Aluminium cable is thicker than copper to improve the attenuation.

thank you i will give that a try a bit later after the wife drags me shopping

i have not seen any other issues with the router but can maybe try connectify for the wife and daughters wi-fi access

they only use a phone and a tesco hudl2 which does not affect the speed tests

Yes but past experience with people on known Al lines showed high loop loss than copper

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Yes but past experience with people on known Al lines showed high loop loss than copper

It's a pity there's no way to quantify that to be able to determine whether aluminium is present or not.

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

The ISP doesn't control the sync speed.

I never said it did. This complaint is about "video stream buffering". Indicative of an issue with packet loss or delay. Since the aggrieved has a reasonably high sync rate (~65Mbps) it's unlikely that bandwidth - between the MSAN and the CPE - is the issue.

P.S. it would be interesting to read some evidence that aluminium pairs suffer more from noise than copper pairs. What sort of noise? Inductive noise? Noise from semi-conducting corroded joints? A quick google search unearthed nothing on the subject.

However it's common knowledge that signal attenuation is higher in aluminium, than in copper wire of the same gauge, due to higher resistive loss in aluminium. And of course with higher attenuation, there will poorer signal propagation, especially at higher frequencies, causing a lower signal-noise ratio across the subcarriers. But that lower SNR wouldn't in itself cause stuttering and video stream buffering.

As usual the fact that BT has locked down its CPE preventing us from examining our line statistics, including error rates, as they clock up - means we're all stabbing in the dark for answers. Which is just the way BT likes it. Information is power, and locking-down CPE devices is a way of dis-empowering the end-user, leaving them ignorant and unable to prove the cause of a fault.

Edited by deleted (Sat 14-Nov-15 20:45:55)

In reply to a post by edwincluck:

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

The ISP doesn't control the sync speed.

I never said it did. This complaint is about "video stream buffering". Indicative of an issue with packet loss or delay. Since the aggrieved has a reasonably high sync rate (~65Mbps) it's unlikely that bandwidth - between the MSAN and the CPE - is the issue.

P.S. it would be interesting to read some evidence that aluminium pairs suffer more from noise than copper pairs. What sort of noise? Inductive noise? Noise from semi-conducting corroded joints? A quick google search unearthed nothing on the subject.

However it's common knowledge that signal attenuation is higher in aluminium, than in copper wire of the same gauge, due to higher resistive loss in aluminium. And of course with higher attenuation, there will poorer signal propagation, especially at higher frequencies, causing a lower signal-noise ratio across the subcarriers. But that lower SNR wouldn't in itself cause stuttering and video stream buffering.

As usual the fact that BT has locked down its CPE preventing us from examining our line statistics, including error rates, as they clock up - means we're all stabbing in the dark for answers. Which is just the way BT likes it. Information is power, and locking-down CPE devices is a way of dis-empowering the end-user, leaving them ignorant and unable to prove the cause of a fault.

get a Huawei HG612 flash it's firmware with an unlocked version and you get all the line stats, or buy a billion 8800nl