Sky just gone live at parents house!

Due to financial matters I am moving back to my parents a week saturday.

Unfortunately this meant going from my lovely 24MB BE connection to whatever I can get with Sky! My parents live on the outskirts of the town so know that my connection will take a massive hit.

I went up there today and plugged the router in as activated yesterday and have left it to do its 10 day thing.

I had a look at the connection stats and was synced at 3mb down 0.6 up. Attenuation was 45db down and SNR was 6.6. Obviously I know the connection isn't set. Would love to go home in 10 days and find it at 24 but know its not gonna happen. Does 3MB seem about the maxiumum given the stats?

I get 4.2mbps with 55 attenuation so you should get a bit more than 3mbps! Would guess between 6 and 7 but its just a wild guess! I doubt your upload speed will go up unless you ring them up and ask them to increase it (mine could go from 603 to 768 thats all)

In reply to a post by MikeL:

I get 4.2mbps with 55 attenuation so you should get a bit more than 3mbps! Would guess between 6 and 7 but its just a wild guess! I doubt your upload speed will go up unless you ring them up and ask them to increase it (mine could go from 603 to 768 thats all)

I used to get just over 4 Mbps sync (inc overheads) on a 53db attenuation but that was with O2.

Now on Sky I only get a 2.9 Mbps downstream sync and 700 Kbps upstream sync (where as on O2 I used to get 1.1 Mbps)

Still I'm not that bothered as when FTTC is available on my exchange, I will be ditching ADSL and going down the fibre route.

you get what you get. I think you will get a bit more. mine stabalised at a higher rate after 4-5 days, so I expect yours will too.

I would expect double the down speed with that attenuation - here are my stats on my sky broadband .Though i do not use the the supplied router however there is very little in it with regards to speed and related issues.

Upstream 796
Downstream 7008
SNR Margin(Upstream) 13.9
SNR Margin(Downstream) 6.2
Line Attenuation(Upstream) 27.5
Line Attenuation(Downstream) 46.5

I see they've capped your upstream to 800 even though you have plenty of SNR margin to play with. I wonder why they do that

I should be back there over the weekend and will have a check, 4-5 days so halfway through and will take my laptop to check the stats. If it sticks at 3mb/800k I believe I just need to email their support and ask to be put on Gaming Mode if that's correct? I understand that not everyones connection is the same even with same Attenuation/SNR but it does seem as if around 4MB wouldn't be unreasonable.

Edited by deleted (Thu 23-Feb-12 19:36:04)

Yeah, that's what you do.

Well just moved back today and first time since the intial post that i've checked the stats. Unfortunately not what I had hoped

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 2045 kbps 604 kbps
Line Attenuation 45.5 dB 27.7 dB
Noise Margin 7.9 dB 16.0 dB

Appears its limited to 2MB. Is there anything I should be saying apart from asking for Gaming Mode in my email to support?

You don't have much noise margin there. Are all devices filtered that are connected to the phone line, e.g. the sky box?

In reply to a post by Richeh:

Appears its limited to 2MB. Is there anything I should be saying apart from asking for Gaming Mode in my email to support?

That could make it less stable than what it already is.

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

Are all devices filtered that are connected to the phone line, e.g. the sky box?

Even with a filtered faceplate should the boxes have microfilters? I have 4 boxes connected (2HD and 2SD) in the loop by a adsl nation plate.

Edited by deleted (Sat 03-Mar-12 23:43:59)

Yes, all phone points filtered. 4 years ago before I moved out I average 3-3.5MB so would be incredibly disappointed if Sky can only offer me 2MB.

I was told not to hook up microfilters in the loop where a filtered faceplate runs the show.

Have you tried the router in the test socket inside the master?

Depends on how the faceplate is connected. If you have connected the extensions to the filtered terminals then no further filters are required. If you have connected to the unfiltered terminals then yes you will still need filters.

In reply to a post by vodoun:

I was told not to hook up microfilters in the loop where a filtered faceplate runs the show.

They shouldn't be needed - but they won't do any harm.

In some cases (faulty phones, sky box modems etc) having two filters has helped resolve broadband problems.

Have only just managed to get on the phone with Sky as had a very busy day. Spoke to a very helpful guy who understood the situation and seemed very on the ball with broadband stuff. Basically plugged it into main socket, then test socket etc but there was barely any difference to my extension so i'm now synced at:

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 2802 kbps 253 kbps
Line Attenuation 45.0 dB 27.7 dB
Noise Margin 6.1 dB 19.1 dB

Which is enough of an improvement for me although the upload is very disappointing as long as I can use XBL with voice comms etc i'm not too bothered.

Now just need to wait for fibre

Edited by deleted (Sun 04-Mar-12 18:49:19)

Whats happened to your upstream.... did you ask about gaming mode? It's better via email tbh.

In reply to a post by Going_Digital:

Depends on how the faceplate is connected. If you have connected the extensions to the filtered terminals then no further filters are required. If you have connected to the unfiltered terminals then yes you will still need filters.

Yeah thats how it works, everything else dies when the faceplate comes off.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by vodoun:

I was told not to hook up microfilters in the loop where a filtered faceplate runs the show.

They shouldn't be needed - but they won't do any harm.

In some cases (faulty phones, sky box modems etc) having two filters has helped resolve broadband problems.

Thats the only thing I've disliked about microfilters. I've always found them flaky.

How can you tell if a Sky Box has a flaky modem?

In reply to a post by vodoun:

How can you tell if a Sky Box has a flaky modem?

Disconnect it and see if the problem remains.

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 2787 kbps 798 kbps
Line Attenuation 45.0 dB 27.5 dB
Noise Margin 6.7 dB 14.4 dB

New stats after arriving home from work, possibly the upstream was just a precautionary measure to make sure the downstream was stable?

Download still annoyingly slow but the connection has been up 19 hours so seems stable at least! Have seen the Noise Margin for downstream go down to as low as 5 and as high as 10 so seems to vary a lot. The weather down here is terrible at the moment so can assume that probably isn't helping.

Only positive thing to come from this was when testing all the sockets I know my extension isn't the problem as the chap said the stats were barely any different and 2.8MB here compared to 3MB from the test socket itself.

Was the noise margin also the same in the test socket?

I can't remember exactly what it was but the chap on the phone said there was barely any difference.

These are the stats now:

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 3069 kbps 798 kbps
Line Attenuation 45.5 dB 27.6 dB
Noise Margin 7.2 dB 14.8 dB

Looked on the Sky website and appears they are doing the 10 day thing again although I manually restarted the router last night forgetting this but it was the first time it had reconnected since I phoned them. Shouldn't it be reconnecting a few times to achieve the max sync etc?

Also a torrents/downloads that last week maxed out my 24MB connection are fluctuating between 200-300k sometimes to as low as 175k a sec. Appears to be both the wired/wireless connection although the ethernet takes a long time to actually get net access when plugged in 60 secs or so. Is the router really designed more towards Wireless?

Roll on fibre!

Taken from my SKY router. I would have thought that after 10 days you should get something a bit better...

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 8190 kbps 797 kbps
Line Attenuation 40.5db 23.7db
Noise Margin 5.9db 15.3db

that sync seems low, with 50db attenuation I had around 6meg. Although it wasnt stable at that speed without SRA due to the noise on my line. But a line without noise would handle that speed I think.

however given the SNRm reported it seems your sync isnt going to go up much if at all. So looks like a noisy line, or maybe you not using the master socket.