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Living with high attenuation

jack21
Grafter
Posts: 189
Registered: ‎25-02-2009

Living with high attenuation

Can anyone give me any tips to help me live with high line attenuation, please?
I live in a rural location, in a wireless blind-spot, roughly 5km from my exchange at Flamborough, and the line attenuation is 67.7 and noise margin is usually 15.0. Since moving to Plusnet from BT (when the line rate varied from 95kbps to 1000kbps), they have very helpfully steered me to a line rate of around 1300kbps, by interleaving, and by prompting me to upgrade the internal phone wiring. Just recently, the line rate has dropped to 800kbps (even at the engineers socket), and that is being pursued via a ticket.
I've tried  4 types of ADSL modems (BT Home Hub, 2700HGV, ST585, Voyager 210), and have had the best results with a BT 2700HGV, but am prepared to invest in a better-performing modem/kit etc if such can be identified. I've also found that microfilters all produce different results, usually marginally and usually reflected most obviously in the CRC rate.
Has anyone out there had similar issues and is able to give me advice to help get the most from my ADSl line?
Thanks in anticipation.
25 REPLIES 25
HPsauce
Pro
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Registered: ‎02-02-2008

Re: Living with high attenuation

Are you on ADSL Max? You may be better on a fixed-rate product.
198kHz
Seasoned Hero
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Registered: ‎30-07-2008

Re: Living with high attenuation

As far as routers go, the 2700HGV is about as good as it gets for your situation.
ADSLNation filters are held in high regard, either the XF-1e rat's tail type, or, preferably, the XTE-2005 filtered faceplate fitted to the master socket. The latter also has terminals providing an unfiltered outlet for wiring a dedicated ADSL extension (preferably with Cat5e cable).
Murphy was an optimist
Zen FTTC 40/10 + Digital Voice   FRITZ!Box 7530
BT technician (Retired)
jack21
Grafter
Posts: 189
Registered: ‎25-02-2009

Re: Living with high attenuation

Thanks for the ideas; I am on MAXdsl, but as far as I'm aware there aren't now any Plusnet fixed-rate products available. BT's estimate of my line capability is only 0.5mbps too, so I bet I wouldn't be offered anything above that figure even were they available. I seem to recall that BT have closed fixed-rates to their users, too.
I've taken up the suggestion re the XF-1E filters, and have ordered a couple today. I wouldn't go the faceplate way because the main socket is in an 'unusable/impractical' site in the kitchen, and I have a fixed cat5 cable extension (no ring wire)  to 9m away where a rat's-tail microfilter then feeds phone and modem. In some tests I did recently, there was practically no difference in performance from connections at the engineers socket, master socket and extension; using different filters seems to have more effect - even new ones of the same model seem to vary in performance (usually by affecting the CRC error rate).
Jack
jack21
Grafter
Posts: 189
Registered: ‎25-02-2009

Re: Living with high attenuation

HPSAUCE's suggestion of a fixed-rate line has been echoed by Plusnet in the ongoing support ticket - they've offered to switch me, if I wish, to a 1mb fixed line even tho BT's estimate of the line's capacity is only up to 500kbps. Well, I've had a 1000kbps profile for almost a year, and happily coped with/at that speed, so I know that my MAXdsl can work OK for me, and I'd like to try these XF-1E filters firstly. But what are the pros and cons of fixed lines as opposed to MAXdsl? Which product is likely to perform the best for me with my high line attenuation?
Oldjim
Resting Legend
Posts: 38,460
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Re: Living with high attenuation

Your upstream speed drops to 288kbps (approx because i haven't bothered checking) - changed because other people did
Denzil
Grafter
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Registered: ‎31-07-2007

Re: Living with high attenuation

That is a very long line. With figures like that I think you are lucky to get 800kbps!
spraxyt
Resting Legend
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Registered: ‎06-04-2007

Re: Living with high attenuation

A 1M fixed speed service would have downstream/upstream sync speeds of 1152/288kbps and interleaving would be off. According to Kitz an actual throughput speed of 955kbps is achievable with optimum tweaking and on a very good line. However since you would be operating at the limits of the service I think significant transmission errors might be experienced which would slow down actual throughput - perhaps significantly.
You could always give it a try if the new filters don't help on maxDSL.
David
198kHz
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Registered: ‎30-07-2008

Re: Living with high attenuation

A 1Mb fixed service would sync at 1152 down, 288 up, so actual throughput upstream would be 256kbps max.
It's reassuring that PN will offer that if necessary, but it's worth a punt with the new filters first. As mentioned, the 2700HGV would be the one to stick with.
Good luck.   Smiley
ps spraxyt got there first, but I'll post anyway. 
Murphy was an optimist
Zen FTTC 40/10 + Digital Voice   FRITZ!Box 7530
BT technician (Retired)
jack21
Grafter
Posts: 189
Registered: ‎25-02-2009

Re: Living with high attenuation

Thanks folks, for all the observations. I suppose I've been fortunate to have been ticking along at 1300'ish kbps, and with a 1000kbps profile for the last 10 months. I'm comforted that I seem to be on a suitable modem/router for this high attenuation/line length, and that I've now got 1 of the recommended XF-1E filters in place tho it didn't seem to improve anything - possibly the reverse (it increased SNR by 0.1 and has produced higher CRC error rates), but I'll persevere with it for a while - its so difficult to tell immediately if anything makes an improvement.
Re the fixed-rate option; perhaps something to be tried if my current dslMAX doesn't regain its normal performance after a week or so; there were signs that it was beginning to drift back up from 800 a few days ago......to 992 this morning....towards the norm of 1300. And until I swapped the filter today (and back down to 800), I had re-reached a profile of 750 - only just less than the 1000 norm.
Do you think I should be optimistic about possible BT infrastructure improvements to the broadband delivery to homes?.....in the near future?
Cheers
Oldjim
Resting Legend
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Re: Living with high attenuation

Quote from: jack21
Do you think I should be optimistic about possible BT infrastructure improvements to the broadband delivery to homes?.....in the near future?
NO
I think the term "when hell freezes over" is appropriate for us people out in the sticks
jack21
Grafter
Posts: 189
Registered: ‎25-02-2009

Re: Living with high attenuation

Update:
I tried an XF-1E filter, but it didn't improve things; rather the reverse - it increased the attenuation by 0.2DB and (possibly) increased the CRC rate. I say 'possibly', because when trying any form of change, I don't know whether the changed item is the cause of any degradation, or whether the ADSL self-adjusting mechanism is kicking in (say as a result of a filter change disconnection/reconnection).
I've decided to give the 1M fixed-rate line a try out, and will put the results up in due course. At the very least I might get a known-performance baseline on which I can assess different modems/filters.
scootie
Grafter
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Registered: ‎03-11-2007

Re: Living with high attenuation

your looking at somthing like 2012 as the earlyest date that fiber to cabinet is rolled out and then BTw will be cherry picking which arears to install it in. so again 21cn offer a small increase to people on very long lines and fiber to cab will be decades away for people out in the sticks far from there exchange.
and ofcom are going to let BTw charge what they like to isp's to use the fiber once installed. i wouldnt like to see the price for this in so called market one areas Shocked
itsme
Grafter
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Registered: ‎07-04-2007

Re: Living with high attenuation

You mean that BT will cherry pick just like VirginMedia. Perhaps OFCOM/government should compel both BT and VirginMedia to run fibre to less profitable areas.
scootie
Grafter
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Registered: ‎03-11-2007

Re: Living with high attenuation

would make sense to do the worst speed areas first.
but as btw have shareholders to keep pockets full this would never happen and what do they care if a gd % of the uk can only just manage 2mb as long as the rest swamp the stats with the soon to come high bandwidth and bump the avearge speed up the whole country ofcom will not give a dam