Switch to ADSL Max - worth the risk?

I'm currently on a standard 2Mb connection with Pipex, but for an extra £1 a
month I could be getting their ADSL Max service with an estimated download
speed (according to both the Pipex website and samknows.com) of 5Mb. It
would mean committing to 12 months, but that would be fine by me as long as
it was reliable and faster than my current connection. I'm a little
paranoid though, as I've heard horror stories of people who have ended up
with slower and/or less reliable connections after switching to Max.

Samknows tells me I'm 2.5km from the exchange. My download speeds are
usually 1.8Mb, but occasionally drop to 1.5. My router (a BT Voyager 2110)
seems to disconnect approximately once a day - it always shows an online
time of less than 24 hours. Since these disconnections hardly ever occur
when I'm actually using the internet they have never really bothered me.
With this sort of speed and reliability, should I be wary of switching to
Max?

The line stats reported by my router are:

Line Rate
Downstream: 2272Kbps
Upstream: 288Kbps

Noise Margin
Downstream: 21.4dB
Upstream: 29.0dB

Line Attenuation
Downstream: 50.0dB
Upstream: 29.0dB

Output Power
Downstream: 18.1dBm
Upstream: 11.9dBm

> I'm currently on a standard 2Mb connection with Pipex, but for an
> extra £1 a month I could be getting their ADSL Max service with an
> estimated download speed (according to both the Pipex website and

Have you tried this calculator http://212.23.23.177/calc.htm or
http://www.dslzoneuk.net/maxspeed.php which use your live values rather
than a postcode calculator?

It threw up 4 meg for me, I'm currently in the 10 days training period for
MAX but it's stabilised on 5920kbps for the last couple of days so the
calculator was a little under in its estimations. Samknows says I'm 1.49km
from the exchange. My attenuation is 37dB and a noise margin of 6dB (at
5920kbps).

For me it was worth doing - the additional upstream speed is useful and
downloads which used to go around 130kbps now fly up to 400kbps.

Regards,
Dave

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
Ant <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>would mean committing to 12 months, but that would be fine by me as long as
>it was reliable and faster than my current connection. I'm a little
>paranoid though, as I've heard horror stories of people who have ended up
>with slower and/or less reliable connections after switching to Max.

The only real way to see how potentially reliable (in terms of dropping
and renegotiating the connection) your line might be under ADSL Max would
be to monitor your downstream SNR figures over a few days. I think the
2110 can give SNR figures via SNMP so something like MRTG could be useful
to provide graphing:-

http://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg/
http://usergroup.plus.net/forum/inde...=3559.msg44097

Given you've already got a 2Mb line, if the downstream SNR tends to drop
below say 6db at any time then you can probably expect ADSL Max to be
a bit flaky and/or deliver a slower downstream speed than you've got now.

Mike

"Ant" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> I'm currently on a standard 2Mb connection with Pipex, but for an extra £1
a
> month I could be getting their ADSL Max service with an estimated download
> speed (according to both the Pipex website and samknows.com) of 5Mb. It
> would mean committing to 12 months, but that would be fine by me as long
as
> it was reliable and faster than my current connection.

I suspect we'll all be "upgraded" to ADSL Max as and when it suits our
respective ISPs whether we want it or not so I see little point in paying
extra for the somewhat dubious privilege.

(kim)

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>, kim <(E-Mail Removed)>
writes
>"Ant" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
>news:(E-Mail Removed).. .
>> I'm currently on a standard 2Mb connection with Pipex, but for an extra £1
>a
>> month I could be getting their ADSL Max service with an estimated download
>> speed (according to both the Pipex website and samknows.com) of 5Mb. It
>> would mean committing to 12 months, but that would be fine by me as long
>as
>> it was reliable and faster than my current connection.
>
>I suspect we'll all be "upgraded" to ADSL Max as and when it suits our
>respective ISPs whether we want it or not so I see little point in paying
>extra for the somewhat dubious privilege.
>
>(kim)
>
>

I am at the end of a long telephone line (8Km) and get stable (most of
the time) vanilla ADSL (512Kbps).

My ISP informed me I was due to be ADSLMaxed the week commencing Monday
9th October. But months prior to me upgrade a lot of discussions around
the 10 day !Line rate adaption period" convinced me to drop out.

I was taken out of the upgrade pool and still run as before. In my case
the predicted speed increase was from none to (possibly) double. As I
use a VPN tunnel for work I am pleased to say nothing changed.
--
Hugh Janus Constipation is the thief of time, but diaorrehia waits
for no man!!

On 31 Oct 2006, "kim" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>I suspect we'll all be "upgraded" to ADSL Max as and when it suits our
>respective ISPs whether we want it or not

Depends entirely on the ISP in question... Many (older) en customers did
not want to switch (the DSL Max product has a 50 GB download quota), so
none of those customers will be forcibly switched. Some ISPs have an
"opt out" policy in place, so don't take it for granted that there
is going to be an enforced "upgrade", by any stretch.

>so I see little point in paying extra for the somewhat dubious privilege.

I made use of a switch of ISP to get both a reduction in monthly fee and
the increased speed. The change from one product to another was free
(according to the ADSL Guide pages, at least) to the ISP, for various
combinations - eg going from a 2000 kbps connection to DSL Max - so I
would be rather 'miffed' if an ISP charged an upgrade fee, but to
then put on a further 12 months contract seems OTT (I think BT did
that, so some other ISPs might have just copied their policy).

"John" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news(E-Mail Removed)...
> I am at the end of a long telephone line (8Km) and get stable (most of
> the time) vanilla ADSL (512Kbps).
>
> My ISP informed me I was due to be ADSLMaxed the week commencing Monday
> 9th October. But months prior to me upgrade a lot of discussions around
> the 10 day !Line rate adaption period" convinced me to drop out.
>
> I was taken out of the upgrade pool and still run as before. In my case
> the predicted speed increase was from none to (possibly) double. As I
> use a VPN tunnel for work I am pleased to say nothing changed.

Pretty much my situation - I was on fixed 512 due to a long rural line and
my BT Wholesale ADSL Max forecast speed was 1.5 Meg.
I opted out for a long while, during the time that everyone's ISPs were
having problems with BT - "teething troubles" with ADSL Max, wrong settings
on exchange equipment, etc.
BT seemed to have sorted those aspects about 3 months ago, as complaints
were seen to drop, so I bit the bullet and opted to go Max.
I'm currently getting between 2.2 and 3.2 Meg, which is much better than the
forecast speed, so I'm happy with it.

George

"Dave Plumb" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:Xns986CC63D5960Bdplumbcixcouk@63.218.45.254.. .
>> I'm currently on a standard 2Mb connection with Pipex, but for an
>> extra £1 a month I could be getting their ADSL Max service with an
>> estimated download speed (according to both the Pipex website and
>
> Have you tried this calculator http://212.23.23.177/calc.htm or
> http://www.dslzoneuk.net/maxspeed.php which use your live values rather
> than a postcode calculator?
>
> It threw up 4 meg for me, I'm currently in the 10 days training period for
> MAX but it's stabilised on 5920kbps for the last couple of days so the
> calculator was a little under in its estimations. Samknows says I'm 1.49km
> from the exchange. My attenuation is 37dB and a noise margin of 6dB (at
> 5920kbps).

Thanks for your responses everyone.

I'm encouraged by the results from the above links. The first isn't working
for me right now, but I think it estimated around 6Mbps when I last tried it
and the second gives me 4.8Mbps. I've noticed my downstream noise margin
has dropped from 21.4dB to 17.4dB since I last posted (although that doesn't
seem to have affected the above estimation), so I'll take Mike's advice and
keep an eye on it for a while before making that phone call.

Is 6dB considered the minimum for a stable connection?

Ant <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote on Sun, 5 Nov 2006 at 12:38:29:
[snip]
>I'm encouraged by the results from the above links. The first isn't working
>for me right now, but I think it estimated around 6Mbps when I last tried it
>and the second gives me 4.8Mbps. I've noticed my downstream noise margin
>has dropped from 21.4dB to 17.4dB since I last posted (although that doesn't
>seem to have affected the above estimation), so I'll take Mike's advice and
>keep an eye on it for a while before making that phone call.

The SNR is usually lower during hours of darkness (better propagation of
LW & MW broadcast stations, more interference from lights & central
heating, etc.). Could this have affected your observation? You need to
compare at similar times of day in order to detect any long-term trend.

>Is 6dB considered the minimum for a stable connection?

6dB is a good estimate of the minimum for a stable connection [1]. I've
not seen a definitive answer, but I surmise that error rate comes into
the decision whether to re-train or not, rather than just the SNR
measurement dropping below a threshold [2]. In practice, my router stats
show 4.0, 4.5, or 5.0 dB SNR at night, and increase to 6.5 or 7.0 dB
during the day, all without any re-training in the 24 hours. That's on a
3.8 km line, 43 dB attenuation, 6.7 Mbit/s sync rate, ring wire snipped
[3].

[1] With intermittent noise on a line, you might need a higher target
SNR to avoid intermittent errors.

[2] However, BT systems can also apparently set a target SNR margin, see
e.g. penultimate paragraph at
<http://newsnet.googlepages.com/maxdsldiagnostics>.

[3] <http://yarwell.blogspot.com/2005_08_01_yarwell_archive.html>.
--
Tony