Horrible Connection Speeds

Heya folks, I was hoping someone could shed some possible light on this issue, because it's driving me.... to give up and use my Mobile Broadband dongle, since it's superior by contrast to that of Sky's 8Mb Package where I am.

DSL Connection
DSL Status: Connected
DSL Modulation Mode: MultiMode (I have tried forcing different connection modes, some either fail or don't improve connection speeds.)
DSL Path Mode: Interleaved
Downstream Rate: 448 kbps
Upstream Rate: 160 kbps
Downstream Margin: 12 db (This has dipped to a best of 9db before)
Upstream Margin: 7 db (This is the best I have ever seen it)
Downstream Line Attenuation: 53 db (And again, best ever here too)
Upstream Line Attenuation: 15.5 db (Roughly, the same could be said yet again here)
Downstream Transmit Power: 0
Upstream Transmit Power: 0

PVC Connection
Encapsulation: RFC 2364 PPPoA
Multiplexing: VC
Qos: UBR
Pcr Rate: 0
Scr Rate: 0
Autodetect: Disable
VPI: 0
VCI: 38
Enable: Yes
PVC Status: Up

Stats from my Router. Using SamKnows, I realise in this newly built house we've been in for a few months, that we are 3.5Km from the closest exchange, which is indeed a bit steep apparently. But monitoring my Connection speeds over time, I never get anything better then 0.6Mbps on Upstream or Downstream - I'm extremely lucky to get 0.5Mbps on the downstream, a bit easier to obtain on the upstream.

I'm probably about the void my whole post with this, but despite being a brand new house, some of the Structured Telephony cabling definitely doesn't work in this house. The socket in my room doesn't work, I can't connect the Router through it. But it operates fine on a Slave in the Lounge, and on the "Master" socket with similar results. And I quote 'Master', because it's not actually a master after ripping it off the wall. I have a box outside the front of my house which has all that jibber jabber in it, it seems, I'm not so sure I'm allowed to play with that.

Tried different Microfilters, tried different Routers (Yeah, I have read about the Sky ToS, I'm troubleshooting!), but to no avail.

I really hope I'm just not too ridiculously far away to achieve anything reasonable, otherwise I just can't believe they would sell us it, which we're apparently stuck with for 12 months.

Hope that's good information to churn, and thanks very much in advance! I'd love to get this Ironed out, but when they supposedly finish tweaking the line for optimum efficiency in the first week of the Broadbands operation.... and I still have terrible speeds 3-4 weeks later, I mean... *Sighs*

With 53dB attenuation, you should see speeds of 4000kbps.
Something definitely wrong with your wiring.
Can you post a picture of your "box outside with all the jibber-jabber in it" to say, http://imageshack.us/ and post a link to it here?
and maybe one of the master that isn't?

Hiya Batboy, thanks for the speedy reply! And I'm glad to hear you mentioned 4Mbps as a possibility, I would be content with 2Mbps.

http://yfrog.com/0timag0004tjx

With boxes still around, my real camera hidden away, I used my Mobile Phone camera, and combined with the time it is in England, the outside photography shots were poor.

Where the 3 wires go in, it lists the numbers 2, 4 and 5 I believe, which I read the other day are the most minimal, yet most common wires used out of the possible 6 available for household use?

The red box in the Outside Telephony box mentioned Network Wiring on it, I'll dig deeper and get better shots tomorrow if it's really required, and if it only carries absolute minimal risk of doing any damage to the already busted installation we have.

The so called "Master Socket" (I say this as well, because it's literally half a meter from the outside box, and I'd imagine first inline to be served by it?) appears to be wired identical to the one in my room, so god knows why that one does work and my room doesn't, but that's a separate issue anyway.

Thanks for your continued support

Edit: Additionally, the outside box had BT OpenReach written on it I think, I imagine it's perhaps a standard box on some new houses, but ya never know -_-

Edited by Izzeh (Sat 30-May-09 22:27:50)

Yes, very interesting.

That box outside looks like the "master" as you say - it seems to have a surge protector etc. in there, but the shadows make it hard to see what's really going on so a daylight shot would be better.

The inside box looks like a rats nest of wires, so a bit more focussed shot would be better too. If you can determine which are the wires from the outside box that would help also.

Looks like a good quick fix will be to remove the ring wire once identified - you only need 2 wires as the ring signal is re-created by the micro-filters and all phones must be filtered.

.

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

all phones must be filtered

I feel like such an idiot for not checking this, I just assumed my Mum had plugged everything in as normal, just like the old house. I just went to check now, and they are all inserted, since my brother noticed it a couple of hours ago and made the fix. Come to my PC just now (Just been to London and back with him), and I'm connected at 2.3Mbps.

I can't believe I made such a stupid oversight though, all this time is was that. Somehow they managed to operate alongside each other without the Microfilters (Which purely separates high and low frequencies, as far as I'm aware) but with reduced Broadband performance?

It's not 4Mbps, but it's better then I have EVER had in the past, and that makes me happy.

Sorry Batboy, I dunno what to say, I'm a freakin' idiot ^^;; I usually remind people of this myself at work when Customers mention broadband connection issues, and... yeah, taking a quote from Under Siege 2; "Assumption is the mother of all ****ups", as proven here, I apparently thought Ryback was dead too.

Apologies again Batboy, and thanks for the assistance

Lol easy mistake to make though! I had a very similar problem recently and it annoyed the hell out of me till a friend pointed it out!

You could possibly get a higher sync by plugging the router directly into the test socket. Although you may not be able to do this as I think you have one of the newer BT OpenReach junction boxes outside your property.