Line length and BT Broadband

We live in a rural part of wales.. and have had an intermittent BT
Broadband service for about a year.

The engineers are actually quite amazed that we get a connection at
all... its about 8km to exchange.

we can normally connect at about 380k, ok for our needs and better
than the 28K via a dacs we used to have.

But recently we have lost the connection for 5 days now and after
hours on the phone to India we have had no progress, we have checked
everything.

my question is should we be grateful to have a service at all? is the
technology going to inprove our bandwidth soon? or should we look to
the skys for an inproved service.

ian h

"ianh" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) ups.com...
> We live in a rural part of wales.. and have had an intermittent BT
> Broadband service for about a year.
>
> The engineers are actually quite amazed that we get a connection at
> all... its about 8km to exchange.
>
> we can normally connect at about 380k, ok for our needs and better
> than the 28K via a dacs we used to have.
>
> But recently we have lost the connection for 5 days now and after
> hours on the phone to India we have had no progress, we have checked
> everything.
>
> my question is should we be grateful to have a service at all? is the
> technology going to inprove our bandwidth soon? or should we look to
> the skys for an inproved service.

Change to a reputable ISP such as Zen and their technical support will
probably be able to help you through this.

--
Graham J

ianh wrote:
> We live in a rural part of wales.. and have had an intermittent BT
> Broadband service for about a year.
>
> The engineers are actually quite amazed that we get a connection at
> all... its about 8km to exchange.
>
> we can normally connect at about 380k, ok for our needs and better
> than the 28K via a dacs we used to have.
>
> But recently we have lost the connection for 5 days now and after
> hours on the phone to India we have had no progress, we have checked
> everything.
>
> my question is should we be grateful to have a service at all? is the
> technology going to inprove our bandwidth soon? or should we look to
> the skys for an inproved service.

I also live in rural Wales and have a line length of 7.5km. I get a
speed of around 550kbps. My neighbour, who lives 1km further from the
exchange than me, gets a similar speed. It sounds as if you have a line
quality problem.

May I suggest that you contact the Regional Innovative Broadband Support
(RIBS) team at the Welsh Assembly. Their contact details are at:

http://tinyurl.com/3795v5

Although the RIBS project was set up to take broadband to areas that did
not previously have it, they may be able to give you suitable advice.
With luck, they may even see your plight as coming within their remit.

--
Howard Neil

In article <(E-Mail Removed). com>, ianh
<(E-Mail Removed)> writes
>We live in a rural part of wales.. and have had an intermittent BT
>Broadband service for about a year.
>
>The engineers are actually quite amazed that we get a connection at
>all... its about 8km to exchange.
>
>we can normally connect at about 380k, ok for our needs and better
>than the 28K via a dacs we used to have.
>
>But recently we have lost the connection for 5 days now and after
>hours on the phone to India we have had no progress, we have checked
>everything.
>
>my question is should we be grateful to have a service at all? is the
>technology going to inprove our bandwidth soon? or should we look to
>the skys for an inproved service.
>
>ian h
>

Not sure if my circumstances or experience is relevant!

I live in a rural Lincolnshire village, with my 2 BT landlines reported
to be 7.9 km and 8.2 km from the local exchange.

We never had the joy of DACS (thank God from what I hear) during the 10
years we had Demon dial up, using the Surftime offer. Our dial up
connection reported speeds variously between 49 Kbps and 53 Kbps, which
was very good. This reported as uploads around 5,100 bps and downloads
at 30,100 bps when FTPing.

I went ADSL (HomeOffice offer) 2 years ago, last February, and have had
a steady 512 Kbps service (55-59 Kbps up and 30 Kbps down) since. This
means there have (to my direct observation) been few losses of ADSL
connection / loss of synchronisation during this time.

That is except 2 periods - Christmas 2005, when I had lots of loss of
synchronisation over a 5 week period. This was solved by Demon replacing
my 4 port Speedtouch 510 router. The second time was July 2006, when I
was troubled over a 6 week period, and ended up replacing my Demon
supplied router with one of my own.

BT Wholesale were involved at both times, and came to the house to test
the system. Their tests showed the lines from the house to the exchange
were OK, and ADSL could be got from their test sites. In both cases the
problem lay with my equipment, the router. The second time it was found
the Ethernet side was OK, but the ADSL side was slowly dying.

Since then the current, self supplied, router seems to be OK and
superior to the Demon supplied one. The down side is it is not supported
by our Indian Help Desk colleagues.

I have yet to implement it, but the obvious solution is to have two
routers, set up and ready. If one goes down the other can be used, and
test whether it is the local equipment or not.

Oh, to my mind, an important step I took which may-or-may-not apply to
your circumstances ...

When Demon offered the ADSLMax roll out last year (I was due for
exchange changes week commencing 9th Oct), I decided to stay with my 512
Kbps vanilla ADDSL. My reason was I used my home broadband to access
the servers of my employer (35 miles away) via a VPN tunnel and MS
Remote Desktop. I needed a stable synchronised ADSL link, and the 10 day
ADSLMax "line rate adaption" training time was an anathema to me. I work
from home.

I still have 512 Kbps ADSL (slow), but it is steady and works. I
certainly will not get a faster link until the BT CN21 exchanges are
fully implemented with fibre to the house, as well.

Having noted the background, some of the techy stuff:

I get 512 Kbps on a system with the current specifications -

================================================== ========
System Up Time 02:22:45
(recent reboot for slow ADSL to California, but no change)

Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time

WAN PPPoA 5838 6852 0 89 692 02:22:23
LAN 10M/100M 24741 27066 0 867 286 02:22:43
WLAN 11M/54M/108M 3508 0 0 34 0 02:22:41


ADSL Link Downstream Upstream

Connection Speed 576 kbps 288 kbps
Line Attenuation 63.5 db 31.5 db
Noise Margin 15.1 db 18.0 db
================================================== ======

The connection speed just confirms that I have basic 512 ADSL

The Downstream line attenuation and Noise Margin is below the figures
that suggest loss of synchronisation, etc. But not by much.

To double the line speed from 512 kbps to 1024 kbps the attenuation
should be about 60 db, and the noise margin well above 12 db. So, I
should be able to get 1 Mbps connections, but only just. Unfortunately
this is not so, due to the line length from the exchange (8 km). Also,
for every doubling in broadband speed there will be a drop of about 6 db
in the Noise Margin. This needs to remain above 5 db to maintain steady
synchronisation.

Pushing to 1 Mbps ADSL or ADSLMax would reduce my Noise Margin, and
possibly give me loss of broadband synchronisation.

I hope this background is of some use for your investigations,
particularly on the downstream absorption of the ADSL signal and Noise
Margin (sometimes known as SNR - Signal to Noise ratio).

--
John Clark

ianh wrote:

> We live in a rural part of wales.. and have had an intermittent BT
> Broadband service for about a year.
>
> The engineers are actually quite amazed that we get a connection at
> all... its about 8km to exchange.
>
> we can normally connect at about 380k, ok for our needs and better
> than the 28K via a dacs we used to have.
>
> But recently we have lost the connection for 5 days now and after
> hours on the phone to India we have had no progress, we have checked
> everything.
>
> my question is should we be grateful to have a service at all? is the
> technology going to inprove our bandwidth soon? or should we look to
> the skys for an inproved service.

How about getting a decent ISP for starters ? Don't expect much help from the
Indians.

Graham

On 3 May, 14:07, Eeyore <rabbitsfriendsandrelati...@hotmail.com>
wrote:
> ianh wrote:
> > We live in a rural part of wales.. and have had an intermittent BT
> > Broadband service for about a year.
>
> > The engineers are actually quite amazed that we get a connection at
> > all... its about 8km to exchange.
>
> > we can normally connect at about 380k, ok for our needs and better
> > than the 28K via a dacs we used to have.
>
> > But recently we have lost the connection for 5 days now and after
> > hours on the phone to India we have had no progress, we have checked
> > everything.
>
> > my question is should we be grateful to have a service at all? is the
> > technology going to inprove our bandwidth soon? or should we look to
> > the skys for an inproved service.
>
> How about getting a decent ISP for starters ? Don't expect much help from the
> Indians.
>
> Graham- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

Problem was solved when we replaced 8 month old BT router with New BT
router. BUT BT were no help in this..thanks to newsgroup

"ianh" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) ups.com...
> On 3 May, 14:07, Eeyore <rabbitsfriendsandrelati...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>> ianh wrote:
>> > We live in a rural part of wales.. and have had an intermittent BT
>> > Broadband service for about a year.
>>
>> > The engineers are actually quite amazed that we get a connection at
>> > all... its about 8km to exchange.
>>
>> > we can normally connect at about 380k, ok for our needs and better
>> > than the 28K via a dacs we used to have.
>>
>> > But recently we have lost the connection for 5 days now and after
>> > hours on the phone to India we have had no progress, we have checked
>> > everything.
>>
>> > my question is should we be grateful to have a service at all? is the
>> > technology going to inprove our bandwidth soon? or should we look to
>> > the skys for an inproved service.
>>
>> How about getting a decent ISP for starters ? Don't expect much help from
>> the
>> Indians.
>>
>> Graham- Hide quoted text -
>>
>> - Show quoted text -
>
> Problem was solved when we replaced 8 month old BT router with New BT
> router. BUT BT were no help in this..thanks to newsgroup
>
Out of interest, what was the old router and what's the new one? I'm also
in Wales and they say that I'm 8.6Km from the exchange. Achieving 480K but
flakey.
Phil B

I think it was a BT voyager 205 but is now a BT 220 that seems to have
lots of other bits that we dont use...

two neighbourghs further up the line 0.5 km can not connect at all,
the BT engineers are still supprised that we can connect.. but over
aperiod of a year i watched our dial up speed slowly increase month on
month, one day i stoped and told the man up pole to keep doing
whatever it was he was doing....they were re doing all connections and
joins... when we got to a sready 44k day after day i aked for BB and
it worked..


On 12 May, 11:39, "Phil B" <phil.remove.br...@hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
> "ianh" <i...@beaconsveggieboxes.co.uk> wrote in message
>
> news:(E-Mail Removed) ups.com...
>
>
>
> > On 3 May, 14:07, Eeyore <rabbitsfriendsandrelati...@hotmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >> ianh wrote:
> >> > We live in a rural part of wales.. and have had an intermittent BT
> >> > Broadband service for about a year.
>
> >> > The engineers are actually quite amazed that we get a connection at
> >> > all... its about 8km to exchange.
>
> >> > we can normally connect at about 380k, ok for our needs and better
> >> > than the 28K via a dacs we used to have.
>
> >> > But recently we have lost the connection for 5 days now and after
> >> > hours on the phone to India we have had no progress, we have checked
> >> > everything.
>
> >> > my question is should we be grateful to have a service at all? is the
> >> > technology going to inprove our bandwidth soon? or should we look to
> >> > the skys for an inproved service.
>
> >> How about getting a decent ISP for starters ? Don't expect much help from
> >> the
> >> Indians.
>
> >> Graham- Hide quoted text -
>
> >> - Show quoted text -
>
> > Problem was solved when we replaced 8 month old BT router with New BT
> > router. BUT BT were no help in this..thanks to newsgroup
>
> Out of interest, what was the old router and what's the new one? I'm also
> in Wales and they say that I'm 8.6Km from the exchange. Achieving 480K but
> flakey.
> Phil B- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -