I just realised that the OP does state his ISP in his second post - Origin. AIUI they are Plusnet resellers, which ties in with my guess from the data he supplied.

He won't have stats to give us of course unless he has an HG612 he can unlock or gets one. He may not even know what we mean by modem stats. He has an ASUS N-12 router which does not incorporate a modem.

See my reply to MHC a few minutes ago.

Is your Openreach modem an HG612 version 3B, or an earlier version, or an ECI model?

We can't help you about whether your connection speed is low or not without line stats. Those can only be obtained by using an unlocked HG612 v 3B or by buying an expensive combo modem/router. Your speedtest results are fine for the connection speed you have.

If your modem is not what is needed I believe they are still available on eBay at around £25. Don't pay extra for an unlocked one if you are happy inside a router's GUI, which with what you have I expect you are. The HG612 is easy to unlock with free firmware.

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 27-Jan-16 13:28:06)

I find it very hard in this forum quickly to tell what is being asked of me, the original poster (is that OP?), and then when I reply it always appears at the end!

I clearly don't know the technical stuff like many of you do, but I am doing my best to provide info where asked, but I do have work to do! I have indicated the initial speed I got. But thanks for many illuminating comments.

As for the above, all I can tell you is the modem is an ECI one from Openreach. Not sure what is meant by "Your speedtest results are fine for the connection speed you have", although presumably you mean vis a vis the VDSL sync speed. I can follow router stats so long as I can get into it...

The one interesting thing which has come up in the last week it that it was found that at the cabinet, my port was synching at 66mbs and not 80. OR were unable to get the port to synch higher, so moved me to another port, at which point they assured me it was synching at 80/20. I confess to being baffled that no improvement whatsoever was seen in the sync speed at my house.

I'm pretty sure that all problems can ultimately be traced to the quality of the wire to the cabinet, but it's unclear how much of a fuss it takes to get that improved!

The question you have to answer is which exchange and which cabinet are you connected to? You may know this already.

The reason for this question is to determine if you are connected to a Huawei cabinet or an ECI cabinet. Being as you said BDUK, chances are that your cabinet is a Huawei but you can find out by following these instructions http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/cabinet-lookup.htm

If you are connected to a Huawei cabinet, you will get a better connection if you use a Huawei HG612 modem that supports G.INP, rather than an ECI modem which doesn't.

Edited by deleted (Wed 27-Jan-16 17:07:14)

In reply to a post by nstrudwick:

I find it very hard in this forum quickly to tell what is being asked of me, the original poster (is that OP?), and then when I reply it always appears at the end!

OP can mean either Opening Poster or Opening Post, depending on context .

Are you using Threaded Mode for the forums or Flat Mode? Towards the top right is a row of buttons, "Mark read, (either) Threaded or Flat, and Index". That centre one changes your view to the one it says at the time.

All posts have a Header saying who they are a reply to, and every post has a Reply button. If in Flat mode there is a temptation to always click the last one, which then looks like a reply to that rather than the post you may have intended.

Once you decide on your preferred view you can set it to the default on the My Home page, at the bottom. My settings there are:-

Normal index
Active in the last week
Descending date
Flat mode
Collapsed threads
99
99
On
140
25
Yes
Yes

I hope that helps. Many people also set up Favourite Forums on My Home and make it their entry point to the forums. I have about twenty in there, and it makes things much quicker.

I clearly don't know the technical stuff like many of you do, but I am doing my best to provide info where asked, but I do have work to do! I have indicated the initial speed I got. But thanks for many illuminating comments.

We all start of knowing little - don't worry about it .

As you have an ECI modem the line stats are not viewable - Openreach decided that for the ECI and the HG612. One bright guy said a rude word to that and managed to extract the configuration of the HG612 and unlock it. Many of us use that. However it turned out the same couldn't be done with the ECI. It can be unlocked, but needs soldering doing to its circuit board to achieve it.

As I said in my previous post, having confirmed there are no glaring discrepancies between your connection speed (yes, that's the VDSL2 sync speed) and your throughput, particularly as I believe you are on a Plusnet connection resold by Origin, we can't really help much more without seeing the stats. HG612 or some posh combo, but I think very few of us would recommend the combo at this stage.

The one interesting thing which has come up in the last week it that it was found that at the cabinet, my port was synching at 66mbs and not 80. OR were unable to get the port to synch higher, so moved me to another port, at which point they assured me it was synching at 80/20. I confess to being baffled that no improvement whatsoever was seen in the sync speed at my house.

Hmmm.

During daylight hours (sync's done at dawn/dusk/night are normally slower) power down your modem for 5-10 minutes. You may as well do the same with your router. See how things are afterwards. Probably no significant difference, but needs to be done just in case.

I'm pretty sure that all problems can ultimately be traced to the quality of the wire to the cabinet, but it's unclear how much of a fuss it takes to get that improved!

Given the speed you have, no chance of anything being done. (In my opinion).

Post deleted by WelshWArrior

Consider the sheer quantity of phone connections in the UK, I have seen the figure of 25 Million suggested.

Typically, these are likely to be 1 mile (1.6 Kilometres) long from the Exchange, to the premises/home; and many in rural areas particularly being significantly longer.

They are a mixture of very-multi-way cables, 100 pairs, down through various combinations to a single pair, depending on specific circumstances of each installation.

I don't know if the uses of the aluminium hybrid wires is recorded; but locating and physically replacing all of such lower-standard wiring would be a massive undertaking, also including such aspects as road closures, loss of service, replacing damaged ducts (which may or may not have impacted on the service) etc.

As far as I can judge, the underground jointing chambers are about 305 Metres apart, about 1,000 feet.

Having been on the periphery of the telephone system technically since 1952, I am constantly amazed that it manages to cope with the various forms of (higher-speed) broadband, even with the technical short-cuts observable in the implementation of FTTC.

In reply to a post by eckiedoo:

I don't know if the uses of the aluminium hybrid wires is recorded; but locating and physically replacing all of such lower-standard wiring would be a massive undertaking, also including such aspects as road closures, loss of service, replacing damaged ducts (which may or may not have impacted on the service) etc.

The type of cable is recorded. The OR engineer pointed out the section of aluminium cable to me on his laptop when he was checking the route of the cable ran from the PCP to the DP my drop wire is connected to. He said it would explain why the cable length was showing as 450m when he was testing the line.

The cable is ducted under the pavement and the ducts are clear (they were in 2011) because they ran fibre through the them to an aggregation node in the chamber where one end of the aluminium section ends.

He even lifted all the covers of the duct boxes by each pole to check the condition of the cable but concluded it was in pretty good condition considering it had been there for over 40 years. He was a bit concerned about the condition of the copper/aluminium joints because he tried a couple of different pairs to try and get my speed back but the first synced at 38 Mbps and the second only synced at 19 Mbps.

The annoying thing is my neighbour syncs at 67 Mbps on the same DP.

Thanks for that information.

I wonder if any one has experience of joining either aluminium to aluminium; or aluminium to copper.

The speed at which aluminium forms the anodic skin must make it difficult to solder, so is it wire-wrap, IDC etc?

Must do some searching.

I wonder if any one has experience of joining either aluminium to aluminium; or aluminium to copper.

Yep me ! and just about ever OR guy who does u/g work . Gel filled crimp connectors . Most ally cable faults are in joints,