Slow Speed Broadband

[#1]

I have had a fault ticket open with PN for 6 days but they are ignoring it so I am trying to do what checks I can myself.
My downstream synch speed is 2976 kb/s which is not good but I live at the end of an overhead rural line so I do not expect to be able to improve that much. The speed is stable and there are no disconnects. IP Profile is 2500. My download speed from ThinkBroadBand speedtester is 440kb/s at the moment. The BT one has been similar over the last few days but at the moment it is sulking at me and will not run.
I have a DG834 router and have routerstats and MRTG running so I get lots of other bits of information but am not sure what they mean and whether I believe them. For instance MRTG says that error seconds is 0 - which sounds good but may be unreal. FEC errors are 537347 downstream which sounds a lot but is either the count over 20 hours since I re-established my PlusNet login after trying test2 on the BT speedtester or over 147 hours which dates back to me powering the router back on after swapping the filters and plugging into the test socket (Not sure what resets the count). CRC errors are 162 and NCD, LCD and HEC are all 0.
What can I get from these numbers? Is there any evidence that my line might have some subtle problem that might be causing the slow download speeds? Are there better numbers to look at?
PN did check the line over Christmas and concluded that there was nothing wrong with it - but something must be causing the slow download speed - incidentally - it is usually quite good in the mornings - maybe 2200kb/s.
I believe it is PN who don't know how to run a network but I would like to be sure its not something I am doing before I give up on PN totally.
Jim

[#2]

The main figures are
download attenuation
upload attenuations
SNR
Rx Synch speed
and your "profile" speed from your members page. together with a BT speed test result....
that will give people some idea of how your line is at present, and whether there is hope to improve the situation !

[#3]

Thank you for that - but it is not what I asked. All of those factors essentially effect the synch speed which I have stated is 2976kb/s. I have little hope of increasing that because I get RF interference on the line.
What I am wondering is whether it is possible that data is coming in at a decent rate (2500) but that it has so many errors in it that only about one fifth of that is usable (clearly a lot of duplication of data would be necessary in this condition which would cut down on the useful data rate).
The fec and hec and crc errors might point to that - though I doubt it.
Jim

[#4]

If you are running Routerstats then this page may help

[#5]

@Oldjim. It looks a useful page but my copy of Routerstats has different pages. I have updated my version (to 5.8a) to see if that was the difference but it still does not show those titles. I am in Telnet mode and can see the bits/tone graph for instance. I have got RX Interleaved (which contains HEC,FEC etc and may be the same thing.) I'll plot that and see what I get.
Is your DG834 a version 1 (like mine) or a more modern one? Or is there a setting on Routerstats that I need to know about.

[#6]

Mine is the older DG834G v4 one with the Broadcom Chip and the graph is under the Telnet Section but you need to enable it by ticking in the bottom left box - and select CRC on lhe left axis
Also under Settings - the litle cog wheel - click on Telnet and Netgear settings - mine looks like this

[#7]

I've got an original DG834 (v1) and my RouterStats telnet screens look nothing like Jim's.
The best two are the Telnet Summary and the Terminal tabs.

[#8]

Thanks jelv and OldJim. The inputs of both of you are useful. I believe that the format of the Routerstats screens changes depending on the version of the DG834 you are using. They are fairly minor changes but do cause some confusion. In fact, I can plot the graphs OldJim suggested - just on a tab with a different title. I am now doing so and slowly building up information.
It seems that I get very few CRC errors, very few HEC errors but quite a lot of FEC errors (maybe several hundred in fifteen minutes). I now need to sort out what that means.
For completeness, Support ran their diagnostics this morning and found nothing wrong (my conclusion based on their figures). They are now asking for a BT Speedtest going through to Test2 and Test3. Only problem is that the speed tester says it cannot run a test on my connection at the moment. My guess is that my line is still held by PN's diagnostics testing.
One final discovery. Normally I can run Test 1 but have never managed to run Test 2. I have now worked out that that is because when I change my user login to bt_test_user, I also have to 1) Tell my router to use the DNS servers it is given by the system (they are normally fixed as I use OpenDNS for one) and 2) tell my laptop to renew its DHCP lease - so that it gets and uses the DNS server that the system tells my router about. This makes it all a bit convoluted and I have not seen these thoughts anywhere in the instructions. Perhaps many of the problems with Test2 and Test3 are down to this sort of problem. Hope that bit helps somebody.
Jim