ADSL gone down hill

[piccoLEW]

Is anyone else here in the uk and on ADSL?

THe last couple of weeks i have seen my download speeds plummet by half. I havn't noticed it as much a few weeks ago as i was plying more single player games, but as of late my pings in games have been stupidly erratic, ranging from the normal 38 up to >300 which is when i get kicked from some steam servers in tf2.

I have also noticed when downloading game updates from steam the download was usually 350KB/s now its just 170 if i'm lucky. Is anyone else experiencing smilar symptons?

IT was probably at it's worst last night, it was just me connected to the net according to my router and the wireless was disabled. Looking at BTs website and other speed testing websites this (about 1.4mb) is the most our phone can reach, but have been getting at least 3mb up until recently

[Aedan]

Does your router provide any line stats at all?
Which ISP do you use?

[piccoLEW]

bt are the isp here. After my angsty email i called up their customer support line and explained the problem to the guy on the other end. They got me to do some testing and got them to do a more thorough test on our line, they found a fault and said within 48 hours you'll hear back from the networking team.

The next day saw an engineer up the pole in the morning and later in the afternoon, after which the speed seemed to have gotten better.

Using speedtest.net i've done a few tests and got 5 different results (avg 5.76) although most are around 6.1 - 6.2 which seems better than what i had before i reported the fault.

Although the chap i spoke to did a test from there and and said it was 7.616 which i find a bit exaggerated but will monitor for next 24 hours.

[Aedan]

Your router should have some stats, like line rates, signal to noise ratio, error rates and others. These give a picture of the line quality, so you see if the line is degrading.

[Rondog]

Originally Posted by piccoLEW

bt are the isp here. After my angsty email i called up their customer support line and explained the problem to the guy on the other end. They got me to do some testing and got them to do a more thorough test on our line, they found a fault and said within 48 hours you'll hear back from the networking team.

The next day saw an engineer up the pole in the morning and later in the afternoon, after which the speed seemed to have gotten better.

Using speedtest.net i've done a few tests and got 5 different results (avg 5.76) although most are around 6.1 - 6.2 which seems better than what i had before i reported the fault.

Although the chap i spoke to did a test from there and and said it was 7.616 which i find a bit exaggerated but will monitor for next 24 hours.

My basic understanding of ADSL connections tells me that connection speed on the pole will be higher than in your home, because its closer to the exchange.

Someone will need to confirm though, not positive.

[Gizmo]

Originally Posted by Rondog

My basic understanding of ADSL connections tells me that connection speed on the pole will be higher than in your home, because its closer to the exchange.

Someone will need to confirm though, not positive.

It's the length of the LOOP, not how far you are from the CO. As a practical matter, those are usually the same, but in the case of the lineman on the pole, the loop would still be the same length unless he broke the circuit and terminated at the pole for the test, instead of just tapping it (the usual test method).

[piccoLEW]

THe router does have some line checking stuff. I didn't take a screenie of it on friday night when it got really bad, but i think the noise was higher then:

I tested it last night and downloaded the bf2 1.5 patch I wasn't paying lots of attention to it but it did reach speeds that i havn't had befroe like 600KB/s so i was pretty chuffed.

[Aedan]

That's cool! Just a quick explanation of the figures:

• Downstream connection speed - that's how fast the exchange talks to you.
• Downstream line attenuation - that's how much signal the line is losing. The bigger the figure here, the more "muffled" the exchange is to your modem.
• Downstream Noise Margin - that's how easy it is for your model to hear the exchange. The smaller this figure, the harder it is for the modem to hear the exchange.