O2 All Connected

Ignitionnet · 21-02-2010, 19:13

Connected to O2 now, seems to work great. Browsing speed not discernible from 50Mbit cable.

Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 1,304 / 16,827
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 13.5 / 28.0

Line is about 1.9km long.

Costing me nothing for 2 months and getting 100 Great British Pounds cashback so the year where I'm under contract will not cost me very much at all

Going to switch to Annex M once the line has settled down which will give me an upstream around the 2.2Mbit mark as a guesstimate.

50Mbit is still under contract but, barring serious issues with O2 or VM pulling their finger out of their arse, will be heavily downgraded or removed entirely as soon as the contract is up. Not a heavy newsgroups user, which seems the major reason for having it, so finding very few reasons to keep it given stability concerns, traffic shaping concerns, poor upstream, etc.

budwieser · 21-02-2010, 20:41

Whats Annex M mate?

**Hugh** · 21-02-2010, 22:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by budwieser

Whats Annex M mate?

Annex M

Quote:

Annex M is the next generation of ADSL broadband services offering speeds of up to 16Mbs download and 2.3Mbs upload.

Ignitionnet · 21-02-2010, 22:36

Hmm. That link sucks.

This is better.

Quote:

Annex M is an optional specification in ITU-T recommendations G.992.3 (ADSL2) and G.992.5 (ADSL2+), also referred to as ADSL2 M and ADSL2+ M. This specification extends the capability of commonly deployed Annex A by more than doubling the number of upstream bits. The data rates can be as high as 12 or 24 Mbit/s downstream and 3 Mbit/s upstream depending on the distance from the DSLAM to the customer's home.

Basically you trade some downstream capacity for upstream capacity. Usually about a 1:1.5 trade off. I expect to go from 16.9 down and 1.3 up to 15.0 - 15.5 down and 2.1 - 2.3 up.

**Hugh** · 21-02-2010, 22:41

I was trying not to go Wiki, and wasn't sure of Bud's networking knowledge levels...

Ignitionnet · 22-02-2010, 18:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by foreverwar

I was trying not to go Wiki, and wasn't sure of Bud's networking knowledge levels...

True, I did attempt to simplify with a quick mention of swapping.

Speed has improved a bit which is nice:

Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 1,313 / 17,214

colin25 · 22-02-2010, 20:11

O2, isn't that just BE?

I was thinking of switching to them, for the upload, even with my distance I should get more than Virgin's

Ignitionnet · 22-02-2010, 20:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by colin25

O2, isn't that just BE?

I was thinking of switching to them, for the upload, even with my distance I should get more than Virgin's

It's Be but less pink and slightly cheaper. The network is exactly the same and the service suits me just fine.

An O2 customer with far too much time on his hands has produced some PDFs that compare packages, explain the differences between Be and O2 along with ways to get some lovely cash back.

Is it just me or is my mood much better since I got back to my exercise after my hols?

Ignitionnet · 16-04-2010, 00:01

After a bit of tweaking my speeds are now pretty much exactly where I thought they would be:

Jitter and latency are great:

punbros · 22-04-2010, 02:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

After a bit of tweaking my speeds are now pretty much exactly where I thought they would be:

What sort of tweaking did you do? care to share mate? thanks in advance...

Ignitionnet · 22-04-2010, 10:18

Sure!

I replaced their modem with one of these which, according to this performed well on O2 lines, especially upstream. I then phoned up O2 and asked them to adjust my line's SNR target from 6dB to 3dB, more aggressive giving better performance but possibly less stability.

As it is it is more stable than it was with the O2 box and as mentioned above performs considerably better, upstream going from approximately 1.7Mbit to 2.4Mbit before overheads and giving a sustained speed of 260kB/s - 270kB/s or so real throughput, including cable equivalent overheads this is about the equivalent of 2.25-2.3Mbps, 0.5 - 0.55Mbps higher than VM's XXL service.

22-04-2010, 10:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Sure!

I replaced their modem with one of these which, according to this performed well on O2 lines, especially upstream. I then phoned up O2 and asked them to adjust my line's SNR target from 6dB to 3dB, more aggressive giving better performance but possibly less stability.

As it is it is more stable than it was with the O2 box and as mentioned above performs considerably better, upstream going from approximately 1.7Mbit to 2.4Mbit before overheads and giving a sustained speed of 260kB/s - 270kB/s or so real throughput, including cable equivalent overheads this is about the equivalent of 2.25-2.3Mbps, 0.5 - 0.55Mbps higher than VM's XXL service.

woohoo eh dude lol wouldnt want to lose my 50 meg down for half a meg up. I did note that you want not really using the download so fair play on that one. O2's offerings seem cheap if you are a customer so I can see benefits

Ignitionnet · 22-04-2010, 12:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by zing

woohoo eh dude lol wouldnt want to lose my 50 meg down for half a meg up. I did note that you want not really using the download so fair play on that one. O2's offerings seem cheap if you are a customer so I can see benefits

I have Sky TV and didn't use Virgin's TV service.

In addition I don't use newsgroups. I don't think I'm wrong to speculate this is a major use of a majority of 50Mbps customers' service. The other main ones I can really think of are extreme impatience, having a large household, or wanting to enlarge the epeen. Even in the case of larger households the main crunch point for many could easily be upstream.

O2 works well for me and suits my needs, it shows more stability than my Virgin connection did and performs better in many ways. Other people's mileage may vary, though not by as much if/when newsgroup usage is cracked down on somewhat.

jrhnewark · 23-04-2010, 01:51

Ignition, I've just O2 Broadband Pro. Do I have to ask them for it to be made Annex M when the connection has been activated? Really looking forward to having a decent upstream speed - should be similar to yours as I'm only 2.1km from the exchange!

Ignitionnet · 23-04-2010, 10:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by jrhnewark

Ignition, I've just O2 Broadband Pro. Do I have to ask them for it to be made Annex M when the connection has been activated? Really looking forward to having a decent upstream speed - should be similar to yours as I'm only 2.1km from the exchange!

No - it'll go through a training period then will go to Annex M automagically.

You may or may not get similar performance to me, depends on a few things.