ADSL speed

[Chancer]

I know it is all relative but I get the feeling that my computer is running slower when changing web pages, it is very old (a P166 I think) and has more memory than before (which at the time speeded things up) but compared to my UK neighbours even older and slower machine which changes pages instantly mine seems like a tortoise.

I did a speedcheck test this morning but dont really understand the units of measure or what I can reasonably expect, can anyone advise on the results?

I have a degroupée abonnement with Free.fr and according to other tests my line is 2km from the exchange, the results were:

Download around 2580kbps upload 553kbps

With the telly switched on the download dropped to 1418kbps and with a radio channel to 1100kbps

I am unable to watch the HD channels but expected that with my distance from the exchange but find that the radio channels sometimes have no sound for a few seconds.

Another anomoly is that if I am using the computer with the TV on in the background sometimes incoming phone calls will not ring and the caller will eventually be diverted to voicemail after they have heard the normal 15 seconds of ringing.

[AnOther]

Something doesn't sound right here JR because at 2km you should get a speed vastly gteater 2.5mb. I get that at nearly twice that distance.

I don't know exactly what service you are on but it you have a look at the graph below the very minimum you should expect is around 8mb !

[img]http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p123/biskitboyo/internode-adsl2-dist07.jpg[/img]

[Martin963]

I'm no expert but I've heard more than once that the theoretical speeds Ernie has graphed are only that -  theoretical.   If your provider is cutting corners then the speed you've been promised is a very different thing to what you'll actually get.

Mind you I'm envious,  we're lucky to get 450 kbps in France and 720 kbps in Devon.   TV and radio by the internet? -  PAH!! - stick to satellite,  it never drops out!

[AnOther]

[quote user="Martinwatkins"]I'm no expert but I've heard more than once that the theoretical speeds Ernie has graphed are only that -  theoretical.   If your provider is cutting corners then the speed you've been promised is a very different thing to what you'll actually get.
[/quote]I agree but would still strongly suspect that with only 2.5mb over 2km and something is amis. TV would not even be an option at that level of performance.

It would be interesting JR to see the results of a line query on Degrouptest.com, particularly pertinent are Longueuer de ligne and Affaiblissement.

Also what did you use to test your speed, a lot of testers are notoriously innaccurate.

PS Martin: If the ISP is cutting corners that should mean a shorter line hence faster speed [;-)] [:D]

 

[Chancer]

The information that you requsted Ernie:

The test that I did this morning was with http://speedtest.bbmax.co.uk

I have just done the degrouptest and it says that I am now 3643m from the exchange, I thought that before it said 2km (I am about 1.5km as the crow flies) but I do have a faible memory.

Afflaibissement was 38.62Db and the débit descendant for ADSL was 4720kb/sec and about 8000 for ADSL2

Its all French to me, except that I usually understand French even Ch'ti and Picard [:)]

[AnOther]

More inconsistent results unfortunately.

Line lengths are a bit hit and miss and certainly yours seems to be the latter. A line length of 3.64km would typically yield an Afflaibissement of around 50dB whereas your 38.62 suggests more like 3km but even that would not give you 8mb.

A bit techcie this but the best numbers to work out what's really going on will be in your router. Somewhere in there you will find some statistics like Attenuation, Noise and Synchronisation speed but just to make things even more difficult these these may be called something slightly different.

Armed with those numbers though it's possible to make a much more accurate appraisal of the real world capablities of your line using THIS calculator.

To get back to your problem of an apparently slow PC, there are quite a few things which can slow a machine down, how much free HD space have you got and have you emptied out your temporay internet files recently, which Anti Virus do you have, some now have Phishing filters which check every page you click for !

You may care to read THIS earlier thread on the same topic.

 

[Bob T]

Ernie, Thanks for giving me a kick. I have not used the degrouptest for ages and thought that as it reported me as being 5.2 km from the exchange I was limited to 1 meg. I thought that I would run it again after reading this post and now I (or the exchange) have moved and I am 3.327 km from the exchange now. How do they do that?

It seems that I can now have a 2 meg connection. Only trouble is that Orange (wanadoo in my case) want to sell me telephone and a livebox too. I am quite happy with my Netgear modem/router. They don't seem to want me to have 2 meg at 5 euros per month more as they don't give me that option!

[Chancer]

Bob T - How do they do that?

Well in this case removing 2km of excess cable from your line and using it to bypass the new Brico-merds being built between my house and the exchange.

[Chancer]

Ernie

It was 30 seconds counting in my head to download the 10mb file, now where can I find it to delete it?

Looking at the ADSL info on the television I have ADSL2+ interleaved apparently

Debit ATM down = 7332kbp/s and up = 665

attenuation 47.5 down and 18.3 up

FEC 959447 down and 55 up

CRC 8624 and 0 up

HEC 189 and 165 up

All double dutch to me, does it mean anything to you?

[AnOther]

The salient points are 7332kbps and 47.5db both of which roughly tally with a line length of around 3.5km and in fact almost mirror my own stats.

I unfortunately, have the same problem as you had Bob. Degrouptest (or FT's database that is) says my line is 4830m and therefore my max possible speed is 2mb max my router figures and actual performance however give convincing lie to this. You might think that once I'd convinced my ISP, Teleconnect, of the error, it would be a simple matter for them to put me on a higher speed package but no, although they do completely agree that it's wrong without getting it corrected they say it's just not possible because FT's system won't allow an ISP to put a customer on a service which their given line length won't support.

Quite how one goes about getting FT to correct it I have no idea. From your experience Bob maybe there is a rolling programme of verification and eventually one day I'll do a Degrouptest and be pleasantly surprised when it comes back at 3.5km or thereabouts but I'm not holding my breath [blink]

 

[Gyn_Paul]

I was fascinated to read about the line lengths/losses changing. So fascinated, in fact, that I ran my own number through Degroup test once more, and discovered that my max theoretical speed has gone up from 610 kps to 940 kps, although - curiously - the line length remains the same.

Even more odd is the fact that my attached neighbour (same junction box) has the same max speed as me, but my neighbour in the other direction (fully 30 metres further along the same piece of wire) has a theoretical max speed of 2350 kbs (2.3 mbs). Is this a record for the highest attenuation in a 30 metre length of 2-wire ?

paul

[Bob T]

Strange that this has just come up. FT have just phoned me and offered me a livebox and no landline charges. I refused the livebox as I won't have one in my house and took the 2 meg adsl instead. Just waiting for them to switch it on now.

[Gyn_Paul]

I'm a sort of vermillion colour with envy !

p