There's a similar Virgin ADSL MAX story here: http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php?topic=11118.0

Well, Virgin have promised to contact me once the NM is reset. If there is no change in the stats by Friday and I haven't heard from them, I'll badger them some more.

Meanwhile, just airing the topic here seems to have had some effect. The line has been a bit more stable over the weekend.

Good luck

The line has been a bit more stable over the weekend.

By stable do you mean the line normally drops out?

Getting the noise margin reset will make your speeds better but will be BAD for stability if it's already unstable.

From the OP

In reply to a post by MinnieMinno:

For the last few months, our service has been noticeably worse, with many short interruptions

Edited by deleted (Mon 17-Sep-12 11:49:15)

Hmmmm. Lets see what happens anyway

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Willing to bet you will see FTTC and or WBC in the next 3 years. Scotland has enough money in the fund to do a fair bit of upgrading, unless it gets spent on 200 different projects that all have their own large admin costs.

There's one coming up with large admin costs in the not too distant

UPDATE:

I received a message from Virgin Technical Support last week that BT were working on our case and would do what they could to improve the line. I was told that BT were going to switch OFF interleaving. I remembered that Harry advised that I should check that interleaving was switched ON, so I got back to VTS and told them that it might be a bad idea to turn interleaving off.

Nonetheless, they turned the interleaving OFF on Friday and our service deteriorated: the broadband connection became much worse and extremely choppy, so that it has been like having a dial-up service. It has improved slightly today, which is why I am able to post this report.

Naturally, I have been calling VTS regularly and asking them to turn interleaving on again, and reminding them about the noise margin.

Here are a current set of stats. Note that this afternoon, for the first time, there is a change in the noise margin!


System Up Time 58:09:14
Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time
WAN PPPoA 91106 113562 0 979 12059 03:14:27
LAN 10M/100M 647600 540216 0 3873 253 58:08:56
WLAN 54M/65M 491873 306088 0 3017 152 58:08:59

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 1824 Kbps 448 Kbps
Line Attenuation 62.1 dB 31.5 dB
Noise Margin 6.7 dB 13.0 dB

(Incidentally, the line is still very unstable: this is my 5th attempt to post this message!)

keeping interleaving on is probably a good idea.

Gained 600Kbps, which is a bit small for a drop of around 7dB from your old 13dB, but the weather may not be helping at the moment.

Hopefully it will stabilise and the extra speed might let you do a little more with the connection. If ADSL2+ (WBC in BT Wholesale speak) comes to the area, you might get another small boost of 300-400Kbps, not from ADSL2+ but the middle protocol of ADSL2.

Well, the line has definitely been more stable for the past two days, with the noise margin at around 7. But this morning, it has reverted to 12 dB, Very wet and stormy today, so I suppose it could be the weather?

System Up Time 148:37:32
Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time
WAN PPPoA 613379 909902 0 496 14072 24:39:22
LAN 10M/100M 2022150 1585159 0 4918 262 148:37:14
WLAN 54M/65M 973788 636230 0 2256 137 148:37:17

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 1344 Kbps 448 Kbps
Line Attenuation 61.5 dB 31.5 dB
Noise Margin 12.2 dB 13.0 dB