Will Sky LLU make a difference?

Hi, hoping someone can advise.
I'm a virgin national customer on a long line with typical stats as below:

System Up Time 202:43:21
Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time
WAN PPPoA 8279 9347 0 92 798 02:39:16
LAN 10M/100M 858766 751317 0 959 245 202:43:17
WLAN 11M/54M 34330 14383 0 15 1 202:43:12


ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 160 kbps 448 kbps
Line Attenuation 62.0 db 31.5 db
Noise Margin 18.1 db 15.0 db

Sky have told me they have LLU'd my area, and I'm tempted to move, but I'm concerned that it may not help my speeds much, if at all, judging by what I've read on these forums so far.
Additionally my connection speed as above can vary up to 1200, but eventually always settles to 160kbps, I take it due to the long line.

Anyone any comments about all of this?

Cheers,

Rob

The only real advantage for you (having such a long line) is you won't have to put up with BT's stupid IP profiling system.
With LLU; your download speed will immediately track your connection speed (as it fluctuates) without having wait for up to five days to see an increase (following a sync speed increase).

I switched from BT (via Zen) to Sky LLU in Sept. 2008, and found that on top of the delight of escaping from IP Profiling I was surprised to find my sync. speed increase too: from 5.3 - 5.5 Mbps (2006 - 2008) on BT to 6.9 - 7.0 Mbps on Sky. I have kept records of ADSL stats over the years and these are typical values over the long term.

your current speed is a fault. It isn't justified by the attenuation.

I'll assume for now you have tried all the usual diagnostics.

Sky LLU will probably be capable of more speed if its using ADSL2, but your stability / speed problems need resolving.

You might not have an IP profile if you're on datastream with virgin adsl.

You're right, I have tried (over the years) all the usual diagnostics to no avail. After a router reboot the sync will often be in the region of 700-1200, only to degrade over several days to 160. I've reported the disconnects on using the phone to VM a couple of times and they say they've "fixed it" but what they fixed, I don't know. I've been a little reluctant to make a fuss as I know my line is long (c4km as the crow flies on samknows)and one one occasion a while ago someone (from VM I think) said that if I continued to call them they would refuse to provide a service altogether! I don't know if this was scare tactics but it certainly put me off.
Many thanks for the replies so far, if anyone can give me an idea of what to do to sort the stability/speed problems out, I'd be grateful.

Rob

tell us what you've tried and how you connect to the phone line.

OK, I haven't got a normal master socket,it looks like an extension socket so there isn't a test socket to use, but I've disconnected the ringwire, and all the extension wiring, I've tried various filters (doubled up as well) upgraded the netgear router VM sent me to the v4 (I think) which connects to my PC nearby via the provided ethernet cable.

Thanks again yarwell

Rob

if you just have the one socket on the end of the incoming line then you're wiring is as good as it can be.

Have you trended the Noise Margin to see what happens, your stats showed a high noise margin and I would expect a reboot of the router would lift the downstream sync speed, but then it may drop as the sun sets - perhaps you could try that in the next half hour and see what the initial speed on reboot is and repost the stats.

There are programs like routerstats or routerstats lite that others are more familiar with that capture data from the router.

Hi,

I installed routerstats lite today and got the following results as snapshots over the day:

Usual speed
Sun 30 Jan 2011 11:46:07, Noise Margin= 8.8, Sync Speed= 160

Reboot
Sun 30 Jan 2011 14:22:01, Noise Margin= 15.0, Sync Speed= 1472

After phone call
Sun 30 Jan 2011 18:16:55, Noise Margin= 15.3, Sync Speed= 1024

After another phone call
Sun 30 Jan 2011 20:50:28, Noise Margin= 15.0, Sync Speed= 704
Sun 30 Jan 2011 20:50:43, Noise Margin= -1.8, Sync Speed= 704 (!)

Yet another phone call
Sun 30 Jan 2011 20:53:29, Noise Margin= 16.6, Sync Speed= 576

..and another
Sun 30 Jan 2011 22:36:54, Noise Margin= 13.9, Sync Speed= 384

This seems to mirror the usual format I've noticed over the years. I can't work it out apart from blaming my long line, can anyone advise what I should do next?

That isn't a particularly long line in broadband terms, though longer than most. You have two reboots there above 1000kbps, with a "target" noise margin of 15dB.

There is definitely something(s) specific causing your problem. If that gets fixed I would reckon you are looking at 2000-2500kbps connection speed.

A couple of off-chances.

You said earlier you have disconnected all extensions. By that do you mean the feed from the master, or is there a star junction somewhere before the master?

Do you by any chance have a phone-connected burglar alarm, or a Sky box? Do you use a plug-in phone extension cable at all, and does the filter normally plug straight into the master?