Possibly your previous adsl1 downstream attenuation readings were not 100% accurate nor were they consistent. Maybe 37dB was the correct downstream attenuation with a 6dB SNRM so now a downstream sync of ~10Mbps would look about right with an adsl2+ attenuation of 40dB, a 6dB SNRM and interleaved.

If you can get a better downstream sync by continuing with FastPath, plus reducing the SNRM and the line remains stable that will be great

Just in case anyone is interested, I thought I'd provide a final update.

After some re-configuring of hardware, settings and cabling, I have a perfectly stable sync of 11776kbps using a forced 3.9dB SNRM on a line with 39.5dB of attenuation. One the factors that increased sync rate was switching to an interleaved data stream. That increased sync by around 600kbps. Of course, latency also increased but, it's only at around 37ms now.

The connection's SNRM sits at around 3dB during the say and will drop to and hover around 1.4dB at night. Speed tests show a throughput of around 10Mbps but, I was downloading some video files the other night and they were coming down at about 1380kbps peak which equated to around 11Mbps I believe.

I'm tempted to force the SNRM a little lower to 3.5dB, just to see if the modem holds on. That should give me a sync close to 12Mbps I'd expect too. We'll see how it goes.

So all in all, I'm very impressed with the Billion. It's not the fastest out of the box but, it can be tweaked very easily and is certainly extremely stable. It also has all the functionality most people would ever need.

Paul

Edited by deleted (Wed 18-Jul-12 11:04:50)

Is it usual to get such a large increase in sync speed when moving from fastpath to interleaved?
Might give it a go if so.

Do you know if Vivaciti have control over different levels of interleaving?

Thanks for the update Paul - great to hear that you have achieved very good results with your setup

If the night time SNRM is currently 1.4dB and you force the SNRM down even further it will be really interesting to hear if the Billion can consistently hold the connection at night - guess having interleaving on will help with that though?

In reply to a post by gmoorc:

Is it usual to get such a large increase in sync speed when moving from fastpath to interleaved?

On TalkTalk LLU (direct) i got a sync speed increase of around 0.8 meg when moving from fastpath to interleaved and pings only increased by 10ms (i don't game anymore).

Thanks for still being interested.

I've achieved my 10Mbps throughput which is great and it's certainly way better than the guesstimate Vivacity and TalkTalk gave me. I'm more pleased with the stability though. As it turned out, that was mainly due to wiring which shows how different the ADSL and ADSL2+ technologies are and what they need to work properly.

I don't think the Billion will have any trouble holding onto a connection with an SNR as low as 1dB. I'd expect it to hold on at 0dB realistically. As I've achieved what I set out to do, I'm not going to push it that far. A little further though, I'm more than willing to try.

I'm also tempted to buy one of the router's you're using. They can be had for peanuts now and I'm just interested to see how different my connection would be using one. That's probably the next step.

@gmoorc: It depends on who you talk to whether you gain anything from switching from one to the other. The theory states that there shouldn't be any difference but, from the evidence I gathered around TalkTalk specifically, and from seeing what happened to my line when I switched to FastPath, being on an interleaved data stream will cause a higher sync than on FastPath. For the cost of an email and half a days testing, I gave it a shot and got positive results.

With regards to the level of interleaving, I think they only use the one. There certainly wasn't any question for me when I asked to switch, what level I wanted...

With regards to latency and gaming, with the lag compensation used in a lot of modern game rooms, the person with the lowest latency normally has the worst experience as the compensation is working for the connection with the highest latency. In the grand scheme of things, 17 to 20ms extra latency is nothing, unless you've optimised the rest of your kit.

Paul

Edited by deleted (Wed 18-Jul-12 14:43:35)

Paul,

If you want PM me your address and I can send you a TG585v7 8.2.6.5 for testing. As you say these days they can be got for peanuts - I've got three of them that were supplied by ISP's and they are not worth putting on ebay. Don't think you can tweak the SNRM with them though?

Hi,

Thanks, that's very generous of you. I've just done some research and you're right, it doesn't appear that the SNR can be tweaked on the v7's, which is something I'd want to do to stress the line. But thanks again anyway.

That being said, there are plenty of alternatives to the TG585v6 that allow SNR tweaking so I'll take a look at them too. I'm particularly looking for the relationship between displayed attenuation and sync rate and how well they hold on to the connection. I'll post up any findings.

Paul

Good luck and all the best with your research, fortunately now you've always got that nice Billion router at hand if and when you need it

This is it. I had my doubts about the Billion in the beginning but, after sorting out the real issue, it's been faultless (touch wood). Now I just need to use to it's full potential.

I just dropped the SNR target to 3.6dB (55% of ISP set target) and the Billion is now syncing at 11976kbps. So, I gained 200kbps from a 0.3dB drop in SNRM. I'll see what the SNRM settles down to tonight and monitor stability. If it's stable, I'll drop it down to 3.5dB and that should net me a 12Mbps sync.

Last night, SNRM was around 1.8dB so either a source of noise disappeared (I replaced an aging SkyHD box last night...) or the router is settling down.

I must say, I'm finding this facinating and it keeps me off the streets afterall.

Paul

Edited by deleted (Thu 19-Jul-12 10:32:53)