Best router config

I got Sky Unlimited broadband activated on Thursday and I am still obviosuly getting through the 10 day period where my line is tested for the fastest stable speed, but looking in the router Sky sent me, my SNR was through the roof, compared to what it was before so I did a bit of rooting and managed to find my Sky username and password and I have reconfigured my old Netgear DG834n with DGTeam firmware on it. Straight away my line noise has dropped but I just want to make sure I have the router set up the best way for use on Sky. When I was on Orange LLU I was getting as close to the 20mb as you could imagine and I want the same deal on Sky, or as close as I can get.
I found a neat app called Router Commander that shows plenty of info from the router so I pasted some of it below, but if there is anything else you want to see, let me know.

Status
No Defect
-
Mode
ADSL2+
-
Type
Fast
-
Trellis
U:ON /D:ON
-
Link Power State
L0
-
Downstream Line Attenuation
15 db
Outstanding
Upstream Line Attenuation
7 db
Outstanding
Downstream SNR Margin
12 db
Good
Upstream SNR Margin
16 db
Good
Downstream Output Power
10 dBm
-
Upstream Output Power
12 dBm
-
Download Connection Rate
9213 kbs
-
Upload Connection Rate
945 kbs
-
Download Attainable Rate
17760 kbs
-
Upload Attainable Rate
945 kbs
-

Thanks

Just done a speedtest and this is what I get:
http://www.speedtest.net/result/1421591166.png

I dont have any ones from Orange apart from:
http://speedtest.net/result/1326520007.png

You should have waited for the training period to end before changing the router. I think it tells you when it's finished on mysky.

Surely letting the training period run on a poor router would have given me poor results? I thought changing it now seeing as this is the router I will always use would be better.

As far as I know, the end game is to ask for the gaming profile to be enabled on your line as this uncaps the line and reduces interleaving. You can't really do that while DLM is unfinished.

Who says it's a poor router?

Edited by deleted (Sun 07-Aug-11 19:25:50)

DLM sets 99% of lines to a 4 meg sync and then slowly increases this. Others start slightly higher and are then increased...

This means that when you first connect on a good line you may have an SNR of over 20db

Then as the speed is slowly increased the SNR will fall.

On a good line at the end of the 10 days the customer will see the initial slow sync and high noise margin turn into a high sync and a low noise margin.

At the end of the 10 days the speed is capped and you are unable to ever sync above this unless DLM makes further changes or Sky do.

TO ADD

If you were getting a 5 meg sync with an SNR of 25db with 1 router

& a 5 meg sync with an SNR of 6db with another router

The 1st router would be the better performer as there is an extra 19db noise margin between the two. This means the 1st router would sync far higher at 6db noise margin

Obviously differences in SNR are usually not this big.

So YES a low SNR is good after DLM as it means your line can support it without being unstable.

BUT a high SNR means there is plenty of space for an increase in speed.

Considering that during DLM the sync is quite low initially, a high SNR is good as it means you can get plenty of extra speed over the following 10 day training period.

Just to add every time you turn the router off and back on in a short space of time DLM assumes the lines couldn't handle the speed it was connected at. It falsely believes that the line dropped connection due to interference or instability and hence reduces your speed.

All in all you should have waited for 10 days with the Sky provided router but it'll prob be fine.

EDIT: I think the sky router may have yielded a faster final sync as you say it had an higher SNR & when you plugged your own router in the SNR immediately fell.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Sun 07-Aug-11 18:48:10)

There goes my theory! If I'd have known I might have just stuck with the Sky one till the training period was over. I always assumed that high SNR was bad and always trusted the DG834. Perhaps I will swap back and see how it goes, if there are problems I will call Sky and see if they can reset the line or something.

My sky router holds on much better than a dg834gv3

Which sky router was sent out to you?

Some of the sky routers have 72 Mbps wireless N & others have 150 Mbps

Theyre draft N and hence not advertised as N. Then others are wireless G

Sky used to supply the dg934g which is a 834g with sky branding.

I think you'll be fine with your current router but if you're using wireless the sky router might be better

& upto you about changing back... If your certain about using your own router forever I'd not mess. Leave your own plugged in... Leave it turned on and see how things turn out. Sky can reset DLM if it goes wrong.

Edit: you'll probably cause damage to DLM switching routers and potentially having several resyncs.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Sun 07-Aug-11 23:59:09)

See here: http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/sky/f/4026661-old-s... for a recent example of a new Sky user starting with low Sync, high NM and gradually reducing NM as Sync gets faster.

Generally, the higher the NM at the same Sync the better as you have more spare margin to improve your speed.

Well so far so good. Most recent router stats are
Downstream Line Attenuation
15 db
Outstanding
Upstream Line Attenuation
7 db
Outstanding
Downstream SNR Margin
10 db
Fair
Upstream SNR Margin
15 db
Good
Downstream Output Power
18 dBm
-
Upstream Output Power
12 dBm
-
Download Connection Rate
15356 kbs
-
Upload Connection Rate
945 kbs
-
Download Attainable Rate
24084 kbs
-
Upload Attainable Rate
945 kbs

and a speed test done a second ago
http://www.speedtest.net/result/1424612833.png - sorry, cant display the image direct for some reason.

Line still improving bit by bit. Any one know what the following indicates? How do I tell if I am still under DLM?

Mode:			ADSL2+
Channel:		Fast
Trellis:		U:ON /D:ON
Line Status:		No Defect
Training Status:	Showtime
		Down		Up
SNR (dB):	10.9		15.4
Attn(dB):	15.0		7.7
Pwr(dBm):	18.9		12.3
Max(Kbps):	24212		945
Rate (Kbps):	15356		945

What interests me is that Max (Kbps) line... I want that speed!

If you are not living in the exchange then you won't get the full sync speed.

Doesn't matter where you live, Sky is capped to 20megs.

In reply to a post by broadband66:

If you are not living in the exchange then you won't get the full sync speed.

did you see the attenuation and snr figures? at 15db attenuation with 10db SNR, I would expect 20meg to be easily reached.

As BatBoy says, Sky limit to 20meg, but on another ISP I can see close to the max.

I know Sky sells a 20mb product and I would be happy to get that (just like I did on Orange before they threw me back on ADSL Max). At the minute I am at 15mb and its stayed that way for the last couple of days. I would expect faster (although I suppose I shouldn't moan) because I know that my line can get a full 20mb. As far as I can tell my line hasn't dropped once in the last 7 days since it was activated (aside from the once when I swapped the router) and I've seen the sync go up more since swapping than before so that cant be a problem.

I will leave it a bit longer and see if anything changes.
and FYI I live less than 1km from the exchange which hasnt been a problem in the past, right from 512k Nildram!

Did you see that the op wanted 24+. No chance!

Sorry, not a place for sarcasm I see.

Unfortunately a lot of people see their sync speed and expect that.

Well I've decided not to trust Speedtest.net any more.
Their test shows my download to be 10-12mb. Just downloaded something from Giganews and it went at 1.6megabytes a sec and tried to push 1.8megabytes. I'm just logging into MySky site now to see if DLM is still on my line, apparently you can see it on there but I've never seen anything before.
I genuinely had some power issues at home that caused the downstairs plug suckets to trip out about 7 or 8 times so I might get in touch with Sky.

[edit]
Just found this:
Line connection testing completed on 14/08/2011, resulting in the following settings:

Download speed setting
Your connection has been set to a download speed of up to 15.0Mbps .

Upload speed setting
Your connection has been set to an upload speed of up to 1.0Mbps .

[edit2]
And another thing, if the estimated speed Sky quotes is, for example 10 mb, will that be the top speed even if your line can go faster?

Edited by deleted (Mon 15-Aug-11 13:28:18)