Slow connection

[Wildy]

Hi all,

I started looking on here for help with a TV problem, but thought I'd try getting by broadband sorted at the same time.

For some reason we seem to be stuck at a max of 1Mb connection. Router stats show as:

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 1088 kbps 416 kbps
Line Attenuation 49 db 30 db
Noise Margin 8 db 22 db

Attenuation seems to suggest a line length of about 3.6km, which tallies with the opinion of a friendly BT engineer, who also fitted a filtered faceplate for us.

Tried calling Sky to see if they would help, but their answer was "1meg is the max your line can support". Also tried asking BT (under the premise that I was thinking of switching to their BB) but only got "It may be due to distance from the exchange" in response (which it clearly isn't).

Any suggestions how I can go about improving this would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Wildy

[Smithy99]

Are you sure it was a filtered faceplate and not just an i-plate?

Remove it and plug directly into the test socket and post your stats again.

[Wildy]

Test socket stats:

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 1088 kbps 416 kbps
Line Attenuation 49 db 30 db
Noise Margin 9 db 21 db

[Smithy99]

When you try the test socket, do all the other extensions stop working? also, do you have an alarm that can call out when tripped?

[Wildy]

Other extensions stop working when test socket is in use. The alarm doesn't call out at all.

Thanks for taking the time to help by the way, really hope I can get to the bottom of this.

[User05]

Can you confirm that you're using the sky supplied dsl cable i.e. not an extension rj11 cable? How about any noise on the landline?

[Wildy]

Can you confirm that you're using the sky supplied dsl cable i.e. not an extension rj11 cable? How about any noise on the landline?

Yes I'm using the supplied cable. No noticeable noise on the phone line.

[User05]

Yes I'm using the supplied cable. No noticeable noise on the phone line.

Have you ever had more than 1mb? Ever had any previous ISPs? What speed did you get with them?


Have you changed over the microfilter in use? If not, give that a try as well. Failing that, then that's really all you can do on your end. The hard part will be getting past tier 1 to really find out whether your line is capable of more than 1mb and then to spot where the possible fault could lie. You could do the following:

Ring 08442 410515, get through to sky broadband tier 1. Tell them that you're a gamer and your ping times are too high. State that you'd like to be passed through to the customer solutions team to have your max delays reduced. This is basically just a 'trick' to get put through to CST. Hopefully you'll be passed through to customer solutions and then when you get through then tell the real issue that your speed is slow and could they check what your line should be capable of and what line length you have.

[Wildy]

Before Sky we were with Virgin, back then we had 0.5meg. As soon as we switched to Sky we went up to 1meg. After the first time talking to Sky we got as high as 1.3meg for a while but it didn't last long. Failing someone coming up with a brilliant solution on here I'll try and find a spare hour to ring Sky and see if I can get anywhere there.

As I understand it we don't need microfilters since we have a filtered faceplate, so that shouldn't be an issue (unless the plate is faulty, I suppose).

Thanks again for help
Wildy

[User05]

Before Sky we were with Virgin, back then we had 0.5meg. As soon as we switched to Sky we went up to 1meg. After the first time talking to Sky we got as high as 1.3meg for a while but it didn't last long. Failing someone coming up with a brilliant solution on here I'll try and find a spare hour to ring Sky and see if I can get anywhere there.

As I understand it we don't need microfilters since we have a filtered faceplate, so that shouldn't be an issue (unless the plate is faulty, I suppose).

Thanks again for help
Wildy

Oh, my apologies, I forgot you had a filtered faceplate. You are correct - no need for filters, unless you're plugging into the test socket obviously.

From your description of previous ISP speeds and also the fact your connection was unstable at 1.3mb, then it is more than likely you have a very long line and that 1mb really is the most stable speed. Your attenuation generally shows that you could push out a lot more speed but then again so does mine and I'm actually 12km from my exchange (some speed checks at work in sky actually return my line is too far to provision )

It would be worth ringing up anyway just to confirm.