sky broadband speed

Hi Guys

I was wondering if anyone could help me with this dilemma that ive been having with sky this past year.

now ive been ringing up sky this past year regarding about the best speed i can get my broadband to go and ive been told so many different stories by sky and i dont think im getting the speed i supposed to be getting.

two years ago i was getting slow speeds and i rang sky and they sorted it out and i was getting a 2.3mb line and everything was fine but lately my speed as been going down again.

According to the sky website i should be getting a line anything between 2.6-7mb line but thats not happening

now ive been reading other posts on here and ive got better router stats than some people and they are getting faster speeds than me

so any help whatsoever would be greatful and heres my router stats if you want to see them




Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time
WAN PPPoA 5208559 6884929 0 4903 12100 75:14:43
LAN 100M/Full 184139 0 0 110 0 75:15:33
WLAN 11M/54M 6965120 5714485 0 12493 5651 75:15:21
ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 1980 kbps 413 kbps
Line Attenuation 61 db 40 db
Noise Margin 8 db 15 db

You have high attenuation. The speed you will get depends on how much noise there is on the line and that is not directly affected by the attenuation.

Have you done everything possible to remove anything in your own house that might cause line issues? Ideally you want to have the router directly connected into the test socket (via a filter) and see what speeds you get there. If they were better then it would suggest a problem within the house.

Trust me ian that ive tried everything and my speed hasnt changed at all

ive even been told by 4 people at sky that i should be getting at least between 2-5 and 3mb but im getting lower than that

the only thing that i can say at the moment is that my router is over 4 years old so do you think that might have something to do with it

like i said before in my previous message that sky put me on a 2.3mb line a couple of years ago and everything was fine but its been dropping down these last few months

The word should is perhaps a bit too strong.

While 2.5 or even 3 is possible at 61dB attenuation, you are within the bounds of what I would say is normal, though at the lower end of it.

Only thing to check is restart the modem and get the stats immediately. If downstream noise margin is 8 or 9dB then you might want to request a change to a setting of 6dB. This will give you perhaps 0.3 to 0.5 Mbps extra speed.

If you get a blank answer, ask for the gamer profile

Well thats what i was told by sky Mr Saffron and skys website says that my line should hold anything between 2.6 and 7mb so who should i believe on this

at this moment i rang up sky 4 days ago about the speed i was getting and they have put me on the 10 day training period again to see what the best speed i can get so ill have to see what happens

7 Mbps - never that would be a world record at 61dB attenuation.

2.6 is possible, as I said a lowering of the target noise margin will get you close.

No need for Sky to re-learn via the DLM, its logic has not changed, so if line behaving the same way you will end up at the same speed.

It needs someone to lower your target noise margin, or set you to the gamer profile

you will have to forgive me Andrew as im a complete novice at this kind of stuff but the one thing i cant get my head around is that ive read on some different websites and people are getting a faster speed that im getting now but have got a higher attenuation than me so what could cause this to happen.

do you think i should reset my router then and post my stats up on here and see where we go from there or just ring sky again and ask them to drop my noise margin

as for the gamer profile... what do you mean by that

thanks again

Gamer profile is if memory has not failed me is one of the DLM profile options Sky use.

1800Kbps to 2373Kbps, possibly an extra 0.5Meg from ADSL2 is what my farina1 site estimates based on your current figures. Am interested to hear what sort of figures others are getting?

We have seen the odd rare 3Meg sync at these speeds, but it is rare.

You can do either, a reset of the router does nothing exciting, just lets us confirm what your target margin is.

As for those getting faster speeds, actual data rather than heresay, as I've seen lots of people claim lots of things, but on inspection there is a good reason. For example attenuation is lower for a neighbour, for example if you dragged your house closer to the exchange to shorten the run of copper by 3dB you might gain 0.5 to 1Meg

thanks for the advice you have given me Andrew and ill reset my router tomorrow and ill post the stats on here and ill see what you say about them

as regarding the other figures people are getting... i can copy and paste them for you if you are interested in seeing them

i would be, i have just moved over to virgin from sky due to line length (no in not gonna gripe about sky - i cant fault their service) but when i was on that for a good 4+years or so i reckon, i had 59.5-60 as my "magic" number and with that i always got a rock solid 3.5meg i did used to get higher (only by about .5meg) but line was unstable so when i called sky they done some work on the background and from that point, rock solid line speed 24/7 that never changed

so as for getting much higher speeds - i would like to see some stats as i reckon i had good speeds and my line was better than yours

Seeing that your line attenuation is between 59.50-60db jimster and getting 3.5mb and my line is 61db and i struggle to get 2mb then surely theres something wrong here.

i know that my speed will go higher but sky in my mind arent doing enough for me.

if you dont mind me asking you this but what speed are you getting now seeing that you have moved to virgin.

as for those stats... ill pm you them later on if you want me to and there is some interesting stats that ive read with people with a long attenuation

Hi Andrew

Heres my router stats as you requested after i did a reset and you will see theres hardly any difference in what i posted earlier on




Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time
WAN PPPoA 107 96 0 72 350 00:02:30
LAN 100M/Full 519 0 0 535 0 00:03:20
WLAN 11M/54M 395 811 0 723 711 00:03:07
ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 1965 kbps 413 kbps
Line Attenuation 61 db 40 db
Noise Margin 8 db 16 db

Okay if the target downstream noise margin can be lowered you will gain some speed back. Might be 0.5Meg, might be more, might be less.

ADSL is not something you can predict, and attenuation gives us a range of possible speeds, the speed range due to in property wiring, and the amount of RF noise impinging on the line. For example, people close to AM radio transmitters will fair worse than those further away.

There is no your line MUST perform at this speed formula. It is perfectly feasible for a line with poor wiring in the property to only run at 2 Meg even if its attenuation is as low as 44dB.

Also another factor is the ADSL modem you are using, some can give different performance, and even calculate attenuatoin and noise margin slightly differently.

Well thanks very much Andrew for all the advice you have given me and what ill do now is wait until next week sometime to ring up sky and see if i can get my noise margin lowered down and see what that will do for my speed

thanks again

Am going to see Sky on Tuesday, so if you want to drop me details on Monday I can raise this with them.

Send info in an email [email protected]

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Am going to see Sky on Tuesday, so if you want to drop me details on Monday I can raise this with them.

Send info in an email [email protected]

Now thats a service!

Well a very big thanks Andrew for doing this for me and ill send you a email on monday containing all my details

Trust me NilSatisOptimum... if Andrew can get me a faster speed on my line then a knighthood should be awarded to this kind young man

Just for comparison purposes, these are my stats:

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 2560 kbps 768 kbps
Line Attenuation 61.5 dB 31.5 dB
Noise Margin 6.9 dB 8.0 dB

Only recently has my line been relatively stable at this sync, but it does sometimes vary up and down with re- syncs. I had big problems last year when the sync dropped to less than 500, but my old isp couldn't do anything about it. The speeds did eventually rise, but ave been the most stable here. I did have an over 3mb sync with a 2wire router, but the connection was too flaky.

Mark

In reply to a post by thecarer1:

Trust me NilSatisOptimum... if Andrew can get me a faster speed on my line then a knighthood should be awarded to this kind young man

Indeed.

new speeds now are 30/1, due to get increased shortly to 30/3
then when virgin do the double speed for free thing thats in the news i will be on 60meg down 6 meg up
going from 3.5/~0.5 just to what i am now on 30/1 its almost 10 times the speed
so speed great but downside is virgin do traffic shaping and management which i was aware of before jumping ship but still that speed boost is nice !!!!

Make sure your modem is powered up on Tuesday, as might see if I can watch it being changed, as then have a much better idea of what options are available to support staff.

NOTE: We do meet with other providers too, and have ways of getting things done, so this does not represent favouritism to Sky.

Well if and when my telephone exchange changes over to fibre optic ( and at this rate it wont be in my lifetime ) i dont think ill pay the extra £20 sky are asking for because it just be a waste of money.

i think ive asked this before on here but my router is over 4 years old so do you think that might have something to do with my problem or am i just blowing in the wind with it

Four year old router should be OK, it is pretty much ADSL mode only at that range. Does the device support ADSL2+, if so then ADSL2 mode can give a small boost.

£7.50 a month for 2 Meg like you just about manage now, or £20 a month for what could be the full 40 meg? Mmm I know what I would do.

All i can tell you Andrew is that its a netgear router

In reply to a post by thecarer1:

Well thats what i was told by sky Mr Saffron and skys website says that my line should hold anything between 2.6 and 7mb so who should i believe on this

An estimate is still only an estimate; particularly this wild one. The only thing you can believe is your actual reported attenuation.

Make sure you do any router reboots in daylight hours and take stats immediately.

What ADSL Mode is your router running at, ADSL/G.DMT, ADSL2/G992.3 or ADSL2+/G992.5? Can you tell? What router?

You may be better switching it to ADSL2/G992.3.

XRaySpeX like ive said on here before that im a complete novice when it comes down to this kind of technology so please bear with me

well ive just looked inside the box in which the router was and it says that is a ADSL2+ modem and wireless router and the part number is DG934G

Try running this link: http://192.168.0.1/setup.cgi?PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bi... and report Mode: if it works (I think it may).

it wont load the page im afraid to say

Ah, OK! I'm mixing it up with the Sky-locked DG834GT.

If a DG834 or DG834G (written underneath it) then should be fine with ADSL2+ and plenty good enough.

It is the Sky-locked DG934G which is a DG834G v3 when unlocked. In its Sky manifestation TELNET is disabled so you can never find out its ADSL Mode or Error counts, which was what we were discussing.

But, yes, it will be OK for ADSL2+ as you say

Well lets leave it for now Andrew and see what you can do for me next tuesday and a very big thanks again for going out of your way to try and solve my problem

In reply to a post by thecarer1:

Well lets leave it for now Andrew and see what you can do for me next tuesday and a very big thanks again for going out of your way to try and solve my problem

All you have to do is to email sky and ask to be put on the gamer profile as highlighted here: http://helpforum.sky.com/t5/Sky-Broadband-Gaming/Gam...

This info was supplied earlier by nredwood here.

Thanks for the advice Batboy but ill see what Andrew can do for me next week first

I dont know if applies to me or even if i can do this to my sky router but ive been reading on different forums and websites that changing channels on my router might help me out with my situation

I read with one user that he changed the channels on his router and he got a extra 1mb by doing this

In reply to a post by thecarer1:

Thanks for the advice Batboy but ill see what Andrew can do for me next week first

Well, I did it and it worked for me

Changing wireless channels can improve your throughput of wireless connected PCs.

But I thought you were concerned about your Sync speed at which your router is operating and changing channels can't affect that, obviously.

I don't know much technical details but can tell you what worked for me.

I was getting around 2.5-2.6 for a while, then it went down to 2, then 1.5mb. I eventually got bored of it and decided to try and do something.

I bought a "iPlate BT Accelerator" from broadbandbuyer on ebay. I then bought various cables but the best was "10M metre RJ11 to RJ11 Extension ADSL Modem Lead Cable" from ezzeshop (does a 5m one too) and 2 new line filters "2 x ADSL Broadband FILTER Modem BT RJ11 Phone SPLITTER" from kenable.

I tried the various cables I bought and one cheap one actually made my line noise go up 2 or 3db! I fitted it all and not much changed. I think I was still getting 58.5 - 59db.

But then I phoned up sky and they put me through to an engineer, I said I was unhappy with my speeds and he reset my connection and it connected at 4000kbps and 605kbps up. I was amazed as the best I had ever seen was 2.8. I asked if he could put my upload speed up a bit and he set it too 768kbps and said thats about as much as I could get (I have been up to 900kbps before but I had bad download speeds)

My attenuation went to 55-56db. It would go up to 56 and then reconnect me at 3.7-3.8 sometimes during the night (more interferance from AM signals). But then during the day time I would turn it off and on and it would go to 55db and 4mb, but then the line noise at night would go as low as 2.9db. Now its at 4.2 down and 768up and the line noise never goes below 5db, mostly stays at the high end of 5 at night and 6 odd in the day.

Oh and I'm on the gaming profile, I think it lets you have a lower line noise threshold so you can get more speed.

Agree with Mike only other thing I'd say is if you can force the modulation try between adsl2 and adsl2+, 2+ is double the frequency and can give you more interference on longer lines. You can also try to remove the ringwire, but the faceplate filter is an easier less fiddley option. I've also got a filtered faceplate at the master socket. I have also tried out a few RJ11 cables and have noticed a difference in the downstream att.

I''m sitting on a 61db and applying the faceplate filter, snr tweaking to a stable 6db and adsl2

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 2908 kbps 763 kbps
Line Attenuation 61.0 db 37.9 db
Noise Margin 6.2 db 6.0 db

On the advice of Mike i've ordered a 5M metre RJ11 to RJ11 Extension ADSL Modem Lead Cable. Looks better quality than the one I'm using and will see if it makes any difference to my connection. Every kbps helps when you live miles from the exchange!

Edited by deleted (Wed 08-Feb-12 00:13:01)

Morning everyone

Well ive just come back from the shops and thought of something about changing the set-up of my line

so what ive done is that a bt engineer came out to me last year and put a new faceplate over the master socket because i had problems with the line kept dropping out

now ive just put the faceplate back on and now heres my latest stats


System Up Time: 00:05:20

Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time
WAN PPPoA 170 159 0 73 361 00:04:30
LAN 100M/Full 559 0 0 312 0 00:05:15
WLAN 11M/54M 480 953 0 650 449 00:05:03
ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 2014 kbps 413 kbps
Line Attenuation 60 db 40 db
Noise Margin 8 db 15 db

you will see that my speed as gone up slightly and my line attenuation as gone down by 1db

now i dont know if this is the truth but ive read somewhere that if my line is 60db then i should be getting around 2.5-3mb

You should find out if the new faceplate bypasses the ringwire (it can cause a lot of noise on the line and stops you connecting at higher speeds) if not get an iplate (you can remove it manually (the ringwire) but best not to mess about with it as its BT property!)

How can you force modulation between adsl2 and adsl2+ ? I'm not even sure which one I'm using, I have the Sagem router.

Yeah thats what I meant, some of the cheap cables I tried pushed the downstream attenuation up (well only 1 did). I don't really know if the cable I have is *better* than others, its just a lot thicker, more like a network cable and seems good quality rather than the flimsy normal cables.

That seems a pretty good speed for the attenuation and distance already.
Always worth ringing up sky to see if they can get anymore out of it though after you got the cable (as I said not much changed on my line with the iplate and cable until I rang up sky).

That's only an approximation at 60DB that could vary quite a bit, anything over 2mb should be treated as okay, you possibly would get to 2.3-2.5 meg tweaking the snr (noise margin) down to 5/6db but thats only if it remains stable.

You are connected to the master socket and have you tried plugging it into the test socket to ensure its not a ringware causing any issues.

Here you can input a little more data to get a more accurate rate

http://www.farina1.com/adsl/

Yours would be

Sync Speed 2014
Attenuation 60
Noise Margin 8

Edited by deleted (Wed 08-Feb-12 14:02:46)

I know - when I moved into my new house it had a rubbish old BT plate. Somehow tho I managed to get a nice new master socket with removable faceplate. And I didnt have to pay the £100+ that BT wanted to do it!

Got a DG834GT router flashed with DGteam firmware see SS.

I thought they made it so you couldn't use your own routers anymore? (was it something to do with changing to MER?) I have never used my own router but this seems interesting if you can still do it!

Im not on sky, but it is well publicised although your not meant to many do and I would of after the training period had I have moved to them. Didn't risk it though and stayed with Xilo.

Hi guys

well i finally rang up sky about a hour ago and told the guy that i wasnt satisfied with the speed i was getting and he told me himself that i should be getting a faster speed than im recieving right now and he was going have to esculate this problem to another department

after been put on hold for 25 mins he came back on and told me that they couldnt do anymore for me and thats it

i honestly thought that BT was a bad internet provider but in my mind right now.... sky are running them a close second

That sounds quite bad. I remember it being quite hit and miss as to how helpful they are, sometimes you get poor service and sometimes its good. I think you possibly need to ask to be put through to an engineer. They will try some different connection speeds and see if the line is getting errors on it or not, sometimes they have to go away for a few minutes to tweak something.

I did have to ring them a lot of times in the past, I would get put up to 2.5mb but then over a few weeks or months it would go right down again (before I got iplate and new cable).

Did Andrew have a word with them when he visited them?

You should get 2.5mbps if you ask to have your noise margin lowered to 6 and/or ask to go on the gamer profile.

thanks for the reply mikel

how good are these iplates and Andrew left my details with them

im not going to call for a engineer now because ive got a funny feeling that im just wasting my time now with them especially after that phone call to them

ill just have to wait now until fibre optic comes to my area

It depends on how much you value your connection, judging by the number of posts - quite a bit.

Help yourself in what ways you can, a new iplate could seriously affect your speed on your line and it is something that YOU can sort out. It all depends wether the ringwire is connected or not, if its not it will make little difference. Also get a filtered faceplate again YOU can help yourself by getting this.

Those two small items shouldn't set you back more than £10-15 and may be the difference of 2mb, or 3mb. You seem keen to obtain better speeds, so do what you can your end to do something about it. If you keep on at Sky eventually you will also get someone that could sort it out at their end, they may be able to reduce your SNR their end to 6db, but don't know whether they would be comfortable doing that as they would want to ensure you have a stable connection, rather than a faster one.

Edited by deleted (Wed 08-Feb-12 16:39:25)

My apologies benbird if ive posted to much on here but im doing this for my 2 daughters because im not very well anymore ( if you know what i mean )

im just trying my best for them both so they wont struggle with things in the future

anyway last message now to say thanks very much for everyone who as helped me out on here

much appreciated

No worries, sorry to hear your unwell. I was just getting to the point you can order the forementioned items from the comfort of where your sat now!

Here and Here

At the bottom of this page you can get them too and a wire insertion tool for £7.86!

Edited by deleted (Wed 08-Feb-12 18:13:19)

I've just moved in to a new property and alas my downstream attenuation is reported as 61.0db by my Netgear DG834GT. However with the DGTeam firmware and Be 16 from Xilo and tweaking the SNR to 50% of default I'm getting a stable 4770kbps connection with the noise margin at about 3.0db

My friend had the same thing happen to him

but the only way he sorted it was switching to BT the DLM put on a SNR of 3db

which boosted his speed from 2150kbps to 3400Kbps.

The ringwire is part of the extension cable setup and belongs to the homeowner and therefore can be removed by anyone!

The sync is likely to go down as more people get broadband on your cable bundle, i.e. cross talk kicks in.

But that is an impressive sync speed for a 3dB margin, is it around the 4Meg mark with a 6dB target?

Got the cable today, it increased my speed by a further 200kbps! After a straigh reconnection. Not massive but still a direct improvement, thanks Mike

Actually just tweaked snr again, if it stays stable at 3db can get:

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 3638 kbps 767 kbps
Line Attenuation 61.0 db 38.0 db
Noise Margin 3.4 db 5.8 db

OMG just telnet the router and entered 65500 to give me a -9DB off the snr gave me this reading! Wont be stable though lol

[img]http://speedtest.xilo.net/result/73579/[/img]

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 4115 kbps 767 kbps
Line Attenuation 62.0 db 37.5 db
Noise Margin 0.9 db 5.8 db

Edited by deleted (Thu 09-Feb-12 19:26:48)

I can't remember the exact number when it was left at the default setting but it was in the high 3's

I might try a faceplate splitter instead of a adsl splitter (one you plug in)

No need to apologise, sorry to hear your not very well.
Have a look at http://www.thinkbroadband.com/faq/sections/install.html I only just found it myself

Thanks for the advice mikel but as far as im concerned now is that ive given up all hope with sky giving me anymore speed

after 8 telephone calls to them these last few months ( and every advisor said that i should be getting a faster speed than im getting now }.. im not going to waste my time anymore with them

i must admit that at anytime these last few months no advisor put me through to the CST department in which ive had success with them before

ill just have to wait now until cable comes around here

Yeah I did give up hope a few times, just left it for ages, it would slowly go slower and slower in my case though, so that was always annoying!

You can just monitor it for a few weeks/months if you want, see what happens with your connection it may go up or down or stay the same

I'm just going through your messages now :

I could only check my address with the Sky broadband checker, it says 2 - 5mbps, which is about right however I don't think I will ever get 5mbps, so it does overestimate.

I was thinking of upgrading my router too, it costs £35 to upgrade your router to the latest one (its got wireless n which is twice as fast as wireless on older models - won't affect downloading off the internet though - just sharing files/streaming between networked computers) I asked the guy on the phone if he thought upgrading my router would give me a better connection, he wasn't sure and said its probably not worth it if I was looking to just increase internet connection, but that it would increase wireless speed (I pretty much knew this I just wanted his opinion/inside knowledge) When I have a spare £35 I may upgrade anyway. Its up to you if you want to try this though. (Your Netgear is older than my Sagem one I think? I came to sky about 2-3years ago I think)

I had the same problem, they put me up to about 2.6mbps but eventually it would keep disconnecting at night and reconnecting at a slower speed. This says to me that you have excess noise on your line.

I have rang them up so many times I can't remember what I have said to them. I think I asked them to take DLM (digital line management) off my line and also to put it on the "gamer profile" I'm not 100% sure what these are, hopefully someone can explain. I just read gamer profile lowers your ping (time it takes for information to travel from your computer to theirs and back to yours)

Changing channels on your router won't do anything but possibly increase wireless speed (if there is alot of interferance) it wont connect you at a higher speed.

About when you put the faceplate back on (was it off?) I don't think 61 down to 60 is anything really, they can go up and down like that with router/line resets, the extra connection speed is probably because it went down to 60db but then next time you reset/turn off the router it could go back up to 61db.

Did you ever try taking the faceplate off and puttings it into the "master socket" ? Master Socket It might connect you at a better speed.

If your faceplate has two sockets, one for broadband and one for phone like this then you can't improve the line much. However if you just have a standard looking socket then perhaps you can.
You can buy one of those in the link, but it requires removing and reinserting a few wires. If you don't want to touch anything you can get a iplate which I mentioned before.

There is something called a bell wire in your socket which was needed on really old phones, but isn't needed these days. It causes a bit of noise on the line, which makes it connect at a slower speed. If you can remove it then hopefully you will connect at a faster speed.

Easiest way to do it is to get a iplate, it just fits over your current faceplate and screws in. You can get it from here it is where I got mine from. There may be cheaper ones about but I prefered to get one from a reputable source. Get this cable for your modem 5 metre cable or 10 metre cable then get some new adsl filters I got 2.

The iplate comes with instructions and they are fairly easy to follow. Here is a video of Andrew himself!

After you have fitted all that there may or may not be a change, in my case there wasn't hardly any change. But I phoned up sky anyway, I just said something like I wonder if you can help me get more speed from my connection as its been getting slower for the last few weeks. They may ask a few silly questions, just say yes tried that etc. Ask to be put through to an engineer. Hopefully they will be looking at your line and will go away for a minute or so and when they come back its reconnected hopefully at a higher speed.