Thanks for the link XraySpeX. I'm looking forward to how EE manage, deal with and resolve these similar issues. Since 22.30 yesterday evening (Tuesday) I have had 12 re-syncs so far and it's 01.20am.

I'm expecting this to continue throughout the early hours, and am really hoping my SNR reset coming to an end is something to do with it

I will take a good look at the other thread shortly and see how far along the 'long and winding' EE road they are. Hopefully near the end of it!

In reply to a post by Vince730i:

my SNR reset coming to an end

There is no such thing as the "end of a SNRM reset". It is an instananeous action on part of ISP to either constrain yr Target NM or free it.

You seem to have a noise issue in your locality. There is nowt ISP can or will do to fix it other than increase Target NM purely in hope.

You can run speedtests and time yr sons downloads til you are blue in the face. They are just symptoms of yr problem. It is the error rates that are slowing u down. You need to start monitoring these accurately against the time u last rebooted router. Concentrate on ES as being a summary of all errors. Once you have errors under control everything else will take care of itself

Edited by XRaySpeX (Wed 10-Apr-13 04:22:58)

It's incredible that the OP's router could hold a downstream sync of ~15Mbps with a SNRM of ~6dB for a day or so, yet downloads could begin at a reasonable ~11Mbps and reduce to a few hundred Kbps very quickly - would the error rates alone be responsible for that? It just seems that the router was holding the connection despite the errors but throughput was somehow really getting hammered...

However it does appear now that the DSL is dropping quite frequently

Potentially yes, as the errors cascade

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Potentially yes, as the errors cascade

So perhaps one could monitor that by say downloading a 100MB file and using a suitable tool to log the cascade of errors during the download?

However doesn't a burst of error seconds, rather than a steady rate, often result in a DSL drop - or am I incorrect in that assumption or over simplifying that scenario?

Whether a modem drops sync varies from device to device and firmware to firmware.

The modem decides for download traffic, and some hang in there in the face of lots of errors to avoid the connection dropping for a minute during resync. Some if the connection is ideal tolerate negative noise margins even.

But yes lots of errors usually leads to a resync, but have seen some modems that hang on in there, and everything gets better once transient noise vanishes.

Remember a noise burst might be just 5 seconds long (or a lot shorter) and resyncing on all of them could result in no connection.

Is it always the modem that drops sync or is it the exchange kit or could it be either?

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

Is it always the modem that drops sync or is it the exchange kit or could it be either?

Perhaps if the exchange kit can not "see" the modem due to the "fog" of noise then I guess the DSL connection would be lost even though the modem can just about "see" the exchange kit and would not drop the DSL?

Trying to use as simple terms as possible

Downstream usually the modem, upstream usually the exchange.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Downstream usually the modem, upstream usually the exchange.

That's interesting because differing routers will often report local/remote errors or Near End Indicator/Far End Indicator errors which I always find confusing.