8 Meg - is it worth it?

I'm new so please be patient....

I work from home part of the time so the stabilty of my connection is really important to me.

I'm currently on 2 meg with firenet, who have mostly been very good except for a couple of periods with really slow speed. I'm now thinking of moving to an 8 meg package with one of the Entanet providers, but having read through a lot of the posts on here I get the impression that 8 meg can be more trouble that it's worth. I know there will be periodic dropping of the connection during the adjustment period but if sounds like for some people that his may continue on for longer than just a couple of weeks.

I just wondered whether I'm only seeing posts from the people who aren't happy with 8 meg and actually most people don't have any problems? Or would I be better sticking with a 2 meg package - slower but more reliable?

I don't download a lot, so it really is just speed of connection (for accessing remote applications) and stability that are important.

Any advice would be gratefully received.

Hi S, I think your question can only be answered if you post your line stats, and then the knowledgeable people here will be able to advise you.

HTH - Blue

Thanks Blue!

I've just checked on the BT site and it said:

"Our test also indicates that your line should be able to support a potential ADSL Max broadband line rate of 6.5Mbps up to 8Mbps. "

Is this what you meant by line stats?
(I may be a computer programmer but I'm an end user of a package and don't know much about the technical stuff).

Edited by Scarlett (Tue 24-Apr-07 13:22:14)

http://www.dslzoneuk.net/adsl_line_stats.php

Cheers!


System Up Time 95:40:24
Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time
WAN PPPoA 252515 256963 0 116 425 95:39:54
LAN 100M/Full 249714 257081 0 438 133 95:40:20

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 2272 kbps 288 kbps
Line Attenuation 23 db 6 db
Noise Margin 28 db 27 db

(I spaced this out nicely to make it easy to read but didn't make any difference when posted...)

If you post your router stats, you are looking for connection speed (up and down) a 2mb fixed speed should give you 2mb down and 256 up, your attenuation and your Noise margine (may refer to it as SNR)

That will help.

With those stats, you would bee looking at speeds of 6.9 - 7.7 Mbps or there abouts and maybe some improvment with some tweeking.
You may notice a couple of dropouts whe your line trains, but with those stats should not be too bad.

Plugging those figures into

http://www2.farina1.com/ADSL/default.aspx

gives an estimate of 8128 kbps (7150 kbps usable) on ADSL.

Check for yourself.

Brilliant - thanks for your help everyone!!
This forum is great.

Just got to pick the provider now... :-)

As you will be using the connection for connecting to remote applications you might want to consider a Business account, as the upload speed will be greater.

Also you might want to look into getting BT's Enhanced care added on at around