struggling to get SKY to LOWER my broadband speed

For years ive had a 2mb connection through Sky broadband over adsl. I dont know how, but theyve been slowly getting higher. About 6 months ago, it was reaching 3mb. About a month ago im getting 4mb. The noise margin is steadily decreasing. It was around 5 , when the speed was set to around 4mb.

Last two days the router is syncing at 4500, or 4800 etc. The noise margin is around 3, and any time i do any large type of download the router drops the connection and resyncs. But every time its trying to sync around 4700, with the noise margin still at around 3.

I just spent 4 hours trying to convince some 1st line support idiot of the problem, then had to force him to get his manager. I told her the router is connecting too high, leaving such a low noise margin it keeps disconnecting.

none of them could understand the problem.... "so its connecting at around 4mb? congratulations... we try and get you the best speed possible!"... no no... i dont need a speed the line cannot handle..... please limit the speed to 4, where its been working fine for a month......"what? reduce yer speed? we dont generally do that"..

finally ive got them to adjust the line speed and limit it to 4.

What i cannot understand, is why none of them seem to think that having a noise margin of 3 is not a problme? Apprarenty their customer solutions team took a look and also suggested it might be my face plate........ half stories from the notes their reading.. since the line they were currently testing was plugged into the test socket.

anyway....... just thought id mention that ive struggled with SKY to reduce my speed..... never thought id hear myself say such a thing

phone sky back up and ask them to hard cap your snr (signal to noise margin ) at 6db, beleive it or not your line is that good the dlm in the exchange lowers the margin cos it thinks the lines so good it can handle it. cheers martin

That's odd as DLM is very conservative compared to most providers.

DLM is dynamic line management.

Sky only gives a 3db noise margin to perfect lines generally. Any instability on a line means you don't get it usually.

Other ISPs are much more likely to set a 3db target.

Have you actually checked to see if the connections dropping? I'm tipping its something else as DLM wouldn't keep you on an unstable 3db SNR.

Go to 192.168.0.1
Click maintenance
Click show statistics
Post them on here

We need everything from system uptime to WLAN WAN SNR Etc

just tell sky to hard cap the line i have had to call them in the past to reset Locked line profiles (238kbs download, 700 upload) norm it takes them about 5 mins to do it, they should be able to just set the speed to 4000kbs at there end, or ask them to set SNR to 5-7db

compared to BT where as tomorrow i going to invoice them for wasting my time, the there first line support are just an bunch of monkeys in frount of the PC, all i want them to do is reset the frgin line profile so its not stuck at 100kbs, i do not want to reset the browser settings or reset the router 20 times as that make zero difference (sky norm do what you tell them to do they have when ever i have called them)

In reply to a post by mart98760:

phone sky back up and ask them to hard cap your snr (signal to noise margin ) at 6db, beleive it or not your line is that good the dlm in the exchange lowers the margin cos it thinks the lines so good it can handle it. cheers martin

Can't be done. well the 6dB can't
The system that CST (Tier2) uses only has options for 7/9/12/15
Also depending on if you are on a Stinger or Isam.

Stinger's 7/9/12 and we can set what ever speed.
Isam's /9/12/15 and have set profiles to pick from.

Only other way to change it is within putty and very few agents have access to this any more.

As Ukhardy07 said its strange for DLM / Assia to set the line on a 3dB profile if it is unstable.

As he said log in to the router page grab the line stats and post back.

I also have 3db margin i've noticed.

As i mentioned, i FOUGHT with them very hard to cap the line. Eventually they did cap it. It seems to be capped at SNR of 9, which gives me around 4 mb connection.

its been stable every day since. Just dreading the day some "doo gooder" comes along and decides i really need to try and get 16mb down my line, sending me on a lengthy battle again.....

Damn it!

Sky just took the CAP off! Its now connecting at above 5mb, and leaving a SNR of 3.1. Its disconnecting regularly... latest uptime is only 2 hours.

Now gonna have to go through all that rubbish again! and the last manager assured me they wouldnt remove the cap.

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 5023 kbps 798 kbps
Line Attenuation 50.5 db 28.4 db
Noise Margin 3.1 db 14.9 db

Does your control panel say line testing in progress or does it say line testing completed?