Has the ADSL synch "strategy" changed?

Ever since I got broadband 5 years ago the way the synch speed gets set has always been the same. If the connection drops then 9 times out of 10 it would reconnect at a lower speed. This makes sense as the connection usually drops because the SNR has got that bad that it can't maintain a reliable connection.

However, since my Home Hub firmware got updated to 6.2.6.E it seems to be working the other way - not that I'm complaining of course, just curious.

When it restarted after the update it synched at ~2900. A couple of weeks later, it dropped the line and reconnected at ~3800. It has kept this connection up for about a couple of months (had to tell due to the bug in 6.2.6.E that causes the counters to run backwards) but this morning it dropped the connection - and reconnected at 4576 I'm guessing that this morning's drop was caused by the bad weather we're having at the moment.

One other thing I've noticed since the update to 6.2.6.E is that it is holding the connection for much longer - more reliable than it used to be.

So, has anything changed or is this just a fluke? Or maybe BT has updated the equipment in the exchange (there are a lot of new houses being built round here so maybe they've had to add extra capacity?).

Sounds like, having got a more stable connection with the firmware, the DLM system is going what it ought to, and after long bouts of stability adjusting for increased speed. What you are seeing is your lines target SNR being dropped, in 3db increments back to the default 6db.

I wish mine would update, still sat on version 6.2.2.6 and it won't budge. The ever reliable (cough) Homehub just wanders off the sync speed, having not looked at it for a few days, and having had no disconnections, resyncs, whatever, this a.m. its sat down at just over 3 meg, a forced reboot (power down) sees the full 8128 Kbps returned, but by then the profile has usually been goosed.

Cheers Zarjaz, yes that makes sense - and makes me very happy too. How come your Hub is not getting updated firmware? There have been 2 since the version you're on - .C and .E - can firmware updates be disabled in the Hub settings and, if so, is that why?

In reply to:

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can firmware updates be disabled in the Hub settings and, if so, is that why?

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If they can, then it's not been by me. I'd happily upgrade it if I someone could tell me how. I had pinned my hopes on the 'new' HH's but they seem to be as troubled as the originals.

You can manually update the Home Hub firmware - take a look here.

The firmware on that page is the latest 6.2.6.e. The PDF instructions give full details on how to manually update the firmware.

(Thanks to BT high-level complaints for that link - shame they never managed to sort out my problems though!)