Hi all, just registered on here for some help. Had IDNet at my main residence for a good few years now and always been more than impressed with the service.
Recently been living away from home and went straight for IDNet. First few months have been great but for about a month now the speeds have been shocking. Currently waiting for the highlights of the F1 quali to load up. 10 minutes in and I've only been able to watch 3 minutes of the 13 in the highlights!
Youtube has also become shocking.
Now I'm not very well up on the tech side of things so go easy, but I thought I'd ask for help on here first. Going to call the Cust. Serv. guys on Monday.
Anyone able to help? Or point me in the direction of what info to post to assist in identifying any issue?
Cheers guys
:welcome:
Speed issues could have many causes. Things needed to form an opinion are :
BT Speedtest www.speedtester.bt.com
Make and model of router
How are you connected, are there phone extensions
Line stats from your router
Has anything changed in the home, any new equipment connected.
Rik's FAQ's http://www.idnetters.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=1904.0 will help with finding the information you need .
Knowing your exchange can help, it can be cheked for errors/congestion.
Let us know if you need help getting the information together.
Can't add to the above, but :welc:
Likewise, but a warm welcome to the forum. :welc: :karma:
Thanks for the warm welcome guys. :)
Some basic info first, I'll run the speed tester tomorrow night a bit earlier on that now!
Using company laptop - Dell and I connect wirelessly using the Dell WLan Utility. No changes in this regard for a couple of years now
Router is just a Netgear DG834G v5
I tend to switch it off every evening and then back on when I get home from work the following day. Never had a problem doing this at my main residence.
Nothing has changed in terms of new electrical equipment in the flat. It sits directly beneath a LCD TV which it has done for 6mths now.
If anyone can point out how to get "line stats" from my router I'll post those up tomorrow night as well.
Thanks again chaps.
Quote from: Swerv on Sep 12, 2010, 23:35:05I'll run the speed tester tomorrow night a bit earlier on that now!
First, welcome to the forum :thumb:
I'll leave the rest of your post to those who know what they're talking about, just say that the evening is
not a good time to run the BT speedtester.
Apart from being likely to hit congestion, everybody and his parrot tries to use it in the evening and it can take ages to get past the "busy" messages. A quick test in the morning would be much less frustrating, but don't forget to copy/paste the results somewhere on your PC as you can't get back to them later.
Quote from: Swerv on Sep 12, 2010, 23:35:05
If anyone can point out how to get "line stats" from my router I'll post those up tomorrow night as well.
Thanks again chaps.
Take a look here >> http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/frogstats.php
Scroll down to >>>>> Netgear DG834/ DG834G
Hi Swerv
You might help yourself by leaving the router on 24/7. BT could be 'seeing' the shut down as a sign of instability.
There is also a possibility that your router has becaome faulty because of the continual swithching off and on, it could have caused a solder joint to break down or become cracked. Also welcome to the forum :thumb:
:welc: :karma:
Thanks again for the welcomes chaps.
Right, just ran BT Speedtester (chances of me being up early enough in the morngin before work are slim!):
Download speed achieved during the test was - 237 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 100-500 Kbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :576 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 848 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 350 Kbps
The throughput of Best Efforts (BE) classes achieved during the test is - 11.95:24.01:64.05 (SBE:NBE:PBE)
>Upload speed achieved during the test was - 361 Kbps
Additional Information:
Upstream Rate IP profile on your line is - 848 Kbps
Sadly, your speed is correct for your profile, and the profile is correct for the sync speed.
Do you know anyone with a spare router you could try?
Just to add the line stats
Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time
WAN PPPoA 31938 41350 0 50 195 1 day 07:40:13
LAN 100M/Full 5878 6211 0 36 20 1 day 07:40:34
WLAN 11M/54M 30916 27590 0 164 33 1 day 07:40:54
ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 571 kbps 446 kbps
Line Attenuation 42.5 db 26.0 db
Noise Margin 14.00 db 14.5 db
That noise margin is costing you about 2M in speed. DLM has raised it to the maximum to try and stabilise the line, so it's seeing electrical noise and/or a high error count.
Would that suggest a dodgy router then Rik?
Like I say, please excuse my technical ignorance. :blush:
That's one possibility, another is something electrical in the house (eg a Sky box), a third is a line fault (or degradation) on BT's side.
Ok ta. I'll bell IDNet tomorrow now I'm armed with some info.
I'll also see if I can borrow a router from someone.
:thumb:
Noise margin's come down a bit today
ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 573 kbps 564 kbps
Line Attenuation 43.0 db 26.0 db
Noise Margin 12.75 db 10.5 db
Sadly, that's probably not a good sign. You would have synced at 15db, to judge by your previous figures, so to me it indicates an increase in noise. :(
down further
ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 573 kbps 564 kbps
Line Attenuation 43.0 db 26.0 db
Noise Margin 10.65 db 10.5 db
As I said, you have noise on the line, the question is where it's being picked up.
Brief update. Unplugged filters on Wed night last week only for the broadband to go down anyway! So, put the original one back on the modem and left the filter for the phone unplugged.
Been away since Thurs and left modem on. Noise margin has climbed notably downstream.
Connection Speed 573 kbps 660 kbps
Line Attenuation 40.0 db 26.0 db
Noise Margin 20.10 db 13.5 db
I think your on a banded profile who's upper limit is 576, it will have been imposed by BT's line management system, you can check with support and get unbanded but you need to try to solve what caused the issue in the first place. The higher margin in this situation reflects how much BT is holding your line back the fact that it has increased to me with the same sync downstream suggest things have improved.
Thanks Steve. Brief experiment. Plugged filter I had been using for the phone back in, with the phone on it, and margin immediately plummetted to 10.5 from the 20.5.
Soooo, unplugged it - immediate doubling of margin. Plugged phone into same filter as modem and the margin settled at about 17.5.
Is this to be expected from having additional connections, or is it likely that the filter and/or phone are bit rubbish and are impacting more than they should?
It suggests to me that the first thing you did induced noise into the circuit causing the margin to fall, as you say one or both are suspect, the filter (which don't last forever and some are better than others) seems to be the primary suspect.
Have had look here http://www.adslnation.com/products/index.php they are highly regarded.
I'd look closely at the filter and phone. Can you get your hands on a wired phone and see if that has the same impact? If it does, try putting two filters in series and see if that helps.