If the SNR is fluctuating, then you may also have some errors on the ADSL part of the line and this results in packet retransmits over the ADSL segment. So not good for gaming, but largely invisible for usual downloads.

Is the ping stable if all the connection is doing is pinging the first hop inside the ISP network?

Tweaking SNR may not actually help you, as pushing a line too fast and introduce more errors and actually give exactly the problems you have.

When I ping my router I get a stable 3 ms. When I ping google.co.uk I get a stable 24-31 ms, the value varies.

This morning my router had lost its ADSL connection and wouldn't connect so I had to return my SNR to normal and it connected but the download SNR was 13 dB and my download speed had dropped to just over 1 Mbps.

Edited by sdb14 (Tue 04-Feb-14 10:29:13)

If your tweaking made the line unstable then DLM will have seen that and now you are not overriding the target SNR you are back at what it thinks is needed for a stable low error connection.

To be honest, your line is long and you have a choice between slower and stable gaming or squeezing the most out of it.

A download speed of 0.5 Mbps with 0.25 Mbps upload should be enough for gaming, the only time it might struggle is if also using headset comms and have the quality of voice dialled right up. Most games with voice can manage in 128 Kbps to 150 Kbps, with no voice 64 Kbps should be enough.

Does DLM apply to G.Dmt and ADSL2 or only ADSL2+?

Why is my ping so inconsistent though? When I run a test on Speedtest.net the graph has spikes in it.

Here is a ping graph for my connection, look at the yellow and red

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/184e9df1a42...

Edited by sdb14 (Tue 04-Feb-14 11:06:47)

What graph? No link to one was in the post.

Speedtest.net is hosted in many locations, so not a good target to assess if issues are line based or general Internet issues.

The DLM system is active on all BT Wholesale connections that are rate adaptive. Dropping a line back to ADSL2 mode from ADSL2+ mode does not disable the DLM at all. Just removes 1.1Mhz of frequency from use which can make things slightly more stable on some lines.

Post amended.

What mode do you recommend I use on my line?

If I leave the SNR as default and let the DLM do its thing do you think things will improve?

Should I be able to get rock solid pings when gaming? Is there anything else I can do? I've got QoS for my console set to 95% upload bandwidth and 100% download bandwidth.

Without having lived with the line and knowing what hardware you using hard to comment.

Are you saying with the QoS that the console takes absolute priority over everything else? Remember that if its the only device running the sort of QoS you describe is largely irrelevant.

DLM might improve things, it might make it worse.

As for rock solid pings when gaming, the only way is if you OWN and CONTROL ever router between your console and the server. All you can do is try and get the ping stable across the ADSL segment.

I've got a Billion 7800N router.

I've set the QoS to 'Limited' not 'Prioritize' and it's the only device running at the time.

Okay well if the games are sensible they will be using UDP protocol so try prioritising that but if the connection is not saturated and it should not be with online gaming then you really not have a problem. Though some people seem to have had UPnP issues on billion routers and have tweaked settings and QoS to improve things.
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1816331

And
http://billion-fae.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/how-to-set...
Also offers some settings you can play with. Alas don't have the 7800N to play with and verify or an Xbox One to see how much traffic they push.

Your problem might just actually be the ADSL transport layer and re-transmits i.e. at a lower transport layer and how the provider handles gaming traffic.

Thanks for the links.

I haven't actually tried my console with prioritization rules applied because I didn't think they'd make an impact if it's the console is the only device running.

I have a feeling that Virgin are screwing me over