Cable Forum - View Single Post - virgin adsl

ulmo · 18-04-2009, 14:42

Hi. Perhaps someone can explain why I can't get faster speeds ?
Is this normal for my area, or is this strange (some stats below to help, I hope).

I live in a PO postcode. I don't think I am far from the exchange really. I have a 'normal' bt phone-line with ADSL activated. I have a netgear adsl router that is a few years old but has been pretty reliable and I have upgraded the firmware on it successfully. I have three phone sockets in the house all wired in parallel from the main socket where the line comes into the house. All sockets have adsl filters in them. The router is plugged into the socket furthest away from where the line enters the house (about 10m of cable).

I have been with virgin for quite a while and had their 2Mb adsl package. I never really managed to get much more than 1Mb speeds though. Recently I was given the free 'upgrade' to 10Mb and this has not changed things. I still only get between 0.8 and 1M speeds. Is this normal for my area or is there something 'wrong' ? Also I am occasionally(say a few times a day) getting a very brief disconnect where the 'i' light on my netgear router starts blinking and then it goes back to solid green again. This has only been happening since the 'upgrade' to 10Mb.

I have some stats from my router and also my browser if this helps.
I have a 'downstream' speed as quoted in the router's pages of 20792 Kbitsps and an 'upstream' of 1024Kbitsps.
The downstream line attenuation is pretty constant at 12db and the downstream noise margin is 9db. The upstream line attenuation varies between 2.5 and 5db, whilst the upsteam noise margin varies between 5 and 9db. Does that sound ok ?

The mtu setting in the router is at 1458. The mtu setting in my computers ethernet settings was at 1500 and I have dropped it to 1458 today to see if this reduces the disconnects. On the basic adsl settings page of the router the encapsulation is set to PPPoA and the 'timeout' is at 0. The other adsl settings are multiplexing vc-based, vpi at 0 and vci 38. Not sure what these mean exactly but I guess they are to do with the type of connection rather than the speed.

I guess the upstream speed (1024) is what equates to the real speed that I see for downloads in my browser of about 100-106 kilobytes per second. mybroadbandspeed.co.uk reports my upload and download speeds as about 845kbits per second (0.8Mb broadband !). This seems really slow considering that I have read people moaning on here about how their 5000 plus kilobits per second speeds are "slow" !

Any thoughts ?

18-04-2009, 14:42	#1
ulmo Inactive Join Date: Apr 2009 Posts: 15	virgin adsl - why can't I seem to get speeds over 1Mb Hi. Perhaps someone can explain why I can't get faster speeds ? Is this normal for my area, or is this strange (some stats below to help, I hope). I live in a PO postcode. I don't think I am far from the exchange really. I have a 'normal' bt phone-line with ADSL activated. I have a netgear adsl router that is a few years old but has been pretty reliable and I have upgraded the firmware on it successfully. I have three phone sockets in the house all wired in parallel from the main socket where the line comes into the house. All sockets have adsl filters in them. The router is plugged into the socket furthest away from where the line enters the house (about 10m of cable). I have been with virgin for quite a while and had their 2Mb adsl package. I never really managed to get much more than 1Mb speeds though. Recently I was given the free 'upgrade' to 10Mb and this has not changed things. I still only get between 0.8 and 1M speeds. Is this normal for my area or is there something 'wrong' ? Also I am occasionally(say a few times a day) getting a very brief disconnect where the 'i' light on my netgear router starts blinking and then it goes back to solid green again. This has only been happening since the 'upgrade' to 10Mb. I have some stats from my router and also my browser if this helps. I have a 'downstream' speed as quoted in the router's pages of 20792 Kbitsps and an 'upstream' of 1024Kbitsps. The downstream line attenuation is pretty constant at 12db and the downstream noise margin is 9db. The upstream line attenuation varies between 2.5 and 5db, whilst the upsteam noise margin varies between 5 and 9db. Does that sound ok ? The mtu setting in the router is at 1458. The mtu setting in my computers ethernet settings was at 1500 and I have dropped it to 1458 today to see if this reduces the disconnects. On the basic adsl settings page of the router the encapsulation is set to PPPoA and the 'timeout' is at 0. The other adsl settings are multiplexing vc-based, vpi at 0 and vci 38. Not sure what these mean exactly but I guess they are to do with the type of connection rather than the speed. I guess the upstream speed (1024) is what equates to the real speed that I see for downloads in my browser of about 100-106 kilobytes per second. mybroadbandspeed.co.uk reports my upload and download speeds as about 845kbits per second (0.8Mb broadband !). This seems really slow considering that I have read people moaning on here about how their 5000 plus kilobits per second speeds are "slow" ! Any thoughts ?