Broadband/dial-up question...

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Broadband/dial-up question...

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sean
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 42207
Location: North Devon

Posted: Thu Apr 12, 07 8:23 pm Post subject: Broadband/dial-up question...
I've just set up my boss's broadband for him (after he'd been to by an expert that you can't connect to the internet using Windows Vista ). Anyhoo, he's at the furthest point from the exchange, and the connection is painfully slow. (Download speed of 9.5KBS). Would he actually be better off with dial-up?

boisdevie1

Joined: 11 Aug 2006
Posts: 3897
Location: Lancaster

Posted: Thu Apr 12, 07 8:54 pm Post subject:
A sustained download speed like that is extremely slow for broadband. I suspect a modem would be faster but it might be worth trying to find out if the broadband speed is likely to improve soon. In France we were at the end of the line broadbandwise and I was getting sustained download speeds of 50k plus - fast enough for VIOP phone calls.

dougal

Joined: 15 Jan 2005
Posts: 7184
Location: South Kent

Posted: Thu Apr 12, 07 10:34 pm Post subject: Re: Broadband/dial-up question...

sean wrote:

.... and the connection is painfully slow. (Download speed of 9.5KBS). Would he actually be better off with dial-up?

NO.

Even that speed is more than twice the speed he'd be likely to get on a plain dialup modem on a good line (which I doubt he has).
The download speed reported is in k *bytes* per second, whereas modem speeds (like 28.8k, "56k", etc) are in k *bits* per second - so there is a factor of 8 to bear in mind. {Actually IIRC, with allowance for protocol overheads, a factor of 10 is fair - so 4.5kBs is/was a good speed from a "56k" modem connecting at about 44kbs...}

Is he on "adaptive rate" broadband? If not, he should be - and if he is then he's probably too far out for ISDN, and has the best conventional solution.
Alternatives might include satellite services, or a wireless link set up from someone amenable in line of sight that has a better broadband connection... neither being cheap or completely simple.

Last edited by dougal on Thu Apr 12, 07 10:36 pm; edited 1 time in total

sean
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 42207
Location: North Devon

Posted: Thu Apr 12, 07 10:36 pm Post subject:
Fairy'nuff. I know very little about this stuff. I suspect that the line is basically rubbish and needs renewing/upgrading. When BT will get round to that is anyone's guess.

dougal

Joined: 15 Jan 2005
Posts: 7184
Location: South Kent

Posted: Thu Apr 12, 07 10:41 pm Post subject:

sean wrote:

Fairy'nuff. I know very little about this stuff. I suspect that the line is basically rubbish and needs renewing/upgrading. When BT will get round to that is anyone's guess.

Likely, the line is simply too long. For which 'adaptive rate' is the only cure. But the lower the line quality, the lower the speed of modem connection it will support. 33k6 would be a fair expectation for a seriously rural line.
He's a lot better off than those poor folk who only actually have half a line - and so can't get broadband at all.

pricey

Joined: 28 Feb 2005
Posts: 6444

Posted: Thu Apr 12, 07 10:57 pm Post subject:
Sean how far is he from the exchange? I am as far as you can go here which is 2.8 miles and am running at 2.8- 3.2 Mbps, is he further away? Can he not ask BT To do something about it?

dougal

Joined: 15 Jan 2005
Posts: 7184
Location: South Kent

Posted: Thu Apr 12, 07 11:09 pm Post subject:

R-ADSL https://www.getonlinebroadband.com/faqs/faq26.html

Quote:

R-ADSL is a variant of ADSL that increases the maximum distance from your exchange by adjusting the upstream bandwidth based on the quality of the line. RADSL increases the maximum distance supported from 3.5 to around 5.5 kilometres.
...
R-ADSL is only available on the 500Kbit/s services and...

Treacodactyl
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism

Posted: Fri Apr 13, 07 7:02 am Post subject:
I'm not sure if it's worth checking the phone wiring in their house, when I've had problems with my broadband service the tech support people seem to blame your house wiring first. If there's lots of it and more than one socket it would be worth trying the nearest socket to the phone cable entry point.

mrutty

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 1578

Posted: Fri Apr 13, 07 7:43 am Post subject:
https://www.two3five.com/adsl-test.htm

Barefoot Andrew
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 21 Mar 2007
Posts: 22780
Location: In the 17th century

Posted: Fri Apr 13, 07 10:18 am Post subject:

pricey wrote:

Sean how far is he from the exchange? I am as far as you can go here which is 2.8 miles and am running at 2.8- 3.2 Mbps, is he further away?

Bear in mind that BT's cabling can sometimes take slightly topsy turvy routes, so the actual distance of cable run from modem to exchange can be more than the apparent distance from house to exchange. OK, the extra distance may not be much, but can be a factor when the distance limits are being pushed.

There needs to be some sort of sea change in how the UK's ADSL setup is managed: it can be extremely difficult to fault-find / improve ADSL because it's nigh on impossible to (readily) get a complete picture of what's going on. BT's engineering & fault reporting service will tell you be about the quality of your line (or otherwise), but will not tell you anything about the what's occuring with the DSLAM port/card to which your line is attached. ISPs don't seem to have access to the full picture either - or are just too useless and script-bound to do anything useful with it. Oh dear... I'm ranting...

A.

MarkS

Joined: 01 Aug 2006
Posts: 2626

Posted: Mon Apr 16, 07 10:08 am Post subject:

download speed tells you very little - depends where you are downloading from, how you are downloading and how busy that server is.

Start with the stats from the router, you cant do anything about the internet as a whole and should concentrate on the speed that you are getting to the internet at.

what speed is the router connecting at?
Are you getting errors on the connection?
what is the dsl package and isp - if you are p2p or torrenting (or even ftping) you may be being throttled.

you can do a bt connection test that makes a reasonable check of your line speed and quality (I've got the link somewhere if you cant find it.)

lots of problems are caused by piss-poor internal wiring and missing/rubbish filters.

Start by reporting a line quality problem to bt but as an audio problem - again there is a number you can dial to do a line silence check. The t&c for adsl allow for quite slow connections so you do better by challenging the sound quality and getting the line improved.

sean
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 42207
Location: North Devon

Posted: Mon Apr 16, 07 11:02 am Post subject:
He's getting the internal phone wiring re-done this week, then we'll see what happens.

dougal

Joined: 15 Jan 2005
Posts: 7184
Location: South Kent

Posted: Mon Apr 16, 07 11:45 am Post subject:

MarkS wrote:

download speed tells you very little - depends where you are downloading from, how you are downloading and how busy that server is.

Erm, yes, but the best ever speed being 1/5th of what it might possibly deliver would tell you that something was under-performing compared to expectations.
Though if his distance is highly marginal, it could be the expectations that are awry.
I'd also add that since he probably also has a 'contention' factor to consider as well, a movie download enthusiast happening to be hooked onto the same bit of exchange kit could also hinder performance.

sean wrote:

He's getting the internal phone wiring re-done this week, then we'll see what happens.

Splitters/microfilters on every extension socket!

christhetechie

Joined: 01 Apr 2007
Posts: 24

Posted: Mon Apr 16, 07 9:17 pm Post subject:
Dial 17070 and run a line test - usually points out crap lines. You may need a BT engineer's mobile number to access the service which is quite easy to obtain if you get one on site - just ask him to call you from the exchange for some random reason -they usually oblige.

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