[Archived] Broadband

[Jim J]

Well, I've just ordered ADSL4LESS. Its £14.99 a month for a 2Mb connection, capped at 2Gb for downloads which is ample for my use. The good thing is I'm only signed up for a monthly contract, not a yearly one, so if there service is poor, i'll just move on.

[Hannah]

I have finally signed up for Broadband and gone with the Sky package at £5 a month. I have set it up no problems but I am now struggling to make it go wireless. Now this might be because my laptop is not wireless enabled but I don't know and no idea how to find out!!!

I followed the instructions in the booklet about going to Control Panel and wireless network setup and did all that ok but now I dont know how to log onto my wirelss connection.

ANyone got any ideas???

Really need help as flipping rabbit keeps chewing wires!!!

[Flopsy]

do you need to press a button on the wireless box to see whether it needs to pair with the router box.

Also make sure your wireless is switched on (if network connections say that it has wireless then you have wireless) and that you have the WEP number for the router in your connections.

Have you searched for wireless connections?

[den]

I got the Sky £10/m package, 16 GB. Also using a wireless keyboard - no problem.

[Paul]

Really need help as flipping rabbit keeps chewing wires!!!

best reason i've heard yet for going wireless

[Hannah]

I am now officially wireless! It appears that the reason I couldn't do it was that my laptop wasnt wireless! Just been on a trip to PC World and now it is all up and working!!

I am not sure how safe the world is as I am now in charge of ICT in my school!!!

[Flopsy]

I am now officially wireless! It appears that the reason I couldn't do it was that my laptop wasnt wireless! Just been on a trip to PC World and now it is all up and working!!

I am not sure how safe the world is as I am now in charge of ICT in my school!!!

i 'm so good. I shall send my bill in the post.

Did you get a card or usb in the end?

[Hannah]

i 'm so good. I shall send my bill in the post.

Did you get a card or usb in the end?

A card - it still sticks out of the side of the laptop though!

I took my laptop to PC World and the man told me which one I needed. I managed to install it all by myself!!!

I really hope you cant send me a bill as that would mean you knowing where I live and that would scare me a lot!

[Baz]

Just found this broadband speed test.

Click Here

Seems my 8 meg connection is actually less than 1 !!

[Alan75]

Just found this broadband speed test.

Click Here

Seems my 8 meg connection is actually less than 1 !!

Same thing here Baz.

[Biddy]

That used to be a really good speed tester but now it seems to give flaky results. The best speed test is to try downloading a big file from a good site like Microsoft and see what speed you get.

For example, I have the 20mb Virgin Media and the speed test says I get 4mb. However, if I download 16 streams from newsgroups I actually sustain a pretty solid 18.6mb. Nice.

[Lee]

Just found this broadband speed test.

Click Here

Seems my 8 meg connection is actually less than 1 !!

Your router will tell you what speed you are connected at.

I have an 8mb connection, but there is not a cat in hells chance of me ever getting an 8mb connection with current ADSL proceedures as I live too far away from the exchange. You need to be pretty close to an exchange to get anywhere near 8mb.

As is the nature of ADSL2 connections, they fluctuate, I range from 1mb to 2mb, currently my router states I'm connected at 1504kbps

[den]

Your router will tell you what speed you are connected at.

I have an 8mb connection, but there is not a cat in hells chance of me ever getting an 8mb connection with current ADSL proceedures as I live too far away from the exchange. You need to be pretty close to an exchange to get anywhere near 8mb.

As is the nature of ADSL2 connections, they fluctuate, I range from 1mb to 2mb, currently my router states I'm connected at 1504kbps

Where do I see that?

Actually, we [me and Baz] switched over to sky broadband 16Mb. It was great for quite a few months, but now, in the evenings, it's unusable.

I've contacted them and await their answer, but it looks like we will have to move away from sky.

[broadsword]

I'm not 100% that changing provider would help Den.

I haven't got a clue how to see what speed my router says.

I'm use http://www.speedtest.net/

My connection is meant toi be 8 meg, but sometimes it's more like 0.25 meg (when everybody else and their dog are online I suppose), but at off-peak times it can be up to 5 meg.

I think some quango recently quizzed the leading service providers on why their advertised rates never match up.

[den]

I'm not 100% that changing provider would help Den.

I haven't got a clue how to see what speed my router says.

I'm use http://www.speedtest.net/

My connection is meant toi be 8 meg, but sometimes it's more like 0.25 meg (when everybody else and their dog are online I suppose), but at off-peak times it can be up to 5 meg.

I think some quango recently quizzed the leading service providers on why their advertised rates never match up.

We were with BT Bryan, but it was costing £25/month. Excellent broadband speeds though. We changed to sky, as probably a million or two more did, because you can free broadband on the lower speeds. We pay £10/month though for a premium 16Mb service, but in the evenings it's no different to our old 56K modem. They should HAVE to guarantee minimum speeds.

[broadsword]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/...feed=technology

[Alan75]

Has anyone tried ON SPEED

[Paul]

Has anyone tried ON SPEED

Yes, it used to come free with BT broadband. I can't say it made any real difference. For free I had no real objection to running it but I think one would have to be pretty desperate to pay. At some point I had to delete it, can't remember why, and was unable to re-install the programme. I made a number of attempts to contact Customer Support by e-mail and phone with no success. I'd say the CS was rubbish especially as this was at a time when they were clearly trying to build business through BT.

On the whole speed thing, I have no idea what speeds I have but they generally seem adequate. When I stay at Premier Travelinns there is a wireless service which is supposed to be somethging like 8-16Mb. It is noticeably faster but hardly life-changing.

Had someone from Roversworld trying to sell me a subscription yesterday (the fact I already have an account didn't seem to register). I explained the online video doesn't match the advertised DVD quality and I wasn't happy. It's true the quality has improved from the Subutteo level but it is not DVD standard on either my home PC or this laptop. Have tried using two different connections in different areas. Is this connected with speed? Roversworld is the only online video I find has this low quality, I can watch other stuff at a very acceptable standard.

[Glenn]

Ok. The rates being advertised are the theorectic maximum offered by the ISP from where the signal hits their kit, which is normally your local BT exchange for the 8mb stuff. There are two common reasons why you may not get this speed, the line quality from your house to the exchange and your house's internal wiring quality.

Now, in this country, for most people the last part of the loop (from the green box to your house and possibly the exchange to the green box) is made of copper. Copper is very poor for high speed comms and the fact the most people can get 2mb is a miracle. But nobody want to spend the money upgrading this bit of the system to fiber (or digging everyone's gardens up). So currently, to get anywhere near the 8/12/14/20mb offered you have to live almost on top of your exchange to get a decent speed. There is a bt site somewhere (possibly linked off upyourstreet.com) that showed you your theoretical max speed based on distance from the exchange.

However, often the biggest factor with dsl+ (i.e. speeds faster than 2mb) is your house wiring. It's much less tollerable of cheap or long phone extensions, MUCH less, than old ADSL. Only trust speed tests done with your DSL box plugged directly into your BT master socket (i.e. where the phone cable comes into the house), remove all phones, all phone extensionsions, all microfilters, just try it with your adsl router and nothing else. Most people see massive increases. You can also remove the ring line of your phone (which isn't needed for modern phones) at the master socket, which often reduces electrical feedback and improves line quality, however, BT might not be overly happy at you doing this.

I'm guessing the guardian artical above is the Zen Internet blaming the worlds second most common dsl modem chip on poor connection quality ? I wouldn't read to much into it at this stage, one of the modems listed is the awesome netgear DG834 which I've used dozen and dozens of times with no problem (in fact, they are also used by Sky for their broadband package).

[den]

That's interesting Glenn, I hadn't realised the importance of home wiring.

In my case though, BT's speeds were excellent, where sky's are abysmal. That can't be anything at all to do with domestic wiring.

[den]

This from Sky's helpline:

There are a number of factors that can affect your connection speed. You can check some of them to improve your browsing experience.

– The quality and length of your telephone cabling, including any extensions

– Connecting your Sky wireless router wirelessly is often slower than using an Ethernet cable

– Having all the correct microfilters installed

– The distance between your house and the telephone exchange

– The speed of your computer. Running a lot of programs in the background can use a lot of system resources. Don't forget that spyware or viruses could be running without your knowledge. Have you updated your security software recently?

Please note: Sky will automatically provide the fastest speed that your phone line can physically support as a reliable connection, up to the maximum download speed of your Sky Broadband product. Your broadband speed may vary during the day depending on whether our network is busy, the websites you are visiting, whether you're sharing your connection with others in your home, and whether you have any spyware or hardware slowing down your computer. Your speed may reduce significantly during the peak period from 6pm to 9pm.

-------------------------------------------------

Well not just 6pm until 9pm. All bloomin' evening. When they say reduce significantly, they mean become completely unusable. When they advertise their product at a massive 16Mb, they don't tell you it wont work at all in the evenings.

[Biddy]

That's interesting Glenn, I hadn't realised the importance of home wiring.

In my case though, BT's speeds were excellent, where sky's are abysmal. That can't be anything at all to do with domestic wiring.

Nope, I'll agree with you there Den. It's probably issues with Sky in your case if you have had another service which was good. To check what your line is syncing at do the following:-

From the web interface http://192.168.0.1

> Router Status

> "Show Statistics" Button

There should be 3 main numbers, down, up and SNR. The down speed is the one you are interested in.

On an 8mb line it can sync anything up to 8192. 16mb would be up to 16384. Lines never sync at the maximums due to line length and quality. That is measured by the SNR (signal to noise ratio), the higher the better. If it's around the 6db mark then the line can be flakey and keep dropping. They usually sync at around 8-10db but you can force some routers lower to increase the speed.

If you are sync'ing at a decent speed (say 8192 on a 16mb line) then you should expect to get about 7mb downloads after contention and overheads. If you are constantly getting lower than this then there is too much contention at the ISP end and there's nothing you can do about it other than shout at the ISP. If you are syncing at 1024 (1mb) and you previously got higher then there is a problem on the line somewhere and you need to get it checked out by the ISP.

Glenn is spot on with the master socket thing though. At my previous house I could only get 512k on my extension where the computer was. I changed the faceplate to pre-filtered plate and plugged my router directly into there. I then got 2.5mb so just stuck a wireless card in my PC and ran it like that. The internal wiring killed my connection. You are allowed to change the faceplate on the master socket, you are not allowed to touch the wiring behind it.

[den]

Biddy,

these are the current figures:

System Up Time 05:45:47

Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time

WAN PPPoA 129 227 0 109 773 00:03:19

LAN 10M/100M 69283 51319 0 4382 310 05:45:45

WLAN 11M/54M 902 0 0 9 0 05:45:35

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream

Connection Speed 15323 kbps 764 kbps

Line Attenuation 17.5 db 10.0 db

Noise Margin 10.6 db 12.0 db

I take it that my speed is 15.3 Mb/sec?

At the moment though, it's working great. If I'm reading it correctly, I'll check again tonight, or whenever it slows to a virtual standstill.

--------------------------------

What's anyone think about This speed test? It was recommended by a poster on This thinkbroadband site

Edited October 25, 2007 by den

[Biddy]

Wow, yes, you have fantastic stats. You're not sat in the exchange are you?!?

Anyway, yes that says you are syncing at about 15mb which means you should easily be getting 13-14mbs (1.3MB per second) downloads.

Any problem you have is with Sky internally.

You probably find you have 49 other people on your DSLAM in the exchange all downloading as much as they can as quick as they can which is killing your connection. That's the main problem with ADSL, there is a contention ratio meaning you share the pipe with 20-50 others locally and then the ISP only has a limited bandwidth themselves internally. If everyone tries to download at 16mb, it all screws up. You will probably find the connection is superb 9am-5pm when all the leechers are at school or work.

Edited October 25, 2007 by Biddy

[den]

Wow, yes, you have fantastic stats. You're not sat in the exchange are you?!?

Anyway, yes that says you are syncing at about 15mb which means you should easily be getting 13-14mbs (1.3MB per second) downloads.

Any problem you have is with Sky internally.

You probably find you have 49 other people on your DSLAM in the exchange all downloading as much as they can as quick as they can which is killing your connection. That's the main problem with ADSL, there is a contention ratio meaning you share the pipe with 20-50 others locally and then the ISP only has a limited bandwidth themselves internally. If everyone tries to download at 16mb, it all screws up. You will probably find the connection is superb 9am-5pm when all the leechers are at school or work.

The only thing is Biddy, that the "Connection Speed 15323 kbps 764 kbps" figures, don't change. I reckon that is what the router is configured to. Using the speed test at the bottom of my last post, it's currently giving around 3MB/sec, but I'm running well now. I'll check it when the speed really dips. [as long as I can get the site up].