Noise margin

Can anyone help me please? A long time ago, before SKY changed the software for the router (DG834GT), I was able to adjust my noise margin up to 10 whenever it dropped. Since SKY did the upgrade, this option is no longer available to me. It has not been a problem as my connection has not been dropping the way it used to but today, I'm having problems accessing the internet. When I checked my router stats, I found crazy readings for my noise margin. This even went negative (I never thought this was possible). The fluctuation is wild. It's now 26.4db. Earlier, I couldn't get a connection when I had readings as low as -2.4. There were a lot of readings between 0 to 1.0. I gave up and when I tried again, I found I had 7.8db and my connection was back up, but only for a minute or so when it dropped rapidly back to under 1.0. Then it shot to 14db and now 26+.

What is going on here? Has anyone found a way of adjusting the noise margins under this new regime?

There's been a lot of electrical storms about today - are you sure it's not them that's causing your noise margin to go haywire ?

Maybe. I'm not a technical person and frankly, I don't really know what noise margins are, other than that when I had a slow connection, I used to be able to improve the situation by nudging it back up to 10. I was just rather perturbed to find I was getting negative readings.

Anyway, my connection seems to be back to normal now, that is to say I am happy with what I'm having. Perhaps there was some kind of glitch the other day which has since resolved itself.