Any Broadband Experts ?

[190]

My broad band download speed has taken a huge hit. As Type this I'm at 239 Kbps. Bizarrely upload is a lot higher at 1216 Kbps.

I'm on a nominal 8Mbps line and usually manage 5Mbps download with up load pretty much where it is now.

My guess is that I've been incurring errors and the line speed has been automatically reduced. During building work the router got moved and was switched on and off many times which I understand is not a good thing. The source of the errors may have been the phone has been connected without an ADSL filter. I've refitted the ADSL filter but the download remains the same. Interrogating the router shows I have 6dB noise margin on upload and 33 dB on Download. I'm assuming that means upload speed is where it should be but I have a lot of head room on the download speed. My question is that now I have corrected the cause of the errors, will the download ramp back up automatically

 

[Delderek]

My broad band download speed has taken a huge hit. As Type this I'm at 239 Kbps. Bizarrely upload is a lot higher at 1216 Kbps.

I'm on a nominal 8Mbps line and usually manage 5Mbps download with up load pretty much where it is now.

My guess is that I've been incurring errors and the line speed has been automatically reduced. During building work the router got moved and was switched on and off many times which I understand is not a good thing. The source of the errors may have been the phone has been connected without an ADSL filter. I've refitted the ADSL filter but the download remains the same. Interrogating the router shows I have 6dB noise margin on upload and 33 dB on Download. I'm assuming that means upload speed is where it should be but I have a lot of head room on the download speed. My question is that now I have corrected the cause of the errors, will the download ramp back up automatically

View attachment 81600

 

[Delderek]

My broad band download speed has taken a huge hit. As Type this I'm at 239 Kbps. Bizarrely upload is a lot higher at 1216 Kbps.

I'm on a nominal 8Mbps line and usually manage 5Mbps download with up load pretty much where it is now.

My guess is that I've been incurring errors and the line speed has been automatically reduced. During building work the router got moved and was switched on and off many times which I understand is not a good thing. The source of the errors may have been the phone has been connected without an ADSL filter. I've refitted the ADSL filter but the download remains the same. Interrogating the router shows I have 6dB noise margin on upload and 33 dB on Download. I'm assuming that means upload speed is where it should be but I have a lot of head room on the download speed. My question is that now I have corrected the cause of the errors, will the download ramp back up automatically

View attachment 81600

I would start by checking your connections and incoming cable. That's a very high noise margin on downloads.

 

[Neiltodd]

mine had dropped from 26 mbs to 0.7 mbs, had BT out it was the router not putting out wifi properly,wired was still ok but the wifi wasn't,router replaced and seems ok now

 

[moonloops]

Ring your ISP and tell them to get it to re-learn the line quality.

 

[190]

Thanks,

I've checked all the connections and tried wired rather than wireless but it makes no difference. I suppose it could still be the router. I have a spare router which I can try if I'm able to find the broadband password.

If it doesn't improve I'll ring the ISP and get them to do a reset at the exchange but I believe it's wise to have a period of stable line connection first. The essence of my question was, do I need to ring them or will the exchange automatically ramp up the speed after a few days.

 

[John]

I would always start by removing the face of the master socket and plugging in the router directly with a filter in there.

This removes your house wiring and anything else.

If that is still shyte, try your second router in the same situation.

If still bad, I would suspect something out of your control.

Otherwise could be duff router. Unlikely in my experience but by no means impossible.

 

[Mattns]

Are you out of BT contract and not signed into a new deal, I have a theory that they cause issues so you call them and they upsell on the basis of a new router, twice done to me this last time I have not fitted the new unit and hay presto speeds are back to good, only thing that changes is I signed up for another 12 months. Third time it happens they won't get a chance and I'll be switching provider!!!!!!

 

[zipdip]

Think your DLM has detected a problem on your line and cut the broard band speed,as you say you have the builders in and switched it off a couple of times,get on to your supplier and have a chat about it,they can check your line for faults,you do not say who is your ISP,as you say you have refitted the ADSL and are now fairly certain that you have got things set right,contact Sky or whoever to test and reset your line.

 

[markjay]

Ring your ISP and tell them to get it to re-learn the line quality.

^^^^^
This.

As you said, frequent disconnection of the Router is not a good thing, because it in fact simulates a poor quality line and will cause an automatic drop in bandwidth as the Routers on BT's side try to find a 'stable' speed at which the line no longer 'disconnects'.

Reseting the connection profile on BT's side should bring it back to how it was before.

Then leave your Router switched on for a few days or weeks in order to 'convince' the BT Routers that the line is now 'stable' at the higher bandwidth.

 

[Gollom]

Thanks,

I've checked all the connections and tried wired rather than wireless but it makes no difference. I suppose it could still be the router. I have a spare router which I can try if I'm able to find the broadband password.

If it doesn't improve I'll ring the ISP and get them to do a reset at the exchange but I believe it's wise to have a period of stable line connection first. The essence of my question was, do I need to ring them or will the exchange automatically ramp up the speed after a few days.

I have been out of the industry for over a year now, but when I was leaving the control of DLM by the ISP was being reduced a lot so it may well take a call to your ISP so they can ask Openreach (not BT) However, I'm not convinced that is the issue and it may well need a test. Could the builders have disturbed the cable into the house?

Are you out of BT contract and not signed into a new deal, I have a theory that they cause issues so you call them and they upsell on the basis of a new router, twice done to me this last time I have not fitted the new unit and hay presto speeds are back to good, only thing that changes is I signed up for another 12 months. Third time it happens they won't get a chance and I'll be switching provider!!!!!!

With the greatest of respect, what a load of tosh. Can you imagine the cost of instigating something like that and what would happen to the ISP via Ofcom if a single case was proved? The margin on a new connection is tiny in any case, so it would cost more to implement than would be recovered. Not looking for a flame war, just my (informed) opinion

 

[190]

I would always start by removing the face of the master socket and plugging in the router directly with a filter in there.

That was the first thing I did and it only made a small improvement of 1.5 dB which is normal and suggests there is no major fault in the house wiring.

The ISP is EE. I will try to contact them but it's complicated by the fact that the account is in my sons name so they may not listen to me.

I've read it can take 5 days continuous clean connection to get the speed back up and so far I've only had the router up for 36 hours.


Is anyone know for certain the significance of noise margins ?

My assumption is that noise margin is the difference between the signal to noise ratio that you have and the amount you need for a certain down load speed. So my 33db noise margin on download is good not bad and suggests I have loads of headroom for the speed to increase. The 6dB noise margin I have on upload is where you would expect it to be and there is no headroom for that speed to increase as 6db is the minimum allowed.

 

[190]

To close the loop on this thread my broad band is back to normal, it just took a full week of the router being on a clean line before the exchange automatically upped the speed.

For what it's worth I had made the right assumption about noise margin. If you have a large figure like 33dB then there is a lot of headroom for the speed to increase. The noise margin has now dropped to 15dB because the speed has increased more than 20 fold.

 

[190]

It's improved again !

After several more weeks of clean connection with the router continuously powered up, I turned the router off overnight to fit a new twisted pair RJ11 cable. The RJ11 cable between the router and ADSL filter supplied by your ISP is almost always poor quality in two respects, It's a flat cable which is susceptible to interference and they are usually much too long which also doesn't help. I bought a short ADSL2+ standard, twisted pair cable, fitted it and turned the router back on. The download speed has more than doubled to a level I've never remotely seen before. The vast majority of that improvement must be that turning the router off and on again gave it a chance to renegotiate the connection speed. The new cable can only have helped at the princely sum of £1.70.

 

[John]

I fitted a high quality RJ11 cable a long time ago before we could get fibre (back in the days when I was getting around 300Kb and I did many things, like face plate and remove bell wires, to get it to a very stable 1.1Mb).

I still use it now as it is shielded and a much higher quality.

 

[190]

I haven't tried disconnecting the bell wires yet but may do it. I see the sense in fitting an ADSL face plate to the master socket but it's in the garage so not a good location for the router although separating the router from the wifi could make that work. What I am going to do is disconnect most of the phone sockets around the house. 20+ years ago in the days of dial up modems I went a bit mad and fitted extra ones in every room bringing the total to 9 including the master socket.