Noise margin and attenuation

A friend and I are both migrating from ADSL Max to ADSL2+ (curtesy of Be) and we are intrigued by the difference in line stats. We both live in the same fairly small town but I'm further from the exchange and my downstream stats are atten:34, margin:12.5. He is a quite a bit closer to the exchange and has atten:24, margin:8.4.

As I read this it means that I have a better quality line..but does it mean his is poor quality?

It looks to me like I'll be getting a better than expected connection speed and he will get slightly worse than expected (but still better than me).

Is that how to read it?

Edited by Andrue (Wed 11-Apr-07 10:29:01)

You have to take into account the sync rates. Are you both sync'ing at 8128/448?

Yes, we both synch at 8128.

Curiously he gets a better upload speed than me (400B/s as opposed to my 350B/s).

In that case you'll have to hope somebody with a better understanding replies.

His could still be better if, for instance, the transmitting end recognises that less signal strength has to be pumped down the link to maintain reliability at 8128Kb/s. But that is conjecture on my part.

heh, well we'll both find out fairly soon. I have an activation date of the 19th and if he can his MAC out of Nildram (I got mine from them a lot quicker) he shouldn't be far behind.

I'll be interested to hear what sort of internet throughput you get. My exchange is Be enabled but I chose to stay with ADSL Max as I don't need great speed.

Tbh *I* don't need great speed but it doesn't cost me any more and there's a chance that my ISP (Nildram) might get sold to Virgin or Carphone Wharehouse or that I could be moved onto Pipex LLU against my wishes.

Most of what I've heard about Be* is good so I decided to give it a try

Using Andrew's tester here it suggests sync of 14181 and throughput of 12550 for you, and 1994/17650 for your friend. I posted the results in case you use Firefox. If you use IE then try yourself

It works fine in Firefox by the way....

Nice if it works out that way. Twice the speed for the same price for me and nearly triple the speed for my mate.

Actually for me it's a drop in price because it's forced me to get rid of static IP. My bill drops from nearly