Which ISP to choose?

Hello all am new to the forums and am looking for a bit of advice.

I currently have BE broadband in my flat and will be moving from them come April as the performance of late has been a bit iffy for xbox live. I have my phone line with them as well and have used various different checkers to see what services are available in my area (Abbeyhill exchange in Edinburgh).

I don't mind paying a little more for a quality service and I download very little a month, all I want is the lowest possible pings and jitter and for my gaming traffic not to be pushed from pillar to post.

Here are some of my stats.

Uptime: 0 days, 0:20:52
DSL Type: G.992.5 annex A
Maximum Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 980 / 7,783
Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 1,005 / 8,114
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [kB/kB]: 0.00 / 0.00
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 12.0 / 18.5
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 18.0 / 33.5
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 15.5 / 14.0
Vendor ID (Local/Remote): TMMB / BDCM
Loss of Framing (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Signal (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Power (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Link (Remote): 0
Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
FEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 875
CRC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 0
HEC Errors (Up/Down): 261 / 0

Any help would be much appreciated.

Considered Andrews & Arnold if your usage pattern fits their charging system?

BTW you line is being held back speed rise, by what looks to be a high target noise margin.

I have been thinking about going with AAISP or XILO but was not sure what one to go with. Cost is not that much of an issue but reliability is.

I am on that profile because I asked BE to put me on the most stable config and I suppose that is what they put me on.

In reply to a post by deepdishdj:

I have been thinking about going with AAISP or XILO but was not sure what one to go with. Cost is not that much of an issue but reliability is.

I am on that profile because I asked BE to put me on the most stable config and I suppose that is what they put me on.

May i ask why you requested this, where you getting frequent disconnects or something?, if you where then that could well be due to a line fault, or dodgy router / filter, The only thing a higher Target snr will do is lower the sync rate and mask to a degree the underlying fault if present, & this would more than likely follow you so matter which isp you go to,Most isp's will gladly increase the margins instead of calling openreach out

Can vouch for Xilo. Was going to go over to Sky with a free for a year broadband. To me I'd rather pay 18a month knowing the service I've had with them for the last couple of years, support tickets if submitted a replied very quickly during the day/week.

I Contacted BE around 4 months ago saying I felt like I was getting lag spikes when playing on xbox live and they recommended putting me on normal adsl and not adsl2+ and putting me on this profile.

I very rarely get disconnected with BE. I think it has only happened around 4 times and that has been in the last month or so. My pings and jitter are normally pretty good but alot of the time I just feel like I'm lagging when playing online especially around peek times.

You are on ADSL2+. That's what G.993.5 is. But your connection time noise margin seems to be set at 15dB, instead of the normal 6dB. That decreases the speed enormously, but should help stability, which was the required result.

What you really want is ADSL2, G.993.2. If you had a suitable tweakable router you could force it yourself.

That was some older router stats (around three weeks old) from a thread on the BE forums. I work away from home three weeks at a time and they recommended that I changed it to adsl. Sorry I should have made that clear.

What router would you recommend?

What have you got?

Newer ones don't seem to be tweakable.

I have the standard Thomson ST585 v7 that I got from BE, I also have ZyXEL Prestige 660R-D1 Compact ADSL 2+ Router. I bought it as a back up but BE say that it wont work although I have tried to get it to work but I am not very tech minded.

I know this is of topic but is it possible to connect a Virgin FTTH connection and a BE adsl connection through another router or gateway and then use both connections for downloading and uploading at the same time. The reason I ask is because I have both in my flat and working night shifts can be long and boring and I started wondering.

In reply to a post by deepdishdj:

I know this is of topic but is it possible to connect a Virgin FTTH connection and a BE adsl connection through another router or gateway and then use both connections for downloading and uploading at the same time. The reason I ask is because I have both in my flat and working night shifts can be long and boring and I started wondering.

Don't know that much about load balancing to be able to give you a correct helpful answer, but from those stats i would say you are missing upto 10meg on the downstream sync, tweakable routers, netgear d or dg 834 v4 this has a broadcom chipset so is fully compatible with the DSLAM , they retail new for around £40-£50 , but if you get be tech to put you on either the default 6db margin or a 3db margin, with INP level set to 1, and the minimum ammout of delay that is possible ,you should see the highest sync the line can support (As per Profile)

As sometimes this setting provides a higher sync than fastpath (Gaming mode ), The default config setup for be connections is A 6db Target noise margin and INP set to 2, not sure about interleave depth,delay levels,

When I was first with BE before I was put on this profile I was getting just shy of 11meg down but because of what I think was lag spikes when playing on live they recommended putting me on this profile as it was more stable.

As for the combining two connections I was looking at this router BiPAC 7300N
Draft 802.11n ADSL2+ / Broadband Router. Not sure if I am barking up the wrong tree here as my knowledge about these things is very limited.

I have found the Netgear dg834 online for £40 so I might look into that.

In reply to a post by deepdishdj:

I have found the Netgear dg834 online for £40 so I might look into that.

Make sure it's the DG834G Version 4; marked on underneath label.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

In reply to a post by deepdishdj:

I have found the Netgear dg834 online for £40 so I might look into that.

Make sure it's the DG834G Version 4; marked on underneath label.

As I remember it, the plain 834 is the same as the G but with no wireless. Still needs to be v4 though, as you say. All GTs are fine.

In reply to a post by deepdishdj:

When I was first with BE before I was put on this profile I was getting just shy of 11meg down but because of what I think was lag spikes when playing on live they recommended putting me on this profile as it was more stable.

I have found the Netgear dg834 online for £40 so I might look into that.

The profile that you referred to was the Default 6db margin and INP 1 or 2, also this was using the Thompson router ?
With a Attenuation figure of 33.5db which the router is reporting it to be whilst using ADSL2+ then you should certainly be getting higher than 11mbits sync, something is clearly wrong, be it router,filters, internal extensions in your home, or any equipment connected to such ,
If none of that is the cause then it's a line fault somewhere between your home &telephone exchange, or a fault with equipment at the exchange,

You are on older firmware for the 585v7 unless you have updated since those stats were taken

Update to the latest firmware which fixes a lot of issues, is more stable and the ADSL driver performance is better
http://beusergroup.co.uk/technotes/index.php?title=M...

Once you have done this, contact BE and ask them to put you back on the default 6db SNR profile

Don't ask for any INP setting to be changed just yet - see how stable things are first

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

As I remember it, the plain 834 is the same as the G but with no wireless.

I took it from Kitz that all plain 834s are TI AR7 chipset.

I am using the Thompson router supplied by BE and I replaced the filter a month ago and have always had the router plugged into the test socket as I dont use the land line at all.

I bought a I-plate to fit to the phone socket but never fitted it. I am on the BE value package as I was told by BE that would be the most suitable package for me.

In regards to the phone socket I have three in my flat and two are next to each other in my living room. One is for virgin and the other is my BE land line. When the engineer came round to re-activate the socket I asked him if it was the most suitable socket for the broadband connection to run on and he told me it was. I do have another socket next to my front door which I thought would have been the master socket but he says it would not matter.

I will update the firmware when I get home next week as I am away with work (in the middle of the north sea).

After I have done that I will contact be and ask them to but me on 6db SNR profile and monitor how it performs on xbox live because that is all I am really concerned about. If the lagging persists on that profile what would be the next step?