This article is not designed as a troubleshooting tutorial and is instead intended to list some of the less well known broadband ADSL tweaks. Please feel free to suggest any that we may have missed.

FYI - Broadband performance

Remember, the speed you get from your ISP depends on a number of factors, such as the quality/length of your line, interference and network congestion. Hence if an ISP advertises an 8Mbps package then the chances of you actually receiving that speed are fairly remote unless you live right next door to your exchange.

To get a better idea of what your line can cope with we’d recommend putting the phone number into this Samknows checker:

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/checker2.php

Selecting ‘BT ADSL’ from the results should give you an indication of expected speed. Be careful with the ADSLMax prediction as it’s usually too high and can be extremely variable between different providers; expect yours to be slower.

NOTE: Check with your ISP to see whether you’re on an unbundled (LLU), BT IPStream or BT Datastream ADSL line before proceeding. The majority of UK broadband ADSL connections are IPStream based, yet a growing number utilise unbundled (LLU) networks and some of our tips may not work with these.

Tips & Tricks

1. Try a different PPP type.

Sometimes, after having worked normally for awhile, when you switch the router on it may suddenly fail to establish a full Internet connection. Though many blame this on a problem with their ISP and wait for the connection to be restored, occasionally it can be fixed locally.

Try switching your routers PPP connection type from PPP_o_A to PPP_o_E or visa versa. This may not always work and if so then the issue could be related to something else, but it has helped some of our readers, myself included. However we’d suggest switching back to the previous/ISP recommended setting the next time you reboot the router.

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