Is it worth changing to ADSL Max

Hi

We have a site that currently has a BT fixed speed (512k) service that
performs well.

We need to change to a fixed IP and I'm wondering if it's worth changing to
ADSL Max at the same time?

Samknows predicts that the best speed we can expect is 512k as we are 3.77km
from the exchange, but in reality perhaps we could get someting better, or
could it be worse with Max?

For the moment I am leaning to staying with the status quo because it all
works OK and just paying BT for a fixed IP address.

Look forward to seeing your comments!

--
Regards
Barry

Hi,

What are the line stats for your current connection? Line Attenuation and
Signal to Noise Ratio would eb the figures to find from your connection
equipment.

More info on this here: http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/frogstats.htm

Based on these it might be possible to have an educated guess as to what
might happen if you switch to ADSLmax.

It's possible that you might get a faster connection (upload and download)
with ADSLmax but on the other hand it might be the speed will go down or
become erratic if you have a lot of line noise or a poor signal.

Are you in an urban or rural area? What sort of experiences have your
neighbours had with their DSL connections?

Kind Regards

Simon

BJH wrote:
> Hi
>
> We have a site that currently has a BT fixed speed (512k) service that
> performs well.
>
> We need to change to a fixed IP and I'm wondering if it's worth changing to
> ADSL Max at the same time?
>
> Samknows predicts that the best speed we can expect is 512k as we are 3.77km
> from the exchange, but in reality perhaps we could get someting better, or
> could it be worse with Max?
>

Mmm. I was on a fixed 512 service, and my router says I am 'about 9k
feet' in loop distance, so thats about a mile give or take, or
1.6km..you are twice that and more....Hmm.

I suspect you PROBABLY could get around about 1Mbps. I get 3.5Mbps-4Mbps.



> For the moment I am leaning to staying with the status quo because it all
> works OK and just paying BT for a fixed IP address.
>
> Look forward to seeing your comments!
>

What you might want to consider is that upload speeds will improve: if
you are running a server on that fixed IP address, thats a useful thing
to have.

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>, BJH
<(E-Mail Removed)> writes
>Hi
>
>We have a site that currently has a BT fixed speed (512k) service that
>performs well.
>
>We need to change to a fixed IP and I'm wondering if it's worth changing to
>ADSL Max at the same time?
>
>Samknows predicts that the best speed we can expect is 512k as we are 3.77km
>from the exchange, but in reality perhaps we could get someting better, or
>could it be worse with Max?
>
>For the moment I am leaning to staying with the status quo because it all
>works OK and just paying BT for a fixed IP address.
>
>Look forward to seeing your comments!
>

As the poster who has already reply to your request states "it will be
the attenuation and signal to noise ratio (SNR) will be what determines
whether it is worth while changing ADSLMax."

I am surprised that you can only get ADSL at 512K.

I lived 8km from the exchange, with an attenuation "down the line" of
63.5 decibels (dB), and an SNR varying between 11 and 14 dB.

I have chosen to stay with vanilla ADSL at 512 K. This is extremely
stable, and I turn down the offer of ADSLMax for stability reasons as,
at the time, I had access to company servers via a VPN tunnel.

I am still running at 512, and stable, and know that ADSLMax will give
me double the line speed down (1 Mbps) - one of my neighbours can run at
1Mbps.

As I understand it for higher speed lines (ADSLMax) the critical
measurement is SNR. However, for attenuation much above 65 dB there
will be some issues as well in the choice.

For every doubling in line speed the SNR will drop by about 6 dB. And
the way that ADSLMax works is to run the line has steadily as possible
with a SNR of at least 6 dB. So in my case with and SNR of 12 dB, the
line speed can double to 1Mbpsand the SNR drops to 6 dB.

If you look at the SNR your router to reports, then you should get a
very rough estimate of what line speed could be by taking off 6 dB for
every doubling in speed.

As you have already suggested, via SamKnows, your likely SNR is going to
be similar to mine or lower. This suggests that perhaps you've got a
noisy line.

--
John Clark

Hi,

There are two many variables to work out likely speeds based on just line
length.

SNR and Noise levels are the way to go to get more accurate results or
predictions.

For instance here in Pembrokeshire BT fitted a lot of aluminium lines way
back and these are very poor at long lengths.

I have customers who are 5+ km from the exchange who can get 1 - 2 Mbits or
more easily where are others closer to their exchange cannot get ADSL at all
or at such a poor speed and low reliability it's not worth having.

Kind Regards

Simon

"John" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> In article <(E-Mail Removed)>, BJH
> <(E-Mail Removed)> writes
> I have chosen to stay with vanilla ADSL at 512 K. This is extremely
> stable, and I turn down the offer of ADSLMax for stability reasons as,
> at the time, I had access to company servers via a VPN tunnel.
>


My line has about a 60db loss. I changed from 512K to ADSLmax about a year
ago. I get 3 times the speed, but the connection does occasionally fail (say
every 2 days) though I don't usually notice this.

--
Michael Chare

Michael Chare wrote:
> "John" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>> In article <(E-Mail Removed)>, BJH
>> <(E-Mail Removed)> writes
>> I have chosen to stay with vanilla ADSL at 512 K. This is extremely
>> stable, and I turn down the offer of ADSLMax for stability reasons as,
>> at the time, I had access to company servers via a VPN tunnel.
>>
>
>
> My line has about a 60db loss. I changed from 512K to ADSLmax about a
> year ago. I get 3 times the speed, but the connection does occasionally
> fail (say every 2 days) though I don't usually notice this.

As I said in another thread last week, I went from a 1 Meg fixed ADSL1
connection at 13dB SNR, to a 2.7 Meg ADSL2 connection at what has settled down
to be 11-12 dB SNR. Upstream is 509k.

What's odd is that the attenuation has dropped from 63dB, to 58 dB, perhaps
because the routing at the exchange has changed.

And to think that in 2001/2002 BT refused to provide any ADSL service, saying
my line was far too long for even 512k to work :-)


--
Mark
Please replace invalid and invalid with gmx and net to reply.

"Mark Carver" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>
> And to think that in 2001/2002 BT refused to provide any ADSL service,
> saying my line was far too long for even 512k to work :-)
>

I had to wait 2 1/2 years because of BT's obduracy. My theory is that they
thought that they could keep their costs down by not bothering with the
problems of long (high loss) lines.


--
Michael Chare

On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 01:48:00 +0100, "Michael Chare"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>"Mark Carver" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
>news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>>
>> And to think that in 2001/2002 BT refused to provide any ADSL service,
>> saying my line was far too long for even 512k to work :-)
>>
>
>I had to wait 2 1/2 years because of BT's obduracy. My theory is that they
>thought that they could keep their costs down by not bothering with the
>problems of long (high loss) lines.

Me too. I was first told my line was incapable of supporting ADSL.
Now I get 2.5Mb on ADSL Max.

--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) Owing to the amount of spam posted via googlegroups
(")_(") I am blocking most articles posted from there.

On 29/04/2008 15:43:12, "Simon Zerafa" wrote:

> There are two many variables to work out likely speeds based on just line
> length.

> SNR and Noise levels are the way to go to get more accurate results or
> predictions.

> For instance here in Pembrokeshire BT fitted a lot of aluminium lines way
> back and these are very poor at long lengths.

> I have customers who are 5+ km from the exchange who can get 1 - 2 Mbits
> or more easily where are others closer to their exchange cannot get ADSL
> at all or at such a poor speed and low reliability it's not worth having.

Thanks guys for all your useful posts.

I'll be able to check out the router stats this weekend so I'll come back
later if I may.

I seem to recall the last time I checked the SNR was around 8-10dB. I'm
leaning towards the status quo at the moment. The current connection is at
the end of the line, in a very old property. The incoming lines run
underground for about 750m from the village, so I think we're stuck with what
we've got.

I think I'll be better sticking with what is a stable connection at the
moment, although I take the point that MAX will give a faster upload speed. I
am looking at remote monitoring of the CCTV, hence my need for fixed IP, so
upload speed could well be a factor to seriously consider.

Thanks.

--
Regards
Barry