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o2/bt Broadband, Terrible speed, help needed

Hi, Not sure if this is in the right section, so i apologise if not :)

Recently i moved into a new house (which is literally about 100-200m away from my old house where with 02 we got about 11mb/s) and paid for a phone line to be installed as one was not already installed (120 quid!) then transferred my o2 broadband over.

When they finally connected it up, the speed is only about 2.7 mb/s. It's terrible, there are 5 of us living here and when more than one of us is online it's almost unusable.

I phoned up o2, and after many hours of them asking me to do pointless things which i knew wouldn't make a difference, they decide to tell me that the wiring outside the house must be to blame for the slow speed and there is nothing they can do about it. I asked them to send out an engineer to find out exactly where along the line the speed is being compromised.. They said they wouldn't because apparently two other people in this street are on o2 and one is getting slightly less speed and one is getting about 5.5 mb/s or something.

I really don't know what to do now.. i really can't carry on with this speed, but the only other option is cable, which means that 120 phone line which we got solely for the internet was a total waste of money.

Does anyone happen to know what could be causing such a slow speed, when literally the bottom of my road, then across a street and there's my old house which easily got 11mb/s?

I'm guessing it's something to do with poor wiring somewhere between the wire connecting into the house and the box at the end of the street (i think that's where it goes to).

I tried ringing bt about it, and they admitted it was much less than the average for my area, but basically said they would do f all about it!

So yea, Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated :)
 
You are stuffed, I believe the BT requirement is currently something stupid like 128kb and the new minimum the old Stalinist government was pushing is only a comitment for 2Mb, as you are miles above the first; and comfortably above the second, BT are going to do nothing, and so O2 can do nothing either, they do not own the lines.

Was a new "IP" plate fitted when the new line was fitted? It might be worth taking it off and trying the test socket behind it; I get an extra 1.4Mb on my line from doing this. You do expose yourself to having the router borked if there is a surge on the line; although in reality, the filters in the socket rarely stop that happening anyway.
 
its likely worth posting your modem stats, would be the first thing ppl in the know would ask and they can work out from the numbers how far you are from the exchange.. by the sounds of it you lived pretty close... but that house could have had a direct line to the exchange where as your new house could be the last house on the line or something weird like that.
 
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100-200m's away could mean 1 mile to the actual cable, there's no easy way to tell but the phone line itself might be looping around a lot and causing a greater loss of performance than you'd otherwise expect. Alternatively it could be an issue with home wiring, posting your router stats (attenuation, noise margin) might help us check.

Check out this article for some tips and tricks:
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/articles/adsltips/

Pay close attention to the iPlate/Filtered Faceplate section a page or two in. I really need to update that article but the advise is still valid.
 
Router stats: DSL Connection

Link Information

Uptime: 0 days, 0:03:28

DSL Type: G.992.1 annex A

Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 761 / 4,118

Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [MB/MB]: 4.56 / 28.16

Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 12.0 / 18.0

Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 31.5 / 62.0

SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 7.0 / 6.5

Vendor ID (Local/Remote): TMMB / BDCM

Loss of Framing (Local/Remote): 7 / 0

Loss of Signal (Local/Remote): 1 / 0

Loss of Power (Local/Remote): 0 / 0

Loss of Link (Remote): 0

Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 1 / 0

FEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 780

CRC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 3

HEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 3
 
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 31.5 / 62.0 << V long line or line fault
 
As louisbs points out above, the attenuation suggests that your line is either very long or has a problem. In fact a downstream attenuation of 62 makes it surprising that you can even get 2.7Mbps, even 2Mbps should be a struggle with those stats, which might suggest that there is a fault.

Likewise your noise margin in both directions is very low, so low in fact that from time to time I would be expecting to see the odd line disconnection / drop out. I would definitely check out the article I linked before and investigate whether you need to fit a BT Broadband Accelerator, that should help unless you have a master socket with the Openreach logo (already filters interference).
 
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I'm with Be, and their service to put it nicely sucks and is falsely advertised.
I was with UKOnline and got max speeds on their 8mb package.

I join Be on the up to 24mb package and whilst the router says I'm getting around 9mb down, I should be getting around 14mb down.

To make things worse, they can't even provide me with that. I'm only getting 3-6mb real world speeds.

At the moment I'm getting 0.5mb as I write this...

Here are my line stats if anyone can shed any light on the problem? I've done the quiet line test and they are monitoring my connection, but can't find a thing wrong...

----------
DSL Connection

Link Information

Uptime: 0 days, 0:11:14

DSL Type: G.992.5 annex A

Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 1,321 / 9,873

Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [kB/kB]: 0.00 / 0.00

Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 12.0 / 19.0

Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 16.5 / 31.5

SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 3.5 / 3.5

Vendor ID (Local/Remote): TMMB / BDCM

Loss of Framing (Local/Remote): 0 / 0

Loss of Signal (Local/Remote): 0 / 0

Loss of Power (Local/Remote): 0 / 0

Loss of Link (Remote): 0

Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 13 / 0

FEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 0

CRC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 1,459

HEC Errors (Up/Down): 266 / 137



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When you are providing a service where upload speed is beating download, you really have issues.
 
For the SNR margin and attenuation I would of thought you would of got a higher speed
 
Is it right that his SNR dB margin is so low, at 3.5 / 3.5? My line tends to get unstable at anything below about 6.5dB. Otherwise the stats look fine and I'd agree that your speed should be miles higher. It might be worth asking Be if there's any congestion on your exchange.
 
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Hi Mark.J, I will ask be if there is congestion on my exchange. Regarding the SNR Margin being low. Is there any way I can improve this or contact Be about improving the ratio?

I thought that the lower the better applied to signal noise ratio...
 
Congestion wont cause any issues with the sync speed but depending what profile they have you on impulse noise protection etc on that would cause it, its the normal checks test socket new filter pref etc and see what the stats are from there.
 
I don't know what router you have but if it supports 'Router Stats' then it might also be good to monitor your connection and see what the SNR does over a period of peak and off-peak hours.
 
It appears you can change the SnR based on profiles that Be allows you to change. Standard puts the SnR to 6.0/6.5. Whilst gaming mode lowers it to 3.0/3.5.

Well after many tests, Be decided to send me a new router. The good news is, that I am now receiving the speed that the Be Router is reporting. It reports a sync of 9106kbps; and through the Steam Gaming Client, I am getting a steady 900KB/S speed which has peaked at 1.1MB/S

Question is, should I be happy with this? Getting the 9mb the router is stating is great, but still 5mb off what I am predicted to get. Or should I downgrade from Be's 24mb package to their 8mb Package and save about £4/per month. Is the extra 100kb on average worth £4?

Opinions please.
 
Be happy with 9Mb I'd say, you're well above the 5.2Mbps average and a lot of ISPs have problems delivering full line speed to those who can actually recieve on or above 12Mbps. Remember that broadband is a shared service, so they can't provide 100% speed on every exchange to everybody anyway.

I'm on about 9-10Mbps myself and am perfectly happy with it, although the only annoying problem I have now is with the slow uploads. 600-900Kbps just doesn't cut it for modern demands anymore, we need faster upstream.
 
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Thanks for the advice Mark J. Problem is, I'm one of those people that is very value conscious. I unconsciously visit Hot UK Deals at least 20 times a day even though there isn't anything i want to buy!

9mb is actually the Be Average according to speedtest sites but just knowing I can get more means I can't be happy :(

I believe I'm going to start playing around with the master socket wiring as recommended by some forumites on Be and see if there is an internal wiring issue as many seem to think there is.

After that, if I can't find any more problems, I'll downgrade to the 8mb product.
I find Be's 1.3mb upload speed to be extremely good. I rarely upload things but 1mb upload speed seems plenty for me. Perhaps higher upload rate packages could be a way for those people that want it to pay more, subsidising those who only which to download and can deal with low upload speeds like 256kb up.

UPDATE: On recommendations, I removed the Ring Wire from my master socket and sync speeds shot up. I'm now getting a reported 13mb download speed which is pretty close to the 14mb I was looking for. It's just a shame that removing the Ring Wire isn't one of the first things Be Support recommended after doing their line tests and finding nothing wrong... Now a happy Be Customer.
 
Last edited:
For some reason I thought you already had a ring wire filter (iPlate or similar) and so didn't mention it :) .
 
For some reason I thought you already had a ring wire filter (iPlate or similar) and so didn't mention it :) .

Unfortunately not. I have really really old master sockets. No Bt Logo. No test socket :laugh:

But thankfully problems all resolved now.
 
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