Re: Small connection issue
 

Yes, don't worry about the stats just leave it be for now.

If you are concerned a bit about the stability of it perhaps get a latency monitoring service on the case.

http://f8lure.mouselike.org

Re: Small connection issue
 

Stuart,

Leaving the techie stuff for now to my friend Broadbandings, you have a real opportunity to get the line quality sorted to optimum.

The BT guff to which you referred isn't lying. It's two variants of the same thing as your neighbour has proved. But we'll disregard that.

If you take the decision to dump VM and go to BT and their ADSL service, they'll send the engineer. Then you've got him. He can call up the cherry picker to renew the pole strung segment when they check the attenuation on that length or even by inspection. IMO, it'll take two BT visits to sort but they'll sort it to optimum obtainable.

Waddaya say?

Re: Small connection issue
 

I will leave my connection for a day or so, and reply back here with the news to whether it's got better/worse etc.

When we phoned BT to ask if they could actually do anything because it is actually their line, they just said the same thing as Virgin Media: that we are very far from our exchange, even though I told them about our neighbors connection.

I'm just worried that changing to BT will not end up in them sending out an engineer, and in fact, I go through the same cycle of terrible 'support' that Virgin Media have given me.

Oh and my 'Noise Margin' is at 3.7 db which is terrible.

I know this because I done some research on Wikipedia:

* 6dB or below is bad and will experience no sync or intermittent sync problems
* 7dB-10dB is fair but does not leave much room for variances in conditions
* 11dB-20dB is good with no sync problems
* 20dB-28dB is excellent
* 29dB or above is outstanding

Re: Small connection issue
 

The whole point of the ADSL Max product is to get as high a data rate as possible by pushing the noise margin. 6dB or below isn't necessarily bad, indeed some ISPs target 6dB margin for their customers.

Don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia.

You do, however, have an issue on your line somewhere, it is picking up a lot of noise from outside. During the evening when people get home, switch lights and appliances on, etc, it increases the ambient 'noise' on the frequencies ADSL uses which is causing your problems.

I wonder, have you only recently started using your heating? Something as silly as a boiler clicking on can cause problems on a long line :(

Re: Small connection issue
 

No, haven't put the heating on. The same lights, appliances have been throughout the day as well.

Re: Small connection issue
 

Noise is probably coming from elsewhere in that case and for some reason your line is happily sucking it up. Could even be due to temperature variations causing copper to expand and contract.

Your mission however is to find someone at Virgin who gives enough of a monkey's to sort it.

BT won't take the case on from you because while you are Virgin's customer your broadband service is simply not their problem, it's absolutely up to your ISP to report faults to them, you literally cannot do this. BT Openreach will fix faults on the line only if your supplier of services raises the fault to them.

Re: Small connection issue
 

Ah - that reminds me. If the pole strung segment is a half wave of a strong medium wave radio station .... But then he would hear Radio Luxemburg on his telephone.

But Broadbandings is right to get you to look at that.

But back to the question of getting a BT engineer out to you. Just make your order conditional on that. They want you back. You can escalate up the BT hierarchy if you need to. It's a case of just.do.it.com not fret about it.

These steps are entirely in you hands now.

Re: Small connection issue
 

Now if he could hear Radio Luxembourg that'd be fairly easy to fault out to BT.

Hrm... Stuart how is the quality of voice on your phone? ;)

Re: Small connection issue
 

It's fine, totally fine.

So basically what I have to do is keep phoning and asking for them to send out an engineer. Even though every time I have suggested that to them they just say it's because we're far away from the exchange.

Excellent - I can see this getting nowhere.

Connection Speed is now 704 kbps with Noise Margin at 10.8 dB.

Re: Small connection issue
 

Too much noise to hold the 1.4Mbps sync so it resynched lower to get the noise margin back up :(

I would suggest going to another ISP if Virgin won't fix it. This behaviour isn't normal and isn't acceptable regardless of line length.

Could you please start a thread in http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/general.html explaining the big swings in noise margin and connection speed? No offense to CF but that is more geared towards DSL and someone there may have a contact within BT that can assist.

Cheers and sorry I couldn't be more help Stuart.

Re: Small connection issue
 

I have posted a thread on Think Broadband, and I'll wait for some replies tomorrow.

Everyone who has replied has been a bigger help than anyone that I contacted at Virgin Media, so thanks to everyone.

I'll keep everyone posted if I get my issue fixed or at least advice on how to get it fixed but I'm sure they'll say the same as yous: get an engineer out, dump Virgin Media.

Thanks again!

Re: Small connection issue
 

Ha ha. You caught that off-chance right!

Stuart really ought now just to pursue BT in the right way by "going back" to them with conditions. In 10 pages time we'll still be going round in these circles.