Downgrading from cable to ADSL2+

TanyaC · 07 Mar 2011

Holy Moses said:

Man, I feel sorry for you guys. I run ADSL thru Telus Communications and I have a 15Mbps connection. Speed tests actually confirm me at around 11 Mbps download. (Megabits)

Upload is about 400 Kbps (Kilobits)

Translated into megabyte speeds thru uTorrent or similar, about 1.3 MB/sec download and 60 KB/sec upload

I am actually pretty happy with it. Hopefully they don't hit me with limits.

I would have been happy with 1.3 MBps. I had 2.4MBps for 10 years...

I called my ISP for assistance. Call was to get configuration assistance with connecting my ADSL modem as a bridge through my router..

Tanya "I would like to run my ADSL modem as a bridge and connect it to my DLINK DIR-655 router. Can you tell me where I should put the settings for PPPoE and so on.."

ISP "Was the router and modem supplied by us?"

Tanya "No, they are mine"

ISP "Sorry we do not provide configuration assistance for equipment not supplied by us"

Tanya "I just need to know the PVC and PPoE details, and if I put them in them modem or the router"

ISP "I'm sorry. I am unable to advise you where to put these settings"

Tanya "Who can help me?"

ISP "I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with your equipment"

Tanya "How can I get my equipment up and running?"

ISP "My system shows your ADSL connection is operational. If it were not operational I could log a fault ticket"

Tanya "I can't connect to the internet. I have an ADSL connection but the authentication is failing".

ISP "My system shows you are connected"

Tanya

<click>

JMH · 07 Mar 2011

If you are not under contract ....... have you tried TPG?

Golden · 07 Mar 2011

Tanyam said:

I think Australia must have the worst Internet services in the world

Yep. We really are the lowest of the low.........infrastructure negelected for far too long. NBN won't make a blind bit of difference...."too much, too little, too late"

TanyaC · 09 Mar 2011

Golden said:

Tanyam said:

I think Australia must have the worst Internet services in the world

Yep. We really are the lowest of the low.........infrastructure negelected for far too long. NBN won't make a blind bit of difference...."too much, too little, too late"

I'm told the NBN, which might not even eventuate for at leat 10 years, will come bundled with ISP-spying, additional controls and blocks such that even if we got high speed, we wouldn't be able to take advantage of it anyway

JMH suggested trying TPG.. I just spent an hour on the phone with them. Their technical knowledge is worse than mine. They couldn't give a straight answer.

From what I've read, to get the maximum download speed, your upload speed need to be 10% of your downstream bandwidth. SO on a theoretical bandwidth of 20Mpbs you'd need 2Mbps to get the maximum, cable distances, attenuation and other factors not withstanding.

TPG's maximum upstream is only 5% of the 20Mbps.

Besides that they state that on a 20Mbps service, 4.5% of that theoretical service is acceptable; that is 109KBps. If you achieve that out of a theoretical maximum of 2500KBps they will not do anything about it.

If I found that the service provided by TPG was the same or worse than iiNet I have to pay a $350 cancellation fee. At Least iiNet's cancel fee is only $69.

The iiNet guy said that the only difference between ADSL1 and ADSL2 is the DSLAM profile is changed. They stated that the same DSLAM will be capable of ADSL1 and ADSL2 and ADSL2+ configurations. Then he renegged and said that if I get poor speeds now, upgrading to ADSL2(+) will not change anything because the same DSLAM would be used .. Does anyone know what the truth really is?

My cable distance is 246 metres to a fibre optic trunk, then 2.7km to the local exchange.

Right now on ADSL 1 I'm averaging 60KBps. iiNet are blaming my new equipment and are refusing to do anything about it, even though we've been though som isolation tests and found my equipment to be fine.

Golden · 09 Mar 2011

Tanya,

Have you tried Internode? I'm not sure if they are in your area.

Regards,
Golden

JMH · 09 Mar 2011

Suffice to say " pair gain systems" suck.
To resolve this unacceptable download speed I would need to sell my home & relocate to where I don't want to live.

Re TPG - I can get up to 6 Mb/s at times where as with Iinet the best they achieved was 1.5 Mb/s.

TanyaC · 09 Mar 2011

JMH said:

Suffice to say " pair gain systems" suck.
To resolve this unacceptable download speed I would need to sell my home & relocate to where I don't want to live.

Re TPG - I can get up to 6 Mb/s at times where as with Iinet the best they achieved was 1.5 Mb/s.

Yeah, me too. I just moved in here three weeks ago. I was naive.. I thought a new estate with all the mod cons would at least have decent Internet.. How wrong I was!

The kids love the house, so they dont want to move, and we've moved 3 times in 3 years...

Interesting that two different ISPs can get such significantly different results. Do you know if they ran off the same DSLAM? Did they only change the profile?

At times is when? Overnight? They seem to have the same offpeak times - 2am - 8am..

I could cope with 6Mbps. 1.5 really, really sucks

TanyaC · 11 Mar 2011

Golden said:

Tanya,

Have you tried Internode? I'm not sure if they are in your area.

Regards,
Golden

Internode cannot provide anything better than iiNet, and what they can provide is dearer than iiNet. But thanks for the suggestion.

JMH · 11 Mar 2011

TPG have provided a consistent 6 to 8 Mb/s over the last 36 hours hours here.
Amazing! {on pair gain}

TanyaC · 17 Mar 2011

JMH said:

TPG have provided a consistent 6 to 8 Mb/s over the last 36 hours hours here.
Amazing! {on pair gain}

I think I have a positive outcome. It's early days yet, but things are definately looking up. I thought I'd share the details with y'all.

As we know, I went to netspace for my Internet, who are owned by iiNet. They said the best they could offer me was a 1536/256 service. Apart from blowing their SLA's for install time, the peak speed I achieved was at around 8:30am with a speed of 1.30Mbps (around 160KBps).

Typically, for most of the day, speeds averaged around 60KBps in the real world, regardless of the source of the data being transferred.

Netspace had me doing speedtests from their speedtest site (an utterly meaningless test), and we found that downloading a 100mb test file averaged 110KBps.

Netspace stated that any transfer speed from their speedtest site, at 60%+ of the theoretical maximum was an acceptable speed and they would not take a fault report.

In actuality, I was only getting 33% of the maximum in the real world so they refused to consider this a fault.

So I made a complaint to Tel$tra who then forced iiNet to make a complaint to Tel$tra wholesale, who supplies the infrastructure.

I also filed a complaint with the TIO and requested iiNet to change me to a different plan.

After a week of conflict with various organisations this morning I did some test downloads and achieved a peak speed of 25000Mbps/3126KBps (huh?), with an average of 19200 kbps/2400KBps. This test was done with 2 x 4.2GB files from two different sites.

Once they removed the capping codes from the DSLAM the speed increases were quite pleasing to say the least!

We also found that I am 2.8kn from the local exchange. However, it is fibre cable most of the way, with a copper length of only 246m for the pair gain infrastructure.

It is said to that to achieve a maximum download speed your upload speed needs to be 10% of your maximum possible download speed. So on a 20Mbps service, you would need 2Mbps upload speed. Of course, various factors influence speeds, so I'm just quoting a general rule of thumb.

We'll see if this lasts, but at this point in time, for a plain ADSL 1 connection this is looking really good.

And now that we have proof that good speeds are achievable here.. I can try and move to TPG whose pricing is much better than iiNet's.

Tanya