Attainable Data Rate

Hello-

I have broadband (if you can call it that) service through a company (www.tkscable.com) that leases the line from the dominant communications company in the country (www.telekom.de). TKS (the person at their shop) indicated they 'resell' this direct from Telekom, but Telekom (at least the person at one of their shows) speculated that TKS is actually going through another 3rd party.

My current DSL rates (as shown in my Fritz!Box console) are 1184kbps down and 160kbps down (miserable).

Our village was recently upgraded, (portions were dug up most of the winter & spring) and according to Telekom, they now have two packages available. One package is maximum of 16 Mbps, and the other (only 5 euro more a month) at a maximum of 50 mbps.

Speaking with Telekom (at one of their shops), they indicate they could provide me with the 50 mbps package. However, TKS indicates the maximum they can provide is 6 mbps.

I learned that I can check my Fritz!Box, and it shows the 'Attainable data rate (kBit/s)' of 5448 receive and 1088 send.

Further, TKS indicated that the maximum they can provide is 16mbps based on their contract with Telekom... so even if they wanted to provide 50, they would be limited to 16.

My question, is how reliable is this info in the Fritz!box? How is this value determined? Is it based on a setting that Telekom restricts on TKS, or through the possible 3rd party? Or, is this a reliable maximum limit given the physical infrastructure?

I'm wondering if perhaps that since the construction is just completed (at least, the visible portion in the village), if the line doesn't yet show a maximum beyond the 5448 kbps due to some additional work that still needs to take place. I'd consider switching to Telekom directly (though, it is a painful 4 week delay between termination and re-activation, apparently)... but would be worth it if I were able to get better than the 6mbps.

However, if the Attainable data rate is reliable, and is in fact limited to the 5448 mbps, regardless of provider, switching would be pointless.

Thanks for any insight/advice. Most importantly, I want to understand if the FritzBox value is reliable, and is indeed a 'speed limit' on my line, so to speak. It's hard to find good/reliable technical info/advice from the telecoms, especially since there is a language barrier.

Thanks

I am afraid I have no direct knowledge of the German market but it sounds similar in what is happening in the UK.

It would sound like you are currently on an ADSL based package. ADSL is heavily distance dependent back to the exchange and your router is reporting the max speeds you can get on that technology.

The up to 16Mbps is likely ADSL2+. However, again it is distance dependent and may not give you any advantage over ADSL.

The new 50Mbps package is most likely based on fibre to a local cabinet or node. This shortens the distance from you to the connection point and probably is VDSL based which can give much faster speeds.

My guess is that Telekom are providing the new package as they own the network. It sounds like TKS don't currently resell that package and therefore can't give you access to it. If that is the case then you may have to move to a provider that does resell the fibre based package in order to get those speeds,

Thanks for the reply. Indeed, the 50 mbps package is marked as 'VDSL'... however, when I asked at Telekom, they indicated that the box at my house, and wiring to it are the same, regardless of the package I have.

My village is quite small.. during the construction process, I noticed two 'boxes' (and underground wiring) installed along the main street. One nearly directly in the center of the village is about 550m from our house. The other is 400m beyond that. the total distance from one end of our village to another is only 1.2 km. If there is fiber, even only to the furthest box, we're still within 1km.

there are two technologies involved ADSL and VDSL. ADSL uses frequencies up to 2.2 MHz.

VDSL uses much higher frequencies - up to 8 or maybe 17 MHz

Your "attainable rate" from your ADSL equipment is specific to that.

VDSL would go a lot faster.

The new equipment and digging would have been installation of VDSL equipment in street cabinets closer to your home than the telephone exchange supplying ADSL. So you win in two ways - shorter distance and more frequency bandwidth.

Your miserable upstream speed may be a problem in your property. Do you have a centralised filter, or individual filters on each thing connected to the phone circuit. Is your phone system ISDN or analogue phone (the Fritzbox may say Annex A or Annex B on the DSL standard).

the Fritzbox may be capable of both VDSL and ADSL, I'm not sure. They aren't that common here. What model is it ?

The wire to your house would stay the same, but the electronics would be closer to you.

The Fritz1box FON WLAN Model is 7170. In the console, for DSL overview, it shows:
DSL enabled
[10 day(s)15:59:04]
ADSL (ITU G.992.1)
Annex B

I was also wondering if the miserable speed may be a problem on the property.. I was going to check with my neighbor to see if their box reports anything differently.

The key to seeing if the ADSL is slow because of your wiring is to get the telephone wiring in your property to its minimum, not sure on the Germany standard in this respect. In short you want just one socket working and usually the one closest to the entry of the property.

The 7170 model does VDSL I believe, so if you upgrade to the newer faster VDSL based service then much higher speeds become possible if available to your property. Very often it is available across a town, but too often only specific parts of the town, which may explain the variation in answers you are getting.

On whether your ADSL is slow or fast, then the calculator at http://www.coolwebhome.co.uk/calc while tuned for the UK market, should give a reasonable indication of if you are slow or fast based on the ADSL statistics.

The stats for the calculator should be on the same page as the attainable figures ie like at http://www.coolwebhome.co.uk/stats/routers.html#avm

Annex B is ADSL over ISDN which I think has less upstream bandwidth, but not so much less as you report. What are the up / down speeds from the console.

Yarwell.. the console reports:

It reports:
Max DSLAM Data Rate kBit/s Up 1184 down 160
Min DSLAM Data Rate kBit/s Up 1184 down 160
Current DSLAM Data Rate kBit/s Up 1184 down 160
Attainable Data Rate kBit/s Up 5448 down 1088

Why do you ask?

According to wiki, upstream is maximum 1.8 MBps, so quite a bit better than what I currently get, and better than the attainable.

i asked for clarity - people sometimes post speed test results rather than line rates, or make mistakes. The ups and downs for example are confusing me.

Annex B I think has a lower upstream potential, as ISDN uses more frequencies than POTS (analogue voice). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tdsldmtspekt...

My conclusion is that you should switch to the VDSL service and you will get much better speeds.

Edited by yarwell (Tue 30-Jul-13 10:18:51)

The fact the first three figures are the same suggests you are on a fixed speed product, i.e. probably sold as 1 Mbps

The attainable is what the modem thinks it could manage if allowed to run at the speeds supported by the ADSL standard.

Why does the modem 'think' it could manage a particular value? Is this something it is 'told' (and thus could be limited by some company/vendor data), or is this the rate that it may be able to achieve based on physical/technical characteristics.. e.g., is it a theoretical value unencumbered by tarrif/contract restrictions?

Thx,
MS

" is it a theoretical value unencumbered by tarrif/contract restrictions?"

That is precisely what it is, and as the modem can see the information on all the frequencies available to it, it is usually reasonably accurate.

What are the 2 blocks (9 lines) of stats below those?

Here's all the details... why do you ask? looking for clues as to what be limiting it (noise, etc?)

Max. DSLAM data rate kBit/s 1184 160
Min. DSLAM data rate kBit/s 1184 160
Attainable data rate kBit/s 5448 1088
Current data rate kBit/s 1184 160

Latency 16 ms 16 ms
Bit swap to off

Signal-to-noise ratio dB 27 31
Line attenuation dB 51 30
Power cutback dB 0 0

Loss of
Signal Loss of
Frame Forward Error Correction Cyclic Redun-
dancy Check No Cell Delineation Header Error Control
CPE 0 0 298 4 1 2
COE 0 0 0 0 4 0

Why do I ask? To see if you are getting what you should be getting, of course.

On your line with ADSL (G.992.1) you should be getting about 4.6 Meg downstream sync, but you are being held back by the high SNR margin (that's not noise itself but the strength of the signal compared with the noise) of 27 dB.

I would a guess that is because your ISP has put you on a fixed 1 Meg connection.

Re: your original Q, Attainable Data Rate is hinting at this by estimating the speed you could get with a 0dB SNR Margin instead of the standard 6dB I used in my estimate or the 27dB actually being imposed by your ISP.

the ISP is vague on what they sell - may well be 1M down 160k up

T-DSL list a service DSL-Anschluss am Anschlusstyp Standard (Analog) oder Universal (ISDN): Surfen mit bis zu 2.048 KBit/s Download- und bis 192 KBit/s Uploadgeschwindigkeit

Indeed, when I first got the DSL line, they indicated the max possible was 1 mbps. I'm curious as to if the attainable data rate of 5448 kbps happened some time ago, or if it was due to the recent upgrade... or if they were always BS'ing me.. I suppose I'll never know.

Why they would impose a 1 kbps restriction is beyond me... the provider has always advertised 'up to 16kbps' for the same price I've been paying... I was always under the impression that since our village is quite small, that the infrastructure was [censored].

I'm curious how you arrived at 4.6 mbps down? Why couldn't Telekom have told me this (or even the 5448 kbps), instead of telling me that it would be 'up to' 16 mbps. Is there a way to guesstimate what the bandwidth would be if I had the 50 mbps VDSL service, assuming I switched to Telekom?

In reply to a post by DoYouLikeHam:

I'm curious as to if the attainable data rate of 5448 kbps happened some time ago, or if it was due to the recent upgrade

Neither! It's measuring the current properties of your connection and it's ongoing. But forget it; it's purely a theoretical estimate thet you'll never attain. Concentrate on the actual speeds.

In reply to a post by DoYouLikeHam:

I'm curious how you arrived at 4.6 mbps down?

There are calculations that can be done on the physical propertoes of the line, e.g. see Maximum adsl speed calculator. Your ISP would be unable to do these calcs before the line was activated and so should have given you an estimate. At least that's how it is UK. Your ISP just gave you the "Up To" max based on the technology but not your particular line.

Edited by XRaySpeX (Tue 30-Jul-13 23:15:31)

It depends on exactly how they have the VDSL set up, and whether it is VDSL or VDSL2. Over here I am about 600 metres from the fibre cabinet and get a connection speed of around 52Mbps down and 16Mbps up.

Dunno if that's same co., but I doubt it as TKS-Cable is aimed at English speakers in Germany and so website is in English.

TKS-Cable offers this seemingly contradictory offering:

In reference to www.tkscable.com/Internet/SurfnTalk.aspx:

� Internet flat rate
� up to 16,000 Kbps connection

Look at the "rates" tab in the box towards the bottom of the page. Flat rate refers I think to the cost not the speed.

that is also offered by T-DSL which is Deutsche-Telekom ie BT Wholesale. So we don't know what the actual service is but the low upstream may be contractual and it may also be fixed 1M service - I still find them here on people who are on "up to 8M" packages.

He just needs to go onto VDSL. I think the concern was that "the line" was limited to 5M.

In reply to a post by DoYouLikeHam:

Indeed, when I first Why couldn't Telekom have told me this (or even the 5448 kbps), instead of telling me that it would be 'up to' 16 mbps. Is there a way to guesstimate what the bandwidth would be if I had the 50 mbps VDSL service, assuming I switched to Telekom?

That's the package - uo to 16M. It goes as fast as it can at the time, within the parameters set.

You are overthinking this. Get the VDSL. It'll be a lot faster.

VDSL will be a lot faster, but it requires me being disconnected for 3-4 weeks... I'd have to terminate w/ TKS, wait until TKS releases the line (3-4 weeks) before I can become a Telekom customer. that's a bitter pill to swallow given I work from home... when we first got the service, it took 6 weeks, so I'm assuming that 3-4 weeks is actually best case!

I'm kicking myself for going w/ TKS. Oh well, we move in a year anyway.

Can you not get the VDSL installed on a new line into the property, and stop the old ADSL service once the new line is in and working?

Do you know whether you can actually get VDSL on your line?

In the UK, altho' an exchange has been VDSL enabled not all cabinets are.

Rather than going by the word of someone in a shop, have you put your phone no. into the Telekom.de Availability Checker?

Surprised that it takes so long to migrate, but not sure how long it would take here in similar circumstances..

telekom told me it is the same cable that is used for both.. I doubt they'll come out and string a new line... but good suggestion

Yes same pair of telephone wires, but was suggesting you get a second telephone number to the property? More costly but for business continuity avoids switch over problems.

yep, it is available. i checked at the shop (they looked up on computer), and I did online as well.

In reply to a post by ian72:

Flat rate refers I think to the cost not the speed.

Maybe, but it could mean anything as it's so unclear with the word 'Internet' in it. For all I know it could mean they won't supply BB to the folks who live on the hill .

Interestingly on Telecom.De Call & Surf Basic package they offer 2 types of connection:

In reference to www.telekom.de/privatkunden/internet/komplettpakete/-/call-und-surf...:

DSL connection on connection type standard (analog) or universal (ISDN): surfing with up to 2,048 kbit / s download and up to 192 kbit / s upload speed

DSL connection on connection type IP: surfing with up to 16,000 kbit / s download and up to 1024 kbit / s upload speed. All information about the IP-based connections can be found here .

The latter seems to be where there is no actual landline but an IP-based telecom connection (VOIP?). However the OP seems to have an ISDN landline and so he is on the fixed speed connection, altho' why he is only getting 1 Meg instead of 2 Meg is unknown.

The latter seems to be where there is no actual landline but an IP-based telecom connection (VOIP?). However the OP seems to have an ISDN landline and so he is on the fixed speed connection, altho' why he is only getting 1 Meg instead of 2 Meg is unknown.

While the 2M package is on sale now, it isn't beyond imagination that there was a 1M one in the recent past, or maybe still is wholesale. Or it could be a profiling gaff.

Escalation with the current ISP to attack the high SNR margin would seem appropriate if migration away or to FTTC isn't practical. Good to see German efficiency in reality