Acceptable Noise Margin?

Hi,

I've been looking at quite a few of the posts on here around noise margins and I am concerned that my noise margin is far higher than any that I have seen posted previously.

I am having general speed issues at the moment so I am trying to fathom out where the problem lies as my ISP believes that the speed reaching my house is acceptable. However the speeds I am getting reported by the BT Speed Test are < 1Mbps.

I have been reviewing my router stats and comparing them with others that have been posted previously and the noise margin figures jumped out at me as being quite high.

I don't pretend to entirely understand the figures, I have done a little light bedtime reading around the subject area but it all goes way above my head.

Would someone be kind enough to give me their thoughts on the below stats?

--- System Information ---
Vendor: Linksys
ModelName: WAG120N
Firmware Version: A1.00.16 , 2010-08-06T14:08:04
GUI Version: A1.00.16_007
Boot Version: 1.0.37-5.4
Hardware Version: 0.01

--- DSL Information ---
DSL Driver Version: 3.4.4.10.0.1
DSL VPI/VCI: 0/38
DSL Status: Up
DSL Mode: G.dmt
DSL Channel: 0
DSL Upstream Rate: 448 kbps
DSL Downstream Rate: 7616 kbps

Down up
DSL Noise Margin: 270 dB 94 dB
DSL Attenuation: 155 dB 321 dB
DSL Transmit Power: -901 dBm -901 dBm

--- Wireless Information ---
Wireless Driver Version: "2.2.0.5"
Wireless Tools Version:
Wireless Status: Enabled
Wireless Wide Channel: 9
Wireless Standard Channel: 11- 2.462GHZ
Wireless SSID: Linksys

--- Dynamic Information ---
LAN Mac Address: 00:25:9C:85:2B:B3
WAN Mac Address: 00:25:9C:85:2B:B5
Wireless Mac Address: 00:25:9C:85:2B:B4

---

Any help would be gratefully received as I am starting to loose my rag with it all.

In reply to a post by backtoeleven:

DSL Mode: G.dmt

You are on a 'up to 8Mb' service.

In reply to a post by backtoeleven:

DSL Upstream Rate: 448 kbps
DSL Downstream Rate: 7616 kbps

You are connected to the DSLAM at the highest rate possible for your service.

In reply to a post by backtoeleven:

Down up
DSL Noise Margin: 270 dB 94 dB
DSL Attenuation: 155 dB 321 dB

This looks like a decimal point is missing and should be:

Up Down
DSL Noise Margin: 27.0 dB 9.4 dB
DSL Attenuation: 15.5 dB 32.1 dB

Simplistically, there is nothing wrong with the physical ADSL connection. If your throughput is low, it would perhaps suggest that contention is present somewhere (a traffic jam on a connection within the network), possibly at either the local exchange or at the ISP.

Perform a BT Speed test (with a wired connection to your router - using wireless can be unreliable) and post the result (minus your telephone number) here.

Edited by deleted (Sat 31-Dec-11 12:56:31)

Nothing to worry about! You are on an "up to" 8 Meg ADSL1 connection and the NM is high accordingly.

In reply to a post by backtoeleven:

Down up
DSL Noise Margin: 270 dB 94 dB
DSL Attenuation: 155 dB 321 dB

Your router is reversing the Down/UP attenuations.

@panda: OP's router reports the dB measures in tenths.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

@panda: OP's router reports the dB measures in tenths.

Centibels?

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

@panda: OP's router reports the dB measures in tenths.

<pedant>If so, then the unit is incorrectly shown as dB. Either the unit should be cB or a decimal point is missing.</pedant>

7616 kbps - Interleave
8128 kbps - Fastpath

Sounds like congestion.

[buck pass]Take it up with the manufacturer[/buck pass]

If there software is as bad as that on the UI, what about the rest of it. Can any of their figures be trusted? It obviously demonstrates that testing of the software and UI was not as rigorous as it should have been.

Anything else in the router to show CRC/HEC/FEC errors ?

As said, the sync is just about as good as it gets on an up to 8 service. Name and shame the ISP, you *should* be seeing around 6 meg-ish through put speeds, if you are directly connected to the router, and no one else is using it.

His profile says "Orange"

Ah, hadn't noticed that bit, makes you wonder, doesn't it ?

Yes, I'm with Orange. Been through their technical support team who haven't been too helpful, they did try though bless them. Still leaves me with a mostly unusable service though.

I did a test using the BT Speed Test again, these are the results:

Download speedachieved during the test was - 673 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 600-7150 Kbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :7648 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 6000 Kbps

Not sure I agree with the acceptable range of speed being 600-7150Kbps. Surely there is a zero missing (6000-7150Kbps).

Thanks to @panda and @XRaySpeX for clearing up the "missing" decimal point.

I don't like Linksys routers for ADSL, I prefer Speedtouch, or even Netgear.

There is NOT a zero missing ...

Have you sorted everything on YOUR side. If using XP, are your MTU and RWIN settings OK, have you tried running the DSL reports tweak test. What does the Task Manager graph look like when running a BT speedtest, or a TBB meter 20MB file download?

Oh I have a range of routers...

Cisco by Linksys WAG120N
Netgear DG834G
Orange Livebox

All of which give similar results. I wish it was as simple as the router being sub-standard but it doesn't appear to be so.

Download speedachieved during the test was - 673 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 600-7150 Kbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :7648 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 6000 Kbps

Ouch !

The only slightly odd thing, the IP profile should be higher if that's a stable 7684 sync, like maybe it's recovering from a series of recent low syncs ?? That said, through put should be higher. Does anyone remember the url for that (Plusnet I think) site that showed exchange congestion ?

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

...Does anyone remember the url for that (Plusnet I think) site that showed exchange congestion ?

http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges/

Post deleted by backtoeleven

That's the very thing !!

I have enough problems on my Jurassic 20CN line - I hadn't checked my exchange VP status for quite a while (it was always *green*) but I've just looked and it's now *amber*

Happy New Year to everyone as I'm off for this year
See you all in 2012...

I have been on the PlusNet Exchange Checker and it is reporting a 'Green' VP capacity status at present. However it has been reporting 'Yellow' all the way from Aug - Nov.

I don't think the exchange checker can be relied upon as very accurate compared to a few years ago. The one for my exchange seems to always lag behind what is actually going on.