80/20 or stick with 40/10?

I have been on a 40/10 connection with an independent ISP for over a month. My connection is rock solid 39976/9992 and my downstream speed is consistently above 38Mbps throughout the day. My Fritz!Box shows an error rate which is negligible and I have had no disconnections. My ISP has offered a free upgrade to 80/20 but I am not convinced that it is worth it. My FTTC cabinet is about 250 yards away and my router shows that my line would sustain102.3Mbps down and 31.7Mbps up. As we are not a multi-user family, I am concerned that if I accept 80/20 I might be trading line stability for speed when the speed benefits are arguably negligible. Any thoughts?

stick with the 40/10 connection

There are quite a few reports of problems on 80/20 from people who had stable 40/10 before. It looks to be in the WBC or Openreach systems.

Most people I think are fine, but I would leave it until the reports stop coming.

I went to 80/20 as soon as it became available (on the trial) and it's been just as stable as the 40/10 was, I get a profile around 70Mbps at ~400 metres from the cabinet.

But now it's widely available I've quite a lot of sympathy with Bob's comment- if you're risk-averse then wait until BT get their act together.

Edited by billford (Tue 15-May-12 09:29:44)

I was on a good steady 38/9Mb for just over a year and then had the uplift back in April and to date my connection has been the same as before with a steady 77/18Mb and no problems at all. With the uplift my start off speeds was around 70/15Mb and over the week they increased up to my current speed. As have been said some have been lucky others have not and have big problems, at the end of the day it's up to you really, you can go for it and if your not happy drop back.
iechyd da

I say go for it. I only got FTTC last month but my totally stable 40/10 turned into a totally stable 55/15 two weeks ago. Didn't cost me anything - didn't even need to extend my contract.

My line was tested as capable of 81Mbit by Openreach when it was installed although the availability checker says 55Mbit for my line.

I upgraded to 80/20 a couple of weeks ago and it's been absolutely 100% solid, just as before, and I've got a full 80/20 sync with IP Profile and throughput to match.

Given your max attainable rate is higher than mine, you're even less likely to have problems.

I say go for it.

Thanks one and all. A lot to think about here.

I'm using a F!B 7390 on 80/20, my maximum attainable speed is quite a bit lower than yours (I'm actually running at my line's maximum of 62Mb) and it's as stable as it ever was on the 40Mb service (In bad weather I get a few CRCs, over the last 24 hours I have logged 6 CRCs), current DSL connection time is about 12 days and that was caused by a resync to a slightly higher speed.
IF you get some instability you can always adjust the F!B line settings towards 'maximum stability'. Please check you're running the latest firmware (05.22 for the 7390), my VDSL sync improved from 05.21.
Which ISP? Most will regrade back to 40/10 if there's a problem with 80/20.
If, (when) you go for it, please let us know how it performs.

Also, take a look at http://www.fritzforum.com/ , need more members!

Edited by deleted (Tue 15-May-12 14:56:19)

If BT offered the unlimited package on 40/10 I'd probably go with that if it was cheaper than the 80/20. But they don't so for me the 80/20 package would be the option. I'm not really sure why BT are limiting it to 80/20 as the 17a profile works upto 128Mb ish down 30Mb up before overheads are taken into account.

They limit it because of a few things - first they need to ensure enough bandwidth to stop any contention and also the higher the data rate the more crosstalk will be present which will slow everyones SYNC down.

James

In reply to a post by Adsl24:

they need to ensure enough bandwidth to stop any contention

Yeah, right

In reply to a post by billford:

In reply to a post by Adsl24:

they need to ensure enough bandwidth to stop any contention

Yeah, right

A contentious issue?

In reply to a post by LeJimster:

I'm not really sure why BT are limiting it to 80/20 as the 17a profile works upto 128Mb ish down 30Mb up before overheads are taken into account.

Doesn't the steep drop in speed with distance from the cabinet mean very few people would get 128Mb? If so managing customer expectations might be more trouble than it's worth to run at full speed and have the majority of subscribers thinking they're being short changed

I had a 40/10 line that pretty much always got the full rate (there were occasional times when the downstream dropped, but my VDSL modem died and had to be replaced so those blips may have been it being unhealthy). The BT checker suggested I should expect ~60/15 but having upgraded a short while ago I've been seeing stable speeds that suggest I'm getting the full 80/20 or close to it. My upgrade took less than a working day to process and I've had no issues then or afterwards (touch wood).

As the upgrade is free, cost isn't an issue to you.

Some people have reported problems due to the switch, so if you have absolutely no need for the upgrade I might suggest you play safe or perhaps save the upgrade for a time when you aren't busy at work or personally so you have time to chase solutions if you do have problems. These problems seem to be relatively rare from what I've read though.

In reply to a post by dspillett:

As the upgrade is free, cost isn't an issue to you.

That might be only on BT. The charge by Openreach is £3.nn per month higher, then whatever BT Wholesale do, then perhaps an ISP markup, plus Vat. BT Retail seem to be swallowing it.

Your connection looks unstable and heavily interleaved both up and down. Which is odd, if it can supposedly hit >100. What are your pings like?

In reply to a post by qasdfdsaq:

Your connection looks unstable.

If you are talking about my connection then I would respectfully disagree. My pings range from 8 to 13 and I get 37Mbps down and 8.9 up at any time of the day. My connection has been up since I last did a firmware upgrade 3 weeks ago and that the stats read Down: 21ES, No SES, FEC 0.01/min and No CRCs: Up; 432 ES No SES, FEC 0.03/min and 0.01CRCs/min. A massive improvement over ADSL Max and ADSL2+ IMHO.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by dspillett:

As the upgrade is free, cost isn't an issue to you.

That might be only on BT.

The OP said the offer was for a free upgrade, though you are right that will not be the case with all ISPs. With A&A (my current ISP) there is no monthly price difference but there was a one-off admin fee of £10+VAT for existing 40/10 accounts to be upgraded.

That's why I said it was odd.

In my experience, reduced sync speeds like yours (i.e. anything below 39999/10000) are used by BT DLM to introduce interleaving and INP on unstable lines. For example on my line 39999 would be the default "normal" speed while 39998 meant light interleaving, and progressively lower syncs (39997, 39996, etc) meant progressively more interleaving and INP. The same applied to the upstream - 10000 = no interleaving, 9999 = light interleaving, 9997 = moderate interleaving, and so on.

The reason your line *is* currently stable could be because DLM has compensated for instability through INP and interleaving (you don't say what your pings are to, or what you tested by, so they could be entirely false) - or it could be completely unrelated. But if it is stable and can reach >100mb, I don't see why your sync is only 39976/9992 instead of 39999/10000.

I think that it is slightly odd because the Fritz!Box 7390 has a user-controlled SNR slider (performance versus stability). When I was on an ADSL2+ connection, I moved the slider one notch towards stability as the FB was trying to hold a downstream SNR of 3 (which it did most of time but not always). By moving the slider towards stability, I raised my target SNR to 5 and lost about 0.5Mbps in speed. When I moved to FTTC, I just left things as they were. I have no idea what it does to a FTTC connection. All I know is that my line is stable; i.e., I have had no disconnects.

I experimented with my F!B when I first connected it to 80/20 VDSL2, I found that max performance connected with SNR of 6, moving it downwards towards max stability appeared to change the target SNR margin about 1dB per step.

Of course, if your attainable rate remains above the 80/20 cap then your SNR margin will be higher anyway with less risk of excess errors or instability.

Edited by deleted (Wed 16-May-12 23:32:48)

In reply to a post by dspillett:

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by dspillett:

As the upgrade is free, cost isn't an issue to you.

That might be only on BT.

The OP said the offer was for a free upgrade, though you are right that will not be the case with all ISPs. With A&A (my current ISP) there is no monthly price difference but there was a one-off admin fee of £10+VAT for existing 40/10 accounts to be upgraded.

?? I've just signed up with AAISP and I had to go for their Premium (£12/month) option to get the 40/10 cap removed.

In reply to a post by chrisadsl:

?? I've just signed up with AAISP and I had to go for their Premium (£12/month) option to get the 40/10 cap removed.

The old FTTC product line was 40/2 (normal) and 40/10 (premium), it is now 40/10 (normal) and 80/20 (premium). I was on the old premium so was only transitioning from old premium to new premium (same monthly cost). New signups are on 40/10 without the extra (though don't get the network priority that is implied in the wording for the premium product), and people on "old normal" 40/2 can presumably upgrade to 40/10 (new normal) for the one-off fee too.

In reply to a post by dspillett:

In reply to a post by chrisadsl:

?? I've just signed up with AAISP and I had to go for their Premium (£12/month) option to get the 40/10 cap removed.

The old FTTC product line was 40/2 (normal) and 40/10 (premium), it is now 40/10 (normal) and 80/20 (premium). I was on the old premium so was only transitioning from old premium to new premium (same monthly cost). New signups are on 40/10 without the extra (though don't get the network priority that is implied in the wording for the premium product), and people on "old normal" 40/2 can presumably upgrade to 40/10 (new normal) for the one-off fee too.

OK, with you now!

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by dspillett:

As the upgrade is free, cost isn't an issue to you.

That might be only on BT. The charge by Openreach is £3.nn per month higher, then whatever BT Wholesale do, then perhaps an ISP markup, plus Vat. BT Retail seem to be swallowing it.

And IdNet. I wasn't even asked to extend my contract although as I'd only been a customer for two weeks that might have a special case. There's been no mention on the forums of any cost though.

In reply to a post by dspillett:

The OP said the offer was for a free upgrade ....

I missed that bit .

I am also with IDNet. Curiosity got the better of me and Support agreed that if I had issues then they could revert me back to 40/10. There was no discussion about any extension of the FTTC contract. The upgrade went through last night. MY Fritz!Box stats show attainable speeds of 94852/30933 and an actual connection of 79992/20000. Downstream SNR and LA are 11 and 10 and Upstream SNR is 12. I have just run a speedtest and I got a Ping of 13 and 65Mbps down and 9.8Mbps up. The error rate has increased slightly and there are more FECs(interleaving).

Brilliant .

I have to say I don't remember any reports of the troubles freshly occurring in the last week, so maybe whatever was found through the Aquiss investigation was a BT problem and the fix has now been spread through the system.

I believe it was MSIL settings.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I believe it was MSIL settings.

If I knew what they were then I might be worried.

MSILs are the bits of kit that link ISPs' systems to the BT Wholesale backhaul. The 21CN equivalent of BT Centrals on 20CN if you ever heard of those.

So all traffic between you and the ISP and back goes through an MSIL. Connection is:- Your modem >> cabinet DSLAM >> Openreach exchange kit >> BT Wholesale MSAN >> BT cloud >> MSIL >> ISP routers/servers.

In reply to a post by lexden16:

65Mbps down and 9.8Mbps up.

I find that speedtest results for upstream on fast connections underestimate by considerably more than downstream tests. Most put miy upstream at between around 12 but if I set a pile of data uploading to my external server in a single stream I see sustained rates closer to 17. The transfer starts slower but speeds up over the first ~10 seconds or more. I assume this is due to "slowstart" - part of TCP/IP's congestion management heuristics. Downstream is affected to, but not by as much - I assume the speedtest sites have tweak their TCP/IP settings to reduce the effect of slowstart in downstream tests, but they can't control those parameters at your end for the upstream test if they are only using flash and/or javascript for the test.

tl;dr: speedtest sites are known to be inaccurate (they are only intended as a guide not a precise measurement), but I find they seem to underestimate on 40/10 and 80/20 FTTC quite a bit more than they did on slower links.

In reply to a post by lexden16:

The error rate has increased slightly and there are more FECs(interleaving).

If you are getting double the throughput I would expect the error rate to approximately double (if you are meaning errors-per-time-period rather than errors-as-proportion-of-packets-sent).

In reply to a post by dspillett:

In reply to a post by lexden16:

65Mbps down and 9.8Mbps up.

I find that speedtest results for upstream on fast connections underestimate by considerably more than downstream tests.

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/newsite/t/4115965-s...

NB:The situation is 'worse' now. Other testers show me as being 55/14. TBB thinks it's 55/8. As I noted in one of the later replies I have confirmed with a friend that my upload is at least 12Mb/s.

Edited by Andrue (Thu 17-May-12 10:37:21)

And I thought ADSL2+ was difficult to get my mind around! Thanks all.

I am in the fortunate position of being able to check my VDSL stats. I seem to have an anomaly that I cannot explain. My stats are showing an ADSL connection of 80/20 which matches a current throughput figure of 79992/20000. However, when I look at my System Log it shows DSL training following by a synchronisation of 44160/11040. A speedtest reveals speeds of 73.4 and 9.98. Having taken advice from others on a Fritz!Box forum, it would seem that other FBs are showing matching current throughput and synchronisation figures which is what I would expect. I am not bothered just curious. Any thoughts? I am inclined not to fiddle until I have a reason to re-boot the router.

In reply to a post by lexden16:

I am in the fortunate position of being able to check my VDSL stats. I seem to have an anomaly that I cannot explain. My stats are showing an ADSL connection of 80/20 which matches a current throughput figure of 79992/20000. However, when I look at my System Log it shows DSL training following by a synchronisation of 44160/11040. A speedtest reveals speeds of 73.4 and 9.98. Having taken advice from others on a Fritz!Box forum, it would seem that other FBs are showing matching current throughput and synchronisation figures which is what I would expect. I am not bothered just curious. Any thoughts? I am inclined not to fiddle until I have a reason to re-boot the router.

Just to close this thread with an update. I gave in and I left the Fritz!Box off overnight. When I powered it up, I again got DSL training followed by a 44/11 synchronisation. My stats showed a 79992/20000 current throughput and a BT Speedtest gave me IPs of 77.43/20 and speeds of 73 down and 9 up. As the Fritz!Box gets more updates than most boxes, I decided on a full factory reset followed by a manual re-install of my settings.

Immediately on powering up I got DSL training followed by synchronisation at 79992/20000. A further BT Speedtest gave the same IP profiles but my upstream rose to 17.65Mbps.

This may just be an isolated case but it serves to show that not all 80/20 upgrades go through smoothly. Moreover, it also shows that without the modem stats, a BT Speedtest will not reveal any issues.

That's great news, both the Fritz!Box anomoly and the BT hidden profile fixed in one go. Thanks for the feedback, I'm sure someone else will benefit from this in the future.