Very pleased...

I recently joined A&A after a timely house move allowed me to escape Pipex - what a breath of fresh air! Been connected just under a week and had to contact support a couple of times to transfer my domain over; replies the same day, stuff sorted out immediately, lovely.

One curious thing i'd like to pick someones brains about - don't want to bother support yet as i'm still in the first 10 days...
I'm approx 2km from the exchange and download speed over the past week seemed to peak at about 2.5 - 3mbps but has now dropped to 1mbps; upload seems happy about 0.3mbps. I wasn't sure if the initial speed was normal for this location, but 1 mbps seems rather low!
Any thoughts? Router info (Billion Bipac 7402W):
Upstream Downstream
SNR Margin 15.5 dB 29 dB
Line Attenuation 31.0 dB 14.0 dB
CRC Errors 44 0
Latency Interleave Interleave

Cheers!

It takes a few days for the speed to settle.. plus the BT BRAS system aint particularly fast (all ISPs are stuck on it unfortunately) eg. I get 8mb sync, BRAS cap at 7.2mb (which is the maximum apparently) and about 6mb throughput. Sucks, but it's not AAISP's fault it's BT.

What speed are you synced at??

You seem to have a very high SNR margin if it's not 8Mb, and how come interleaving is on??

See - this is what made me think... Something seems strange.

Sync speed currently is quoted by the router as '4512000', which i take to be 4512kbps. Its steadily dropped since Monday's high of 5696000 (according to A&A themselves). Download is back to its approx 2.5mbps level after the dip earlier today.

Interleaving appears to have switched itself on - the router originally listed the connection as 'fast'.

I had read somewhere about routers misrepresenting the SnR figure and just showing the noise figure or something. Any ideas?

Did you have a period of a lot of reconnection? Older modem perhaps?

The way BRAS works is if you reconnect a lot it'll lower your sync speed until you stop reconnecting. If you still do it it'll switch you to interleaved (see http://www.aaisp.net.uk/maxmagic.html)

Looks like you're set at 15db with interleaving - which is the setting for the worst quality lines.

You can apply to have interleaving removed but the margin will recover on its own once you're synced for 10 days continuously (20 days? can't remember).

Older modem? Me initial response was "no, not that old!", but thinking about it, the thing has got to be about 2 years or so. Given the rate of technology change, i suspect it rates as being middle-aged at least. I did have a period of multiple reconnections, much to my girlfriends disgust. Sounds like i've been given this worst quality line setting.

Beyond waiting for the 10 day sync deadline, anything else i can do? There is at least one firmware update i could apply to the router which, judging by the other updates i've previously seen, might have some new features and tweaks...

I'm just hoping its not a physical problem with the line in my house - when we moved in the phone line was dead, despite BT seeing it as active. Took a visit from an engineer to sort that out, but given the state of the wiring where it entered the house (old, corroded, etc) i'm a tad concerned...

Still - i'm better off than i was: 2.5mbps versus 1mbps, less money per month and not with Pipex any longer...

You can apply to A&A to have the interleaving removed once you're sure it's stable.. Not a lot you can do to speed things up beyond staying connected long enough to get on a faster profile.... BT are a law unto themselves.

Definately get the latest firmware for your modem since it may make things more stable.

Edited by TonyHoyle (Thu 30-Nov-06 22:15:29)