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[BuddyB]

A friend of mine has just discovered he is getting a broadband speed of less that 0.5 MB even though he is on an 8 Mb service with Utility Warehouse as part of a bundle. Sometimes the speed is as low as about 100kb.

He has been told that the reason for this is that he is 2209m away from his exchange. In the past he had been with Tiscali and TalkTalk and still had a slow service and again this was put down to the distance from the exchange, although I'm not sure if anyone from an ISP has been out to check is the reason this.

In the area where he lives cable is not available.

Is there any way he can get a better broadband service?

[Graham M]

What is the mobile phone reception like inside his house?

[BuddyB]

Originally Posted by Graham M

What is the mobile phone reception like inside his house?

Excellent

[Matt D]

2209m doesn't sound like that bad a distance... certainly not bad enough to cause such a horrendously slow speed.

Perhaps there are also line issues... e.g. noise.

How does your friend connect his modem/router to the phoneline? Straight to the Master? Via an extension?

Can he find his downstream attenuation and downstream noise margin figures?

Have a read of this:

http://www.skyuser.co.uk/forum/route...explained.html

And also...

http://www.dslzoneuk.net/socket.php?type=html

[BuddyB]

Thanks for the replies.

I will forward the links to get them to collect the information and get back to you.

Tonight they asked their neighbour who their ISP was and to do a speed test. The neighbours are on Tiscali and got over 1Mb on the test. My friends did a test at the same time in their house and got...68kb!

Will post the information asap.

[Matt D]

If the speed difference is that drastic, & the neighbour is able to get 1Mbps, I'd definitely be thinking along the lines of a poor/noisy line, likely caused by poor extension wiring.

The second link I posted gives info on using the hidden "test socket" behind the faceplate of a standard NTE5 BT Master socket.

Here's another: http://www.skyuser.co.uk/forum/view-master.html


The test socket bypasses all the extension wiring. If, when using the test socket, things get better, then it suggests that the problem is an internal one - e.g. extension wiring, noise from the ring wire, how the modem/router is connected to the socket, etc.

One potential way of cutting down on noise caused by internal wiring is to disconnect the "ring wire" from the back of the faceplate (orange/white wire, terminal 3).

Using something such as an I-Plate or a filtered faceplate can also help, if the test socket improves things:

http://www.skyuser.co.uk/forum/cabli...faceplate.html


However, if nothing improves when using the hidden test socket, then it could be that the issue is outside the customer part of the wiring and is an issue for BT (e.g. some sort of actual line fault).

[Paul]

Also the 2K distance may be as the crow flies and not true line distance. Do the test socket check if possible, post up your stats and it may just be down to setup or faulty filters.

[dragon]

Ideally what you need to do is get the SYNC speed from your adsl modem if possible.

If you know the make/model of the modem or router?

Ideally we need to know what speed the connection between the modem and the exchange is looking at so we can determine if we're looking a problem with the ADSL itself or a problem with slow throughput.

Also what is the call quality like on the phone service, do they get any cracking.etc?

It might be worth dialing 17070 option 2 from a standard phone (not cordless) and listening for noise (Note some phones have noise suppression ideally it want's to be as basic as possible)