Bit errors anything to worry about?

I've just bought a new Billion 8800NL router which is great, but i'm seeing a large number of errors on the "Bit Errors" stats, over 2000 with an uptime of 2hours. are these anything to worry about? are they as bad as CRC errors?.

I've changed my SNR from 6 to 9 for a lower error count for now.

wow, no one knows what Bit Errors mean?

Bit errors, or Bitswaps?

Hi, Robertos

It's says Bit Errors in the router stats

Screenshot of stats <--

No one else seems to be getting Bit Errors like me so i'm just wondering if they could trip the line into interleaving like CRC errors can?

Me too. I use the 8800NL in straight ADSL mode and, using a deliberately slugged download rate (to keep the line up and running and fairly stable; it's a long line), I'm getting the following error stats:

Super Frames 0
SF errors 25595

RS words 0
RS correctable errors 0
RS uncorrectable errors 0

HEC errors 38500
OCD errors 167
LCD errors 167
Total cells 1623900284
Data cells 101747836
Bit errors 2298788

Total ES 14220
Total SES 92
Total UAS 0


Download sync speed is 4064K bps, upload sync speed 544K bps.
System Up Time 43 days, 23 hrs.
Interleaving is on, at depth 1.

I have to confess I've no idea what most of these abbreviations stand for and how significant each one is, for the system up time thus far. I suspect that some of these will be more relevant than others.

If I take my figure of 2298788 for Bit errors and the time for which my 8800 has been running this session, by simple computation I get an average error rate of 37.1 errors per minute. That's more than twice the error rate you're getting, Sto. Whether this signifies a good result or instead a bad one I've no idea. And are these uncorrected bit errors anyway? Anyone know? With ADSL, are we to assume that all detected errors end up as corrected errors?

Sto, have you run the Bit Error Test? Just below where these stats are shown in the 8800's GUI there's a BER test button. If you run that for the standard 20 secs, what sort of result do you get? Zero bit errors? I get zero. However, if I run the test for anything longer than that, the results rapidly worsen.

All of this begs the question as to what constitutes an acceptable bit error rate.

Edited by deleted (Sat 14-Feb-15 15:44:43)

Hi, meditator

I've ran the BER test for 20 second

Test Time 20 seconds
Total Transferred Bits 0x000000001617AE00
Error Ratio 0.00e+00

And the full 360 second

Test Time 360 seconds
Total Transferred Bits 0x000000018DAAB580
Error Ratio 0.00e+00

I'm guessing that's a good result?



My stats after 23 hours uptime

Super Frames 0 0
Super Frame Errors 137 0

RS Words 0 2257383
RS Correctable Errors 0 0
RS Uncorrectable Errors 0 0

HEC Errors 334 0
OCD Errors 10 0
LCD Errors 10 0
Bit Errors 13263 0

Total ES 116 0
Total SES 0 0
Total UAS 0 0


Hopfully these errors are good enough to stay on a fast path line. Fingers crossed

Edited by deleted (Sat 14-Feb-15 16:21:26)

Averaged out, the bit error rate you're getting on your line is more than twice as good as mine. Mine's nothing to be judged against, though. Quite the contrary; I'm on a long and noisy copper line.

I certainly can't return a BER test result of zero, other than for the standard 20 secs., and that's with my line deliberately slowed down, running with a target SNR of 15dB. Clearly, your 9dB is an indication that you're able to run stably, and clocking up fewer line errors, at a faster rate than I can.

Your 24 hrs is only a snapshot, though. It'd be interesting to see your results after your router's been up and running continuously for a month, say.

I'll try and remember to post in a few weeks

I wonder if Bit Errors are more of an internal problem than external, maybe if I tried taking the ADSL fillter face plate off and testing with just the test socket see if that changes anything