odd SNR stuff..

A business associate of mine for whom I do IYT related stuff, is pissed
off with Tiscali because the upgraded service =- a sort of ADSL premium
- is only delivering 2Mbps, wheres it should be capable of nearly 4Mpbs.
The synch rate is as I speak 2336kbps with an SNR of 15.4dB down, and
832k up.

Her has been tempted to move to talktalk - the only LLU his exchange
offers - as the overall phone call deal is as good, BUT they wont do
either the high upstream rate or a fixed IP address.

My gut feeling is the reason that he is strapped on download speeds is
the exchange itself is short of backhaul - its a small exchange outside
of Norwich - and that BT have pulled the SNR stuff down to basically
throttle the whole exchange to sensible traffic levels. Or maybe Tiscali
have.

Fir reaons I dont want to go into here, to do with firewalling issues, a
fixed Ip ddress is relatively mandatory - dynamic DNS s not a good enoug
solutio, and I do want to establish te facts before recommending what,
if any, changes he should make to teh ISP.

He gets very good phone call deals with tiscali, and the internet though
slower than it should be, is reliable enough.

So as one part of te fact finding mission, can anyone shed light on why,
after upgrading from a fixed 2Mbps service, he should have such a dire
download synch rate? The upgrade happed several months back, and so it
should all have settled down. The ine is stable and was not subject to
any particuar regime of disconnects that would have forced the SNR to
such high levels, and it synched pretty much at this rate from the word
go, and hasn't shifted since.


To be honest, his chief beef with tiscali is that they have been unable
to answer this question to his satisfaction..

"The Natural Philosopher" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
[snip]
>
> To be honest, his chief beef with tiscali is that they have been unable to
> answer this question to his satisfaction..

Get a decent ISP for the internet connection, and pay somebody else for the
phone calls.

A decent ISP - together with noise margin and attenuation figures from the
router - will establish whether the line can support a higher sync rate -
choice of a different router might also help. A decent ISP will also offer
a static IP address. Some will offer a better guarantee of backhaul
capability.

Others here will recommend Andrews & Arnold and Zen Internet.

--
Graham J

"The Natural Philosopher" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...

> So as one part of te fact finding mission, can anyone shed light on why,
> after upgrading from a fixed 2Mbps service, he should have such a dire
> download synch rate? The upgrade happed several months back, and so it
> should all have settled down. The ine is stable and was not subject to any
> particuar regime of disconnects that would have forced the SNR to such
> high levels, and it synched pretty much at this rate from the word go, and
> hasn't shifted since.

Same problem here after an upgrade to the Max service of "upto 8Mbs".
Initially I was told that my line was only capable of just over the 2Mbs. I
didn't accept this. I made complaints via the Tiscali Forums and direct by
email to complaints. Eventually after much insistance my connection went to
a high 4Mbs. Action on my part to use a good router (Netgear DG834PN with
modded firmware) direct to the master socket. The modded firmware allows me
to drop the Downstream SNR to around 6.2
and results in 7616 - 8000 connection now!
>
> To be honest, his chief beef with tiscali is that they have been unable to
> answer this question to his satisfaction..

The answer is to pester them over and over again. Complain, complain and
complain again ..... but not on the telephone - that costs! Tiscali don't
care about customer service but hey they are cheap and once you moan them
into action its good package for the price.