Broadband on the Isle of Wight

A friend of mine rang me last night to discuss her broadband.

She lives in a fairly rural part of the Isle of Wight running a small Alpaca farm. SDSHNKL is her exchange. SamKnows doesn't know of any of the properties where she lives but gives a straight line exchange distance of 3.69km to her postcode.

Her ISP, farming.co.uk who I assume is a reseller, has recently moved her from fixed 1/2 meg to some sort of variable rate service (perhaps a max ADSL type service) and her performance has plummeted, scarcely getting 50-100 k.

The local firm that she uses for PC issues has suggested she look at a new wireless BB service that's recently started on the island, not sure of the name but thought it was something like TechScore, somebody Munro being her contact (sorry I didn't make a note). Bandwidth was 5Gb peak, 20Gb off peak - far more than she needs so that's not an issue. Cost was reasonable as well.

When BT originally installed BB for her some years ago she said they had to do what sounds like a lift-and-shift to get a viable circuit, and then had to run a special cable from the incoming socket (they installed one that separates the BB & voice signals so no further filtering needed, don't know the exact designation) to where she has the router and PC. I suspect from her description that it is a fairly long run, if so that won't help performance. I have suggested if she has time to put the router directly into the socket and test via wireless from her laptop.

Any thoughts on a reasonable way forward for BB for her would be appreciated. After a 90 minute call last night my brain was a little addled.

How about router stats - this will inform about line length and relative performance for a start.

Sounds like a proper data extension, and 30m of extra twisted pair wiring, will make little difference, if they have 6000or 7000m of phone cable to the exchange.

There are times when the fixed speed products cope better with long lines, mainly due to problems with the IP Profile and flapping lines. A sensible ISP can request the line be put onto a fixed speed profile under Max which are available for 0.5, 1 and 2Meg so suggest that in the first instance.

I'll find out her router and see if I can get the stats.

I take your point about fixed speed being better on long lines.

Changing ISPs if hers won't revert her will, for reasons to do with web and email hosting be a little more challenging. And it's a hassle she really doesn't want, she's trying to run a business and household on her own and just wants things to work properly don't we all!).

ISP solution of a fixed profile under Max may be the best, but without seeing line stats hard to say.

If the line attenuation is under 60dB, then line speeds of 2Meg or more are feasible. If 63dB or higher then a real lottery, and the wireless service should be given consideration.

I now have the router stats.

Down: CS=256 kbps, LA=63.5db, NM=12.8db
Up: CS=448 kbps, LA=31.5 db, NM=8.0db.

If it's relevant, the router is a Netgear DG834 v4.

It would seem that with an attenuation of 63.5 then it's into 'lottery' territory.

Out of interest I see from the stats page she emailed me the WAN had been up for 577 hours, so clearly left on much of the time.

Get the router rebooted, and if the NM is still 12dB after a reboot, then that explains where the speed has all gone.

If the line is stable, then ISP should have no problem getting the margin dropped down to 6dB. But I suspect its via a retailer who uses a reseller who buy from someone who buys from BT Wholesale, so a long convoluted chain.

In which case if the details after the reboot, and the telephone number of the line can be emailed to me [email protected] I can get BT Wholesale to take a peek, and if its stable lower the noise margin and that will give them back the missing speed

Thank you Andrew. I've emailed her your kind suggestion, though it may be tomorrow before she reboots the router.

Andrew, email with relevant details on its way. Many thanks.

To add to what I said in email, the 63.5dB attenuation indicates a very long line. Modems stop displaying the attenuation at this value, i.e. the real attenuation is higher than this figure, suggesting a line length of other 6km to the exchange.

If we get nowhere then best option if sticking to DSL would be a LLU provider who will not have an IP Profile setting.

Some update on this, though increasingly confusing it seems to me.

Got the line set to half meg fixed rather than variable profile. Whether this is actually a good idea is another matter in some ways, inasmuch as it goes faster but drops out more often...

Many phone calls to the person (all-inclusive call packages are great!) is showing a much more complex situation.

When she had broadband first installed in 2005, BT had trouble getting it to work and the BT engineer (who she recalls seemed to know what he was doing) installed a new box where the line comes into the house. This box is fairly deep and says ADSL V1.0 on it so I assume it�s an NTE5 box with voice and ADSL sockets on the front with the filtering done internally. Just had an email saying she�s found the original notes and that it�s described as a NT2000.

Discussing the house wiring has revealed a strange set up.

The ADSL connection is plugged into the ADSL port on the front of the box, then goes back inside the whole box and disappears off to her office upstairs. Why it goes back inside I have no idea.

The voice socket is feeding just a wired phone in the sitting room.

But� There is another wire coming out of the NTE5 box which goes off around the house to a socket that feeds a phone/fax/answerphone in her office; it also feeds a socket to which is connected a Calor Gas auto-orderer (her Calor Gas tank is linked wirelessly to this receiver which automatically orders another supply when the tank detects it�s getting low). It also supplies her Sky box which is hard wired into a telephone socket in the kitchen.

All very odd.

The broadband connection has become much less reliable � though faster when working � than before. But she has found that when it is off if she picks up the handset and replaces it the Netgear immediately starts to re-establish connection and broadband is back up, for a while.

We discussed putting additional filters in where possible. She tells me that she tried putting a filter in the socket in the office before plugging the answerphone/fax/pcmodem back in (remember it was previously bringing the internet connection back up when she put the handset back on the rest). With the filter IN, it prevented her being able to bring the internet back up by putting the handset back on the rest. Just to double check, she removed the filter and lo and behold was able to bring the internet back up again. She�ll try the same process with the corded phone in the sitting room but is guessing the results will be the same.

What seems so weird is so many things seem to be happening the opposite way round from the way that they are expected to behave.

Any thoughts, ideas, whatever, on how to progress this?

Maybe it would be worth her getting another line installed?
And taking all that [censored] ( diallers/fax/sky) off that line?
May help, and may also give her a better line?

Another update.

Being fed up with broadband that dropped at a the slightest excuse, and after much thought and discussion , she signed up for click4internet, a local wireless internet service. The receiver aerial was installed on Thursday, she can just about see the transmitter mast, and after a few installation hiccups she is getting broadband at around (speedtest.net figures) 8.95mbps down & 3.55mbps up. As one may imagine she is quite happy with that level of performance.

She also told me that her neighbour had been having all sorts of broadband problems (BT being his ISP) lately with router dropouts and very poor performance. Looks like she is just about at the limits of broadband viability on her rural line. She's also recently noticed that heavy rain knocks the broadband out in the area. Suggests line problems but the chances of BT sorting it in anything like a reasonable time scale are low so she's gone wireless.

For those interested the cost is £25 / month (installation is nominally £199) with 5 peak time Gigs and/or 20 off-peak gigs included in the monthly allowance. That's probably far more than she's likely to use.

Thanks for all the help so freely given on tbb, it's been much appreciated.

Hi,
I have been reading this post with interest as I am the 'Munro' from Click4Internet mentioned in the post.
I am in regular contact with this customer and she is very happy with the Wiber® (Wireless-Fibre) connection that we are providing. When I have tested using my laptop directly connected to her service I have always achieved between 9.5 Mb/s and 10.5 Mb/s downloads, and over 3.5 Mb/s uploads, with a latency of under 15 ms. The service she has subscribed to offers 'up to 10 Mb/s download and 'up to 3 Mb/s upload' so these figures are extremely healthy in that context.

This customer�s neighbour (mentioned in the post) was so impressed with our Wiber® system that he has since subscribed and also uses one of our VoIP units in place of his �old� land-line.

The installation 'hiccups' mentioned in this post were entirely due to the customer wanting to try to use her existing old ADSL router with the new Wiber® connection rather than opting for a recommended Wiber® router unit. The connection was actually 100% operational from day 1 but it did take her some time to resolve the issues that arose by her choice to configure and use her own equipment herself. This is of course fine and we fully appreciate that customers want to keep costs down by trying to re-use old equipment and by doing things themselves. We provided extensive support, free of charge, to assist her with what she wanted to do.

Performance fluctuations and limitations will be introduced when using 'old' ADSL routers as (effectively) switches to distribute our high performance Wiber® service in homes and I know that the router in question was on its performance limits when trying to deliver even 10 Mb/s which is why I achieved better performance results when plugging directly into our connection at her home.

Having said that some customers use older computers that may be a little under resourced and therefore unable to cope with more than around 8 Mb/s throughput anyway, so in these cases there is nothing to lose by using an 'old' ADSL router to save on costs, provided users accept that their equipment will not be able to process and distribute the full potential of our connection.

We would be delighted to hear from anyone with rural 'broadband' issues as our Wiber® network is growing all the time.

We can offer low latency, reliable and robust connectivity of up to 75 Mb/s both down and up and our Wiber® network is excellent for all forms of networking and VPN, and VoIP / SIP phone technology. More than 50% of our domestic customers already use a VoIP phone accross our network saving on call costs and line rentals.

Our extensive Wiber® coverage easily reaches users over 15 miles away from our masts and so is a perfect and cost effective solution for high performance internet distribution in rural areas where the cost and disruption associated with terrestrial infrastructure installation is prohibitive. We also have a number of urban customers both domestic and commercial who chose Wiber® for its Megaband� upload performance and low latency which DSL alternatives were unable to compete with.

We call our connectivity Megaband� rather than 'broadband' because our system out-performs 'broadband' by a large margin so we feel that it is important to use a different term for our service. We feel that the term� broadband� has come to have a very �loose� definition these days and says little about actual performance when one user receives �broadband� performance that is a tiny fraction of what another gets for example. With Megaband� every user gets the same performance irrespective of location and the massive performance fluctuations from one home to another do not occur.

We offer a �try before you buy� service where we can demonstrate the system working at your home or office using our mobile signal testing unit. This enables customers to see exactly what performance they will receive before they order an installation.

Please visit our website at www.click4internet.com and use the contact form if you would like more details or have any questions.

Frazer Munro
Managing Director
Click4Internet Ltd.

This is interesting is there anyway of finding out what if any wireless internet providers are available in my area? I've tried googling but can't turn up anything.