Zen V Be

I am currently with Zen (since 05) and over the past few months the speeds are getting noticebly slower.

I have started looking around and am attracted to Be. My question is how can Be offer about 17 mb download speeds on the same line that Zen at it's best gives me 6mb..?

Revlac

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My question is how can Be offer about 17 mb download speeds on the same line that Zen at it's best gives me 6mb

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Depends on your attenuation. What is it?

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I have started looking around and am attracted to Be. My question is how can Be offer about 17 mb download speeds on the same line that Zen at it's best gives me 6mb..?

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Maybe. It depends on both signal attenuation (the longer or lower quality your line, the worse this will be) and noise levels (this depends again on line quality, but also what conditions your line passes through on the way to you).

They've estimated 16Mb for my line, which currently gets 7-ana-bit on a Max-based ADSL connection. To be honest I don't need more speed downstream (though due to the current problems at Entanet I have been getting more like 1Mb for large periods of time recently), so it'll not bother me if the 16Mbit estimate is a little optimistic. For me the possible upstream speed boost will be more useful ["up to 1.4Mbit", more with UploadPlus, compared to the 0.8Mbit I get now (or the 0.45Mbit most home products give)].

As per the two previous replies, except they missed out the essential bit.

Your Zen connection is using a communications protocol called ADSL. Be connections use a protocol called ADSL2+.

On your phone line the voice signals are in a certain frequency range - think of analogue radios where you can tune to different stations - each on it's own frequency. So radio uses a frequency range over the air. TV uses a different range. Mobile phones yet another.

So on your phone line ADSL uses a different frequency range from the voice traffic. That's why you have to have a filter for the phone else you wouldn't be able to hear the voice for the racket caused by the ADSL signal. Think of interference on radios.

ADSL2+ uses the same frequency range as ADSL, but also another range of frequencies immediately above it, so it is just a wider range.

Each frequency on both carries some of your traffic. Road lanes! The more frequencies/lanes you have the more traffic you can carry. Over your phone line that means more speed. On the roads? That's not always the case !

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Each frequency on both carries some of your traffic.

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And each frequency band can be differently affected by certain line issues such as actual line quality, your wiring, and signal noise from any source near the line as it winds it's way from the exchange to your router, including intermittent conditions like the weather, which is why it is difficult to get an accurate estimate of the throughput you'll see when you switch between standards - performance on one standard is not completely indicative of what you might see on the other.

Plus the higher frequencies attenuate faster and are more susceptible to noise.

Which is why on longish lines people can find that ADSL2 or even ADSL1 can be faster than ADSL2+. My line is borderline between 2 and 2+, both are better than "1".

In fact I see my router has shifted to ADSL2 automatically.

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My line is borderline between 2 and 2+, both are better than "1".

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My line (58.5dB on ADSL2+) is about the same on 2 & 2+ (maybe 2+ is a little faster, but 2 reports a lower line attenuation).
However, 2 gives a lower upstream (about 950kbps, compared to around 1120kbps on 2+), so I'm sticking with 2+.