I just asked a person who is extremely knowledgeable about Be and routers used on it, whether they were aware of any problems with the 585v8 on the service. The answer was:-

Has an Infinion chipset, so pretty rubbish on BE / O2 - to be avoided from the 2 people I know who have tried it.

Certainly it has always been understood that a Broadcom chipset is the best for a Be connection, though one poster claims his Conexant one is better.

Ok, so I decided to filddle a little with the wiring and have now established that there is no NTE5 Master Socket.

I have found the Line Jacks master with the yellow ring capacitor, and disconnected all wires except those connected to terminals 2 and 5. The other side of the wall to the master is the point I am using - literally less a foot away. Again, I have removed all wires except 2 and 5.

After rebooting the router, the stats have improved (slightly):

Link Information

Uptime: 0 days, 0:01:56
DSL Type: G.992.5 annex A
Maximum Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 1,261 / 16,940
Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 1,261 / 15,787
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [kB/kB]: 13.00 / 45.00
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 11.5 / 17.0
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 8.0 / 13.5
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 5.5 / 3.0
Vendor ID (Local/Remote): TMMB / BDCM
Loss of Framing (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Signal (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Power (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Link (Remote): 0
Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
FEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 258,294
CRC Errors (Up/Down): 68 / 43
HEC Errors (Up/Down): 91 / 110



So I guess the next step is to wait and see what Vivaciti have to say.

sub-16MBit seems dreadfully poor given the line stats ...

In reply to a post by lg56xbp:

So I guess the next step is to wait and see what Vivaciti have to say.

sub-16MBit seems dreadfully poor given the line stats ...

Also see if the speed stability has improved, despite being lower than expected.

Note my post about the modem chipset. This low sync compared to expected is exactly the symptom of it not getting on well with the exchange kit. Similar effects can be observed sometimes with other kit at each end on other ISPs' setups.

I would be looking for a cheap Netgear 834GT or PN just to see if it makes a difference. The 834Gv4 is also suitable, but not v1, 2, 3 or 5. 834Nv1 is OK. Sky-locked 834s of one of those abound and can be unlocked, but not something I know about. I think Sky even have Help about it.

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 01-Feb-12 09:39:43)

Thanks Roberto, that's also worth trying.


After a reboot I've noticed the huge number of FEC errors:


Uptime: 0 days, 0:01:54
DSL Type: G.992.5 annex A
Maximum Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 1,253 / 17,116
Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 1,253 / 15,890
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [kB/kB]: 5.00 / 8.00
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 11.5 / 17.0
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 8.0 / 13.5
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 6.0 / 3.5
Vendor ID (Local/Remote): TMMB / BDCM
Loss of Framing (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Signal (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Power (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Link (Remote): 0
Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
FEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 174,000
CRC Errors (Up/Down): 76 / 135
HEC Errors (Up/Down): 125 / 194


Do these FEC errors have any relevance to the speed of the connection?

Just wondering as well, the standard noise margin setting on Be is 6dB. You seem to be on 3dB.

I know in theory 3dB will connect faster than 6dB, but in practice if there is a problem on the line I think it may not. Have you tried 6dB?

I expect it will be about 1Mbps slower connection but only trying it will prove the point.

Note that on a native Be (Retail) connection the maximum throughput is approximately 84% of connection speed. I don't know on the vivaciti Be Wholesale one.

Sorry, missed the FEC question.

At that rate of error correction I think yes. 1526 FECs per second isn't going to leave the router processor much time to pass the data.

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 01-Feb-12 10:27:14)

Apparently Vivaciti 'do not use BE's network for data transit', which might help to explain why peering and download speeds vary considerably and are simply not consistent (unlike the native Be service).

Just pondering now whether to revert to the previous (stable) MurphX service, or try another ISP.

What do you folks think?

If it helps, I do know that the transit pipes are no where near to anything like capacity.
The issue would seem to be down to the errors and the fact that when you bounce your router you get a different sync, it does seem like some noise on the line and taking from what you said about the wiring that does seem more likely.
Once you have done the tests that have been suggested in your ticket that will give more idea, but in the mean time we can always raise the snr back up to 6db while further investigations are on-going.

I've also tried a v8

i was surprised how bad it was with my BE service

works well with BT though.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I just asked a person who is extremely knowledgeable about Be and routers used on it, whether they were aware of any problems with the 585v8 on the service. The answer was:-

Has an Infinion chipset, so pretty rubbish on BE / O2 - to be avoided from the 2 people I know who have tried it.

Certainly it has always been understood that a Broadcom chipset is the best for a Be connection, though one poster claims his Conexant one is better.

Broadcom chipped routers are probably the most stable(compatible with BE/O2 LLU line cards) A conexant based router will almost always provide the highest sync rate, but unfortunately , the netgear branded ones are not as resilient in dealing with some types of noise , even when used on a compatible adsl service,


Get yourself a DG834/ (G) V4 the important bit is the bit in bold, as that is the only DG834 Version that has the broadcom BCM6348 V0.7 chip

Or if you are feeling flush go for the Billion 7800 (n)
Both are tweakable, the Netgear tweaks will survive re-boots if you flash with the DGTeam F/W