speed of your broadband?

[roobarb!]

Just ran a quick check on our building again, seeing as it's Friday morning and the students should still be asleep.



Also, here's a little something you might be interested in if you think you're having difficulties with your connection. It's a failure monitor called f8lure. The server pings your router and takes measurements of availability and latency, then produces graphs like this:



That's an up-to-the-minute image of the behaviour of my home connection. I started using the service again to see what was happening after having Infinity installed (and after getting a whole bunch of disconnections yesterday). It seems to have cleared up now, but I'll be keeping an eye on it.

Unfortunately, BT Home Hubs don't respond to pings (unless you've hacked them, I believe) so you need to be using some other router. My home connection runs through the BT-provided, snappily-titled ECI Telecom B-Focus V-2FUb/I Rev.B modem, but it's an Apple AirPort Extreme that actually handles the PPP connection, so the pinging works just fine.

[roobarb!]

Well, as the graph shows, the BT Infinity connection is still being bad! Reported it and although the website had said all was well, it failed the customer support guys line test miserably. I'll be resetting at 7pm after they've twiddled with things their end. Fingers crossed!

[roobarb!]

Well, as the graph shows, the BT Infinity connection is still being bad! Reported it and although the website had said all was well, it failed the customer support guys line test miserably. I'll be resetting at 7pm after they've twiddled with things their end. Fingers crossed!

That didn't work, Openreach engineer has been this morning and replaced the ECI VDSL modem (we're connected to an ECI 128 cabinet, so I'm assuming it's an another ECI box he's swapped it for). I shall see how it goes from here.

[pete]

Is it fixed yet?

[roobarb!]

Is it fixed yet?

Yes, it would seem to be fine now - the new modem they fitted seems to have settled in. I've read that they're not the most reliable boxes in the world, so I've sprung for a Fritz! 7390 box and see how that goes. Should have it once I get back from my hols.

Need to sell some of my unused tech to fund that Fritz box, mind. Not cheap!

[hawsey]

What's a fritz roobarb? Is that to replace the ECI?
Just had a quick look at the fritz box and I can feel gadget fever kicking in will it work as the Openreach ECI box and the Home hub 3 or only the later? Will have a better look when I get a chance but i'ts looking good to me...

[roobarb!]

What's a fritz roobarb? Is that to replace the ECI?
Just had a quick look at the fritz box and I can feel gadget fever kicking in will it work as the Openreach ECI box and the Home hub 3 or only the later? Will have a better look when I get a chance but i'ts looking good to me...

It replaces both - it's a VDSL2 (and ADSL2+) modem with router, dual-band wifi, DECT phone base station and more features than you can shake a stick at. I'm actually very pleased with it! It looks a bit weird (and its not cheap, though I found an open-box return one on broadbandbuyer), but it really does work incredibly well.

[roobarb!]

One thing to note, though - I'm not bowled over by its wifi performance. I need to play with it s bit more, but it's a little 'disconnecty' at the moment.

[Turvey]

After having problems with the phoneline getting so bad we couldn't hear the person on the other end we finally got our line 'fixed' We can now hear perfectly but...





Needless to say yet another email has been sent. I wait with bated breath.

[hawsey]

Hmm not good that Turvey.
If you ping your router can you see what your sync speed is?
If it is a lot faster than the above results then you either need a BRAS profile re set or you can wait 10 days and the speed will go up automatically if you leave your router plugged in and switched on the whole time.
If your sync speed is no better than your results you have different issues.
The above assumes you are on a 20CN line as 21CN should have automatically re set your speed in theory.

[BuZz]

After having problems with the phoneline getting so bad we couldn't hear the person on the other end we finally got our line 'fixed' We can now hear perfectly but...





Needless to say yet another email has been sent. I wait with bated breath.

horrible

Even http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers might be an upgrade speed wise!

are you in the middle of nowhere, or did someone replace your copper with string ?

[ilovemyjoggler]

are you in the middle of nowhere, or did someone replace your copper with string ?

No - it's just the decimal point's been accidentally put in the wrong place.

Joking aside though, that's pants!

[Turvey]

Hmm not good that Turvey.
If you ping your router can you see what your sync speed is?
If it is a lot faster than the above results then you either need a BRAS profile re set or you can wait 10 days and the speed will go up automatically if you leave your router plugged in and switched on the whole time.
If your sync speed is no better than your results you have different issues.
The above assumes you are on a 20CN line as 21CN should have automatically re set your speed in theory.

Once I find out how to do all that I'll let you know

Just home from work and tested again with the same result

Went into the kitchen and just happened to notice the new BT main socket, which BT installed last week, didn't seem to be sitting correctly. So I removed the screws and pushed the cover in fully and replaced the screws with this result...




Not perfect but a lot better than it was.

We're about a mile or so from the exchange. BT replaced the line from the pole to our house last week and told me the box on top of and the cable coming down the pole both need replacing! When that happens I don't know.

Incidentally our exchange has recently been upgraded with a fibre optic connection to the mainland but I cant find out when we, the lowly customers will start receiving the benefits of this. Here's the Samknows link to our exchange for anyone who's interested

[hawsey]

Do you have any extension wiring wired in to the main socket Turvey?
To ping the router you just Google what type of router you have and then type the I.p address in to the top bar of your browser
For a Bt home hub 3 it is 192.168.1.254 (I think from memory)
And you navigate to advanced, somewhere in there you will find your sync speed which may well be very different from your actual speed.
Let us know how you get on
I see you are with talk talk so depending on which model router you have your ip address will be different.

[ilovemyjoggler]

Do you have any extension wiring wired in to the main socket Turvey?

Can I ask a practical (but probably silly) question. I've never lived in a property where the main telephone socket doesn't enter the house in the hallway (and I've lived in a fair few). That being so, how is it possible to have a router that isn't on some form of an extension lead? Unless the router remains in the hallway?

[Turvey]

The main socket in our house is now in the kitchen

The router is plugged into the one in the hall so I'm going to try it in the main one and see if there's a difference in speeds. Problem is the main computer is in the sitting room linked to the router with an ethernet cable under the floor. So I'll have to dig out a laptop and try it that way

hawsey, not sure if it's what I'm looking for(couldn't find anything with sync speed on it) but I found a section marked 'bit rate' and the downstream reads 6016Kbps.

Using http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/max_speed_calc.php it says I 'should' be getting 8128 and if/when TT switch over to fibreoptic I could get up to 18144Kbps.

[hawsey]

Righto well it looks like you are in sync at just over six meg Turvey. So that is good news I suppose and it sounds like you are on the old up to 8meg type of line.
Plugging your router in to the main socket won't make any difference if the extension cables are wired in to the main socket. If you have a test socket , the sort where you can take the faceplate off and the wires are attached to that ;then you could plug your router directly in to that with the extensions hanging off on the front plate then wait till it syncs up and do what you did before and see if the sync speed goes up from 6 meg.
Regardless of what I have just said though your throughput should be better than 2 meg, probably about 4.5 with a 6 meg sync so you need to keep the router on permanently and by 10 days things should improve ,
your slow speed is probably due to your line fault causing the DLM to tweak your speed downwards due to errors and unstable sync and the 10 day process will in theory anyway rectify that

[Turvey]

7.40am on laptop via wifi.....so it can be quite good

[hawsey]

If your speed is only slow at peak times then you have possibly got a contention issue where by a Comms provider only has a certain bandwidth in a given exchange and once that is reached that is it :-/
if you can speak to someone else with talk talk on your exchange and see if they have the same issue, a change of CP might be your only solution in the end.
Good luck

[BuZz]

Downstream/Upstream got increased in Jan so time to post a new test.



speed is mostly good, however my line has a low SNR, so I am getting some problems like occassional disconnections etc. I would still swap this for 80/20 (like you can have on bt infinity). need more upstream speed!