Thinking of migrating from Zen to Be

Hi all,

Been hearing some good things about Be lately, and have been thinking about migrating my connection from my Zen 8000 Pro package to Be. Be nice to make use of their faster LLU connection and being 1.89km from the exchange I think I'm 'just' in the range for a decent download and hopefully a minimum of 1.3mbps upload as well which would be great for my Exchange and FTP servers.

I do work from home, so my broadband isn't just a play thing so reliability is a factor, and having paid the extra to be a Zen customer based on their high performing reliability levels and good customer service I am a little reluctant to move, but the faster speeds make me a little jealous of those that have it already.

Not really interested in this BeBox thing, just want my (soon to buy) Netgear wireless router to be able to work without fail.

Thanks for any advice / comments.

If you post your line stats your likely speeds with Be can be estimated.

Or put your line stats into these:

http://www2.farina1.com/ADSL/default.aspx

http://www.dslzoneuk.net/maxspeed2.php

Stats from my Vigor Dratek 2600 Plus Router:

ADSL Status Mode State Up Speed Down Speed SNR Margin Loop Att.
G.DMT SHOWTIME 448000 5792000 10.0 36.5

Was hoping to use LLU, all websites I've used so far to estimate distance from exchange have indicated 1.88 - 1.9km distance, which seems to be inside the 2km limit.

The estimator John pointed you at suggests a Be actual download speed around 11000kbps based on those figures.

However, your current sync is quite poor for an attenuation of 36.5. See this graph which isn't just applicable to Be. The immediate cause of this is probably a "target" SNRM of 12. The underlying question is why has it gone from the default 6 to 12 - it implies quite a bit of instability/noise variation.

The way to be sure of your target SNRM is to check the stats immediately after a resync or router reboot/switch-on. It will be within a few decimals of 9 or 12 I expect.

Have you a history of disconnections or frequent re-syncs? Maybe some time ago possibly even before you went to Zen?

Thanks for that info, I've just re-booted the router now and these are the stats straight after a re-boot:

ADSL Status Mode State Up Speed Down Speed SNR Margin Loop Att.
G.DMT SHOWTIME 448000 7104000 9.0 36.5

Could you tell me what the SNR and Loop Att. actually mean?

I did phone Be and have been told that I'd expect about 5mb Down and up to 800k up, which isn't what I'm after, as it doesn't sound like I'm making use of the LLU? (not sure if I'm A: understanding the technology and B: Understanding what allowes such connections)

Many thanks

(sorry, just realised I posted the above as Anonymous as I hadn't logged in!)

In reply to:

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ADSL Status Mode State Up Speed Down Speed SNR Margin Loop Att.
G.DMT SHOWTIME 448000 7104000 9.0 36.5

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Those are much better stats, and indicate the "target" SNRM is 9. A good explanation of what it is all about is here. (The lower end of the profile table has some new entries, and the update time for profiles is now up to 5 days, not 3 days).

The previous sync of 5792 was very dodgy - hopefully it was a one-off for some odd reason. Any idea how long it was since your previous resync - ie how long was it running at 5792 - more or less than 10 days? The reason I ask is that if the SNRM had got up to 12dB due to a transient problem then 10 days at 5792 could have caused it to drop to 9.

A combination of things could have happened to improve your sync speed from 5792 to 7104. First, as in the previous paragraph the SNRM may have fallen - each 3dB of SNRM accounts for 500-700kbps at sync time. And the slow sync could have been at a time of high actual noise, mid-evening or overnight. The actual noise frequently varies by more than 3, so a noisy-time sync could account for all the difference even if the target margin was 9 all the time.

(If the target margin was 9 all the time that would indicate swings in noise of 5, 6 or more, and so confirm the time-importance of the sync).

Whatever - 7104 is more what I would expect. If I am right about the SNRM having been bumped up then 10 days at 7104 could see it drop to 6, which would be great.

In reply to:

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I did phone Be and have been told that I'd expect about 5mb Down and up to 800k up

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That sound like rot! Is it possible the person at the other end mis-heard your attenuation figure, or didn't they ask for it? There is no way on a good line like yours that ADSL2+ should be slower than ADSL. The graph I pointed you at before agrees with Andrew's estimator on a speed of 11000 or so throughput on Be Unlimited/Pro. Try ringing again and see if you get a different answer from a different person. Quote the attenuation to them not the distance estimate. Distance is merely a guide to help guess attenuation. You know the attenuation . (Similarly the upstream attenuation).

And finally off on a tangent - have you checked your master socket and/or tried syncing in the test socket if you have one? Terminal 3 connection in there, or dodgy extension wiring or filters can seriously affect performance.

Edited by RobertoS (Thu 01-Nov-07 15:30:18)

Thats an awesome reply thanks Robert, little more info for you, new router stats:

ADSL Status Mode State Up Speed Down Speed SNR Margin Loop Att.
G.DMT SHOWTIME 448000 7104000 9.5 36.5

Not much change since the last post....

When I phoned Be, all they asked for was postcode and telephone number to estimate speeds.

I am perma connected to the test socket in my house. We only have one BT socket, and I'm sure its not very good as whenever I connect to the main socket ADSL reliability drops dramatically.

Maybe time to get a new BT engineer to sort out the socket?

I did hear there was a way to manually drop the SNRM to speed up ADSL via telneting to your router, not sure if this is possible on my brand though, or even a a wise idea!

The router is connected as I said to the test socket perma, all I have is one filter there, one phone and one Sky modem connection along with the router. The router sits right next to the socket, so no major extension work there, and I have tried multiple filters also, maybe too much coming off one socket?

Maybe time to change the router? it is old, and also the wireless functionality is broken, so thinking of heading back to a Netgear.