Speed dropped and am I getting the best speed possible?

I'm on sky broadband up to 16mb £10 a month (£10 because we have SkyTV etc) deal, been with them for about 2 and a half years now.
My dad and I usually complain about the internet, it's becomes frustrating when I'm playing Xbox live on a very low connection speed and he can hardly stream youtube videos. We've phoned up sky on various occasions, I remember one of them was about capping our bandwidth due to a virus on a computer which we had got rid of ages ago and we've always wondered if that is limiting our speed at the moment.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1258217332.png

I usually get around 4500kbps download speed which I think could be better but I don't understand the stats well. Today it has dropped down to 1824 kbps download and 128 kbps upload. I'd like to know if we should be getting a higher speed and if so what speed roughly.

Our nearest exchange is http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/LWGAR (0.8 miles from my house)

These are our stats from the Bounce sky router program:

/usr/sbin/adslctl: ADSL driver and PHY status
Status: ShowtimeRetrain Reason: 0
Channel: INTR, Upstream rate = 128 Kbps, Downstream rate = 1824 Kbps
Link Power State: L0
Mode: G.DMT
Channel: Interleave
Trellis: ON
Line Status: No Defect
Training Status: Showtime
Down Up
SNR (dB): 7.3 7.0
Attn(dB): 40.0 29.5
Pwr(dBm): 19.1 12.3
Max(Kbps): 2016 192
Rate (Kbps): 1824 128
G.dmt framing
K: 58(0) 5
R: 16 16
S: 4 16
D: 32 8
ADSL2 framing
MSGc: 1 1
B: 58 5
M: 4 16
T: 1 1
R: 16 16
S: 4.2711 18.6666
L: 472 48
D: 32 8
Counters
SF: 83364 83367
SFErr: 0 0
RS: 1417202 353808
RSCorr: 489 11
RSUnCorr: 0 0

HEC: 0 0
OCD: 0 0
LCD: 0 0
Total Cells: 6096872 0
Data Cells: 175809 0
Drop Cells: 0
Bit Errors: 0 0

ES: 0 0
SES: 0 0
UAS: 21 0
AS: 1418

INP: 4.33 10.66
PER: 1.86 2.04
delay: 34.16 37.33
OR: 29.96 27.42

Bitswap: 0 0

Total time = 24 min 11 sec
SF = 83364
CRC = 0
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 0
Latest 1 day time = 24 min 11 sec
SF = 83364
CRC = 0
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 0
Latest 15 minutes time = 9 min 11 sec
SF = 32391
CRC = 0
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 0
Previous 15 minutes time = 15 min 0 sec
SF = 50973
CRC = 0
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 0
Previous 1 day time = 0 sec
SF = 0
CRC = 0
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 0
Showtime Drop Reason: 0
Last Retrain Reason: 0



Thanks in advance

Edited by deleted (Mon 18-Apr-11 21:14:23)

can anyone help?

Seems there is a fault somewhere. With that attenuation you should be pushing 10Mb/s.

Do you have a test socket on the main socket? If so, you need to try plugging the router into that and see what the stats are. That would rule out (or show) any issues with your internal cabling. Also, try a different filter if you have one.

If the connection is still as bad there then it is probably time for a call to Sky.

Down Up
SNR (dB): 7.3 7.0
Attn(dB): 40.0 29.5
Pwr(dBm): 19.1 12.3
Max(Kbps): 2016 192
Rate (Kbps): 1824 128

DEFINITE line problem somewhere. Inside your house or outside...

With 40.0 db attenuation I would expect between 8 and 12 meg download speeds. You are getting 1.8. Also the SNR indicates there is no cap, your line just can't handle any faster... Well the line SHOULD easily handle faster. Hence the fault somewhere.

Are you in the master phone socket? I have seen this issue so many times and it turns out the homeowner is using so many extension cables & has so many additional phone sockets etc...

So how many phone sockets are in your house?
Are you using the master socket?
Are you using an extension cable?
Does every phone socket that's in use have a filter plugged in?

Edited by ukhardy07 (Tue 19-Apr-11 14:06:36)

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

Down Up
SNR (dB): 7.3 7.0
Attn(dB): 40.0 29.5
Pwr(dBm): 19.1 12.3
Max(Kbps): 2016 192
Rate (Kbps): 1824 128

DEFINITE line problem somewhere. Inside your house or outside...

With 40.0 db attenuation I would expect between 8 and 12 meg download speeds. You are getting 1.8. Also the SNR indicates there is no cap, your line just can't handle any faster... Well the line SHOULD easily handle faster. Hence the fault somewhere.

Are you in the master phone socket? I have seen this issue so many times and it turns out the homeowner is using so many extension cables & has so many additional phone sockets etc...

So how many phone sockets are in your house?
Are you using the master socket?
Are you using an extension cable?
Does every phone socket that's in use have a filter plugged in?

Thanks for replying

There are 2 phone sockets in my house, both have the filter
The router is connected to the master socket, an extension cable is used to power the router. The other phone socket is for the phone.

1. Unplug the other phone and other filter and the cable going to that socket if possible, check again

A nice round number for the upstream, suggests to me maybe NOT a line problem, but Sky DLM might have gone mad and put you on a slow profile.

if upstream and downstream sync speeds are the same ALL the time now, then DLM looks likely.

Stats after phone line unplugged.
Down Up
SNR (dB): 7.8 8.0
Attn(dB): 40.0 30.0
Pwr(dBm): 19.6 12.5
Max(Kbps): 2208 192
Rate (Kbps): 1888 128

Stats after phone line unplugged and router restart

Down Up
SNR (dB): 7.2 8.0
Attn(dB): 40.0 30.0
Pwr(dBm): 19.6 12.5
Max(Kbps): 2368 192
Rate (Kbps): 2048 128

slight increase but nowhere near the speed we were getting before or the speed others have said I should be getting.

Should I ring up sky and ask them to give my old speed back (around 4.5mbps) or could I ask for around 8-12mbps like others have said I should be getting.

Is your Sky TV box plugged into the phone line? Something is reducing your SNR Margin.

The Sky TV box is plugged in to the master socket as well.

That's usually the problem.