Line Speed, Router settings and Profile

Ey up guys, lurked around but finally registered.....
Wonder if anyone can advise on this:-

current router stats are below....

Downstream Upstream
Rate (Kbps): 3904 256

SNR Margin (dB): 11.1 27.0
Attenuation (dB): 48.0 24.5
Output Power (dBm): 11.5 19.3

..any ideas how I could maybe squeeze a few extra b/s out of this setup ?? Do I need to ask my ISP to manually drop my SNR margin ??

Had another thought, I'm supposed to be on an 8 Meg profile, even though my ISP recon line can only take just under 4....looks like they may have me on a 4 Meg profile, do I take it I need to talk to them about this, and if they say I am on 8 Meg profile already, can they do anything to help my SNR Margin ??


any help appreciated guys....

Urm what says you should be on an 8Meg profile? Pretty much impossible with a 48dB attenuation line

You may be on an up to 8Meg product, which means you will connect between 160Kbps and 8128Kbps

The upstream of 256Kbps is odd, given the large upstream noise margin, what provider are we talking about here, as it does not look like a BT Wholesale or most LLU products I know about.

I'm on Tiscali LLU, yes, up to 8Mb service. They recon line wil do 4.3 Mb max, and I'm syncing at 3950kb. They also recon I can't drop SNR margin or will lose stability, so liiks like I'm on all I can be.......

Do you have any phone extensions? Is your router plugged into the master socket or on an extension?

There is often a chance to squeeze a little more from a line by optimising the internal wiring. I don't know whether Tiscali use dynamic line management or if it was just done manually in the early days of the connection so if you do make an improvement it may or may not require another call to get the margin reduced. An alternative to asking for changes (after a wiring improvement) would be to use a router which can override the target but that should be a last resort.

Edited by kwikbreaks (Thu 12-Mar-09 09:02:32)

Mmm the line will go faster if a 6dB target is used, but without you monitoring your SNR margin, sync and power levels it is hard to know.

Basically if you have the 11db noise margin even when its dark and all electrical kit is on in your home and the 3904 sync is holding then a lower margin is possible.

Unfortunately it is Tiscali's call, the power levels reported suggest they may actually have fixed your speed to its current 3.9Mbps. We would need to see the numbers immediately after you had restarted the modem to be more sure.

This is just after a router re-boot...


Downstream Upstream
Rate (Kbps): 3904 256

SNR Margin (dB): 12.3 29.0
Attenuation (dB): 48.0 24.5
Output Power (dBm): 11.7

thanx for the suggestions....when I called them they seemed to think my nice stable connection would become unstable if they dropped the SNR target....even if that's the case, it's still 3x faster now on LLU than when on normal tiscali through BT line, due to our exchange and BT kit being old, decrepid and without the capacity to provide more...

Looks like they are running a 12dB target margin, to see if would fall over, monitor the SNR margin figures, mainly to see how low they go at night.

Still exactly the same telephone line, and as for BT kit being old, the DSLAM will be 2000 or later.

3x faster suggests Tiscali still had you on a fixed speed product

Hanx Saffron.....so far I've seen between 10.9dB and 13.5dB(ish) range, always with a stable connection. Obviously, I'd rather keep the stability than get another 0.5 Mb/s out of the line, and removing bell wire has already netted a consistent 0.5 Mb/s. Any further advice greatfully appreciated..