F2S Throttling

Evening all.

I have been a happy customer of Freedom2Surf for over 5 years however, they are now throttling connections during the day (pretty much ALL traffic so the remarkably honest support guy tells me).

My exchange is in Sileby, Leicestershire (Sam Knows).

I am currently on their "unlimited" upto 8mb package - does anyone have any suggestions where to jump to as 0.7mb (even though I'm at a high sync rate) during the evening is unacceptable.

Apologies if there's not enough info here, let me know what else is required and I'll post.

Thanks,

Neil

The main things we need to know are what you are paying for what allowance, and how much you are willing to pay and what allowance you need with the new ISP.

In terms of choosing the most suitable ISP/package it then depends what you do/use Mondays to Fridays in the daytime, what in the evening and weekends, and is an unmetered or high allowance few hours at night any use.

The terms Peak and Off-peak are fairly meaningless when comparing ISPs as they define them differently.

Your line stats would be useful, see here for help if you need it.

Bob's broadband basic info/help site:
www.robertos.me.uk
ISP history: Demon dialup >> Freeserve dialup >> BT Broadband >> Prodigynet >> Newnet >> O2 Standard.
Purple Cloud for domain, email and web space.

RobertoS - as requested:

I am currently paying £25/mo for upto 8mb, 40gb usage (though from 1am - 6am it is unmetered).

From my new ISP I am willing to pay roughly the same and with an allowance of about 15-20gb/mo (I am not as much of a big-eater when it comes to data these days, but would still like to get some HD iPlayer content etc). I will probably use this 6pm - 11pm weekdays and then throughout the weekend...

Line details: (down and up, respectively)
Connection Speed 7456 kbps 448 kbps
Line Attenuation 12.0 db 5.5 db
Noise Margin 6.6 db 24.0 db

Cheers

I suggest Vivaciti Office 15 at £23.21 a month.

This will give you 15GB weekdays between 8am and 8pm a month.

8pm to 8am weeksdays and 8pm Friday until 8am Monday is unmetered.

Two aspects to this. From those stats. In particular you should be connected at either 8128kbps or 7616kbps and your downstream margin should be much higher. The power levels would be interesting if you can see them. I suggest we look into that later.

If you can cope with a small amount Mon-Fri 9am-6pm, say two or three GB then AAISP fits nicely. You may have trouble at first understanding the estimator, so also have a look at this post explaining how the units work.

More conventional allowance packages that you should look at are:-

IDNet;
ADSL24 Home packages, which are now via Murphx instead of Entanet;
vivaciti Premium Home, but not their Family packages which look like ADSL24 but are Entanet based - Premium Home is Murphx;

You might find this comparison interesting. ADSL24 and vivaciti are resellers so don't get rated, but Murphx is getting good reports at the moment. Whether that may change as they gain customers, which they are doing, is another question.

Bob's broadband basic info/help site:
www.robertos.me.uk
ISP history: Demon dialup >> Freeserve dialup >> BT Broadband >> Prodigynet >> Newnet >> O2 Standard.
Purple Cloud for domain, email and web space.

How can I look into the power levels on my line? I have a Netgear DG834PN router if that helps?

I'll have a look at both of your suggestions tonight. Thanks!

Cheers,

Neil

I've just found the AAISOP rates are changing 1 April so won't be quite as good in your case. New rates.

You can get the full stats from the 834PN by going to the bottom of the Monitoring/Tweaking page on my website and instead of the adslctl configure ... use adslctl info --stats. That's 2 minus signs. You will need the debug bit right at the bottom first. Maybe I should lift that up a bit!

Bob's broadband basic info/help site:
www.robertos.me.uk
ISP history: Demon dialup >> Freeserve dialup >> BT Broadband >> Prodigynet >> Newnet >> O2 Standard.
Purple Cloud for domain, email and web space.

Tadaa!

# adslctl info --stats
adslctl: ADSL driver and PHY status
Status: ShowtimeRetrain Reason: 0
Channel: INTR, Upstream rate = 448 Kbps, Downstream rate = 7456 Kbps
Link Power State: L0
Mode: G.DMT
Channel: Interleave
Trellis: ON
Line Status: No Defect
Training Status: Showtime
Down Up
SNR (dB): 6.6 24.0
Attn(dB): 12.0 5.5
Pwr(dBm): 13.8 12.2
Max(Kbps): 8000 1216
Rate (Kbps): 7456 448
G.dmt framing
K: 234(0) 15
R: 16 16
S: 1 8
D: 32 4
ADSL2 framing
MSGc: 1 1
B: 234 15
M: 1 8
T: 1 1
R: 16 16
S: 1.0680 9.0000
L: 1880 128
D: 32 4
Counters
SF: 4632502 4632484
SFErr: 2 0
RS: 315010166 39376114
RSCorr: 1332 0
RSUnCorr: 16 0

HEC: 2 0
OCD: 0 0
LCD: 0 0
Total Cells: 1384856465 0
Data Cells: 2403609 0
Drop Cells: 0
Bit Errors: 0 0

ES: 2 0
SES: 0 0
UAS: 12 0
AS: 78754

INP: 1.08 2.00
PER: 1.86 1.96
delay: 8.54 9.00
OR: 29.96 28.44

Bitswap: 0 0

Total time = 21 hours 52 min 52 sec
SF = 4632502
CRC = 2
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 2
Latest 1 day time = 21 hours 52 min 52 sec
SF = 4632502
CRC = 2
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 2
Latest 15 minutes time = 7 min 52 sec
SF = 27730
CRC = 0
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 0
Previous 15 minutes time = 15 min 0 sec
SF = 52982
CRC = 0
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 0
Previous 1 day time = 0 sec
SF = 0
CRC = 0
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 0
15 minutes interval [-30 min to -15 min] time = 15 min 0 sec
SF = 52923
CRC = 0
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 0
15 minutes interval [-45 min to -30 min] time = 15 min 0 sec
SF = 52923
CRC = 0
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 0
15 minutes interval [-60 min to -45 min] time = 15 min 0 sec
SF = 52923
CRC = 0
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 0
Showtime Drop Reason: 0
Last Retrain Reason: 0
#

If you look at the dowstream power there it is 13.8dBm. Normal is around 18-19dBm, but it is often reduced on very short lines such as yours.

So it is probably a valid low power, just gone a fraction too low. However your line is interleaved, and in most setups that would mean a maximum connection of 7616kbps. As it happens the cost to you in download speed is zero as you should have an IP Profile of 6500 if you run a BT speed test, which is the same as you would have at 7616.

The error counts are negligible for 22 hours.

I just checked your exchange for VP congestion, which could have been the cause of your slowdowns. It seems it isn't.

I suggest you check out the links for other ISPs that I gave you before, with one proviso. The AAISP unit allowances are changing on 1 April to these.

Bob's broadband basic info/help site:
www.robertos.me.uk
ISP history: Demon dialup >> Freeserve dialup >> BT Broadband >> Prodigynet >> Newnet >> O2 Standard.
Purple Cloud for domain, email and web space.