Hi,

Another update...

I received the 2700 yesterday and set it up last night (not connected to DSL). I was impressed to see how much diagnostic information the router has compared with the HomeHub - it certainly makes you feel short-changed with the limited data the HomeHub can give.

Anyway, you'll fry me for saying this but I couldn't resist plugging it in! Before switching off the HomeHub at ~10pm last night it was syncd at 1182kbps although hadn't been syncd long enough for my IP Profile to go from 750 to 1000.

So I switched off the HomeHub and plugged in the 2700. It took roughly 10mins to synchronise (honestly!) compared with the HomeHub which is about 60-90seconds. And to my surprise it only syncd at 1088kbps. I know it was probably the worse time to do it but I still expected better than that. So I resyncd this morning at 8am and got the same again and it still took about 10min to achieve a synchronisation. I decided at this point to try the HomeHub for comparison so swapped that back (still at 8am). That syncd in about 60seconds at 1248kbps! So now I'm confused, the HomeHub appearas to achieve a better sync by some margin than the 2700. I should stil try the 2700 around lunchtime on Saturday/Sunday as advised but at the same time, if the HomeHub holds sync at 1248 then I'm reluctant to turn it off as its a bit of a gamble as to whether, even at lunchtime, the 2700 will sync over 1152kbps and at this rate I'll never get to a 1000K IP Profile.

...and another thing, I can't understand why the 2700 seems to be taking so long to sync. Weird. So all in all, a bit confused. At the moment I'm glad the 2700 only cost £13!

Just thought you may be interested to hear how im getting on.

Thanks,
Andrew

All I can suggest is,

a) Don't mess about at night-time! We warned you...

b) Try the ADSL cable and filter that came in the box with the 2700, in the test socket.

c) Did you confirm that the wiring was OK - no other kit, all extensions dead, etc.,etc.? Are you sure there's no audible line noise? (17070 option 2)

d) What noise margin did you get when the 2700 synced? Post up the detailed stats you actually get from each (HH2 and 2700). Try and find the bit that details the DSLAM maker (might be some reference to remote vendor, remote chipset, whatever).

Take your time on the unplugging\replugging, etc. Too much at once will trigger an increase in noise margin, and make matters worse.

It is unusual that it took so long to sync - was it in a shrinkwrapped box with the seals intact? Plenty unscupulous eBay sellers.

If we can get the vendor ID of the DSLAM, there might be others that could be tried - certain Speedtouch or Netgear models may be worth a try. (Possibly speedtouch, bearing in mind your exerience so far with the Thomson-made HomeHub2)

Apart from that, you may just be at the limit of what you can get, and as you know you'll get your 1Mb profile with the HH2 (given a few days steady sync), at worst you've spent £13 to know you can get a 1Mb profile and no more.

A 1Mb profile at 8Km is hardly a failure.

While the 2700 has a good reputation there is still very much a caveat on these things, i.e. the noise situation is almost unique for each and every line.

Have you tried forcing the 2700 to only try syncing using one flavour of ADSL? G.DMT 992.1 i.e. vanilla ADSL is best probably.

Thatnks everyone for all the help and replys on this. I I was going to close this thread today but I've had an unexpected development... I have kept the BT HH2 in place because since last Friday morning I'd been connected at 1248kbps and as this is almost the best sync I've seen (with one exception) I wanted to try and keep it rather than risk a lower sync by plugging the 2700 around mid-day only to find that for unknown reasons it may connect at 1056kbps.

My connection remained up for almost approx 5 Days and 22hrs (although my IP profile remained at 750K - I though it should have jumped to 1000K after 5 days max?) but then this morning, bad luck! A problem occured at our phone exchange (according to BT) and I resync'd at 192kbps!! And then around 8am the connection kept dropping every couple of minutes, usually reconnecting at anything over 1200kbps only to drop again.,

I'm not sure how it is now because I had to leave to go to work but the BT website reports that the problems at our exchange are now resolved so hopefully my sync has restabilised over 1152kbps. My question to you is does this mean I will now need to wait for a stable connection abover 1152kbps for another 5 days (even though that made no difference last time) before I see a rise. Because the HH2 lost sync from 1248kbps at about 6am this morning (presumerably when the exchange problems started) and resync'd at 192kbps I seem to have dropped to a really low speed now. I did a speed test around 8am after rebooting the router and connecting again at 1248kbps and got no higher than about 160kbps. I'm guessing my IP profile has dropped really low now because of being connected for nearly 2hrs at 192kbps!! Just after I did the speed test the connection kept dropping every few minutes. I'm annoyed because surely this will mean the DSLAM misinterpretting the connection dropping as me constantly resetting the connection and my target SNR will rise? I wonder whether when the engineers fix a problem at the exchange they then 'reset' everyone so any 'fooling' of the DSLAM gets wiped away? Otherwise loss of connection for a fault that is outside of our control can have a knock on effect to IP Profile and Target SNR that goes on for days or even weeks beyond when the fix was made?

Any thoughts? I may have completely misundestood all of this - I'm happy to be put right!

Thanks,
Andrew

PS - double annoyed because all of the planned work to install a second cabinet in our village for FTTC suddenly got cancelled and lo and behold, our village's FTTC enablement date has gone from 31 Mar 2011 to "Sorry, BT Infintiy is not due to be rolled out in your area"!! The next village from us, 1.5miles closer to the exchange has their cabinet but for reasons unknown to me, BT have decided that us at the end of the line are no longer viable (economics? demand?). So, it looks like trying to squeeze myself onto a 1000K IP profile is even more important than ever before!

The fault at the exchange may have been an incident totally unrelated to your sync drops, or it was just said to keep you happy.

Bigger changes in IP Profile should be faster, how fast depends on how many changes the database is receiving and processing from around the country.

Essentially, what you say is correct. Bad luck indeed.

Unfortunately, it's just one of those things - every now and again I get unlucky, have to resync at night-time and wind up with a 9db noise margin, which will change back to 6db. Eventually.

Post up stats from your router, including the DSLAM ID, we may yet be able to suggest an alternative one.

Hi Andrew,

If the exchange fault has been cleared and your sync speed is still low could you send me an email with your details and I'll take a closer look at this fault for you? I'll need a link to this thread and your account details.

Our email address is [email protected].

Thanks,

Stephanie

Hi Stephanie,
Sincere thanks for offering to look into this. I've emailed across to you what I think you need to know but as I'm new to this I may have left out something important so do let me know.
I addressed the email for attention of BT_Care Stephanie so I hope you're able to find it.

Many thanks,
Andrew

Ps, thanks to Mr Saffron and Shtu too - your assistance has been very welcome!

In reply to a post by NorthBucksAndrew:

My connection remained up for almost approx 5 Days and 22hrs (although my IP profile remained at 750K - I though it should have jumped to 1000K after 5 days max?)

I've tended to find that a relatively small increase takes a long time to register, I suspect you would need to wait longer. I usually say a week to avoid the "it's been exactly 5 days and nothing's happened, I'd better reset everything" approach.

(I know you didn't, but some folk can't resist fiddling, and don't realise that it's this fiddling that can cause problems.)

There's a description of the "adaptive" system introduced a few years back here,

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/IPprofile.htm#Adaptive_Ma...

Though my experience suggests that the small profile changes can take longer than the 120 hours mentioned there, certainly reductions to noise margin take much longer, a couple of weeks or so.

The key sentence seems to be

"How long it exactly takes for increases to be applied would also seem to depend on how busy the system is."

What's your sync speed and noise margin now?

(Again, please post up your detailed stats)

Hi shtu,
My current stats are:

Connection information
Line state Connected
Connection time 0 days, 0:03:29
Downstream 1,024 Kbps
Upstream 448 Kbps
ADSL settings
VPI/VCI 0/38
Type PPPoA
Modulation ITU-T G.992.1
Latency type Interleaved
Noise margin (Down/Up) 9.4 dB / 7.0 dB
Line attenuation (Down/Up) 63.5 dB / 31.5 dB
Output power (Down/Up) 14.8 dBm / 12.6 dBm
Loss of Framing (Local) 0
Loss of Signal (Local) 0
Loss of Power (Local) 0
FEC Errors (Down/Up) 274 / 0
CRC Errors (Down/Up) 0 / 2147480000
HEC Errors (Down/Up) nil / 0
Error Seconds (Local) 0

Now getting a top down speed of about 340kbps when doing a speed test on speedtest.bbmax.co.uk

Thanks
Andrew