UberNoob Posted January 13, 2011 Share Posted January 13, 2011 My internet at the moment is really crappy, even though it is ADSL2+. I'm supposed to be getting 20000kb down and 4000 up, but it's only about a 10th of that. I called up my ISP (Optus Australia), and they said the reason was because I'm too far away from the exchange, hence the sluggish speeds. I was wondering if I'm able to check what speeds other ISPs would deliver to my house? Or is this not possible? ty Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HX1 Posted January 13, 2011 Share Posted January 13, 2011 Are you positive first off that your not exchanging the two terms kbps and KBps?And my first point of advise would be to look for the nearest provider.. Unless your out somewhere its not really going to matter..I would know how to test for the fastest DNS with namebench.. but its not really going to tell you the quality of your connection with each provider at all.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UberNoob Posted January 13, 2011 Author Share Posted January 13, 2011 Yes sorry I meant kbps. I've attached a picture that has all my info if you would care to take a look. Isn't this a slow connection? I'm pretty sure it should be faster, I live only 6 miles from the CBD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HX1 Posted January 13, 2011 Share Posted January 13, 2011 Your speeds match mine.. its about $20-30 a month.. American Dollars.. mine are at about 1537 and 500 something close ... My Service tech took a short connection loose in the box and actually cut a bunch of 'loop Feet' out of the line... All of the poles and lines are old as they can be though.. My ISP advertises them as 1.5 MBps lines... for like 5 or 10 more you go 3 then 6.. then you hit business packages.. where you actually have upload speed... I am about ten times the distance from mine.. and it services many small towns and communities in the area... but if your ISP is advertising the same and that is what your getting.. don't too disappointed.. because thats about right.. The numbers you posted above roughly translate into Business account numbers.. and would run in the neighborhood of 400 a month... something low-end hardware can't even handle well.. or utilize on its own..EDIT: and don't worry I was about to pick the phone or drive to their office and rip someone a new holes or two.. over it before I realized or had it explained to me so many years ago.. it would be nice to actually have the public utilities that would handle it correctly and not get what still feels and seems to be a tenth of what we pay for.. 1.5 MBps = 150 KBps = 1500kbpsDTA Extension in FF was the first thing that made me think something was wrong because it used a different scale from my router..You can also make sure you have your filters on all of your lines in the house... don't have a lot of electrical interference from other devices and make sure you do not run any lines together with anything else for more than 3 FT... small tips but some guidelines that can help with killing the interfernce of line connections.. and Wireless connections can be tuned in by using something like InsSider in conjunction with your router settings to help you attenuate a good stable output and a frequency number that will not get much interference.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UberNoob Posted January 13, 2011 Author Share Posted January 13, 2011 Thank you so much heath. That was really helpful. I will take everything on board and do what everything in my power to optimize my connection! (without ripping someone a new one :) ) cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HX1 Posted January 13, 2011 Share Posted January 13, 2011 BTW the way you might want to remove the image above as you have exposed your MAC Address and several other small bits of info that you may not want publicized.. and Glad to have helped.. :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UberNoob Posted January 13, 2011 Author Share Posted January 13, 2011 ok. thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeetPirate Posted January 13, 2011 Share Posted January 13, 2011 All ISP advertise speeds in kilobits per second (kbps) but to convert that to something meaningful to the user, you must divide it by 8 to get kilo bytes per second (kBps). 1500kbps = 187.5kBps, not 150kBps.ADSL2+ is distance related by design, you must be aware of this before signing up for the account. The ISP technician will usually do a line test and tell you if you can achieve the maximum speed you want to pay for else they would advise to take a lower package.You can also check this yourself by going into your modem's web setup page and looking at the adsl statistics. Look for attainable rate and rate, yea although it's called attainable rate you cannot attain it :D you can only attain the speed listed under "rate" or sometimes called current rate. All the numbers are in the adsl statistics page for your modem. If the rate is less than what you pay for then you should lower your package and save some money instead of paying for what cannot reach your house.If you want to optimise your dsl line, the first thing you do is calculate the ringer equivalence total for all your passive telephone line devices and ensure they don't cross the total for your phone company, typically the max ringer equivalence is 5. You can look at the sticker under your phones in your house and see the ringer equivalence number, most phones are around 1.1B. I'm talking about passive phones here, not cordless ones that plug into the power outlets. Each line filter you add is also about 0.1B or 0.2B so the more you add, the higher your total ringer equivalence becomes. Ringer Equivalence just relates to the amount of load on the line. I find that global voice filtering works best as it only relies on 1 filter so adds the least load to the line.If your phone lines are run parallel to power lines then you most surely have EMI problems and you may want to change your phone line to your modem from straight cable to cat5 twisted pair. If you live very far from the adsl exchange then using twisted pair cable can be a double edge knife or whatever the expression because twisted pair is many times longer than straight cable so you need to know if you really need the EMI protection on the line. If your house is close to the adsl exchange then using twisted pair cable is always a better choice since the added cable length is insignificant.Honestly I find the distance factor in adsl to be minor as most reliable ISPs use fibre optic cables to "bring the exchange closer" to the customer. That's what the ISP did in my country, alot of customers live too far to use adsl2+ so the ISP used fibre optic cables to connect the adsl exchange to smaller stations along the way and customer lines run to those smaller stations so their distance to the exchange is effectively decreased many times over. In fact I was surprised to see that the connection quality by some customers 2 miles further down the road from my house having a higher rate than I.There is another problem potentially preventing the ISP from doing this, sometimes they add voice coils on the phone line to improve the telephone voice capabilities, that's old tech on older lines but it is a hurdle as those voice coils help improve voice performance but they impede adsl performance. If you have done everything you possibly could do at your end and still do not get satisfactory speed then the last thing to try is switching ISP. :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UberNoob Posted January 13, 2011 Author Share Posted January 13, 2011 thanks for that very informative post LeetPirate, I'll look into it. Australia is upgrading it's infrastructure to fiber optic over the next couple of years, as we don't have it yet sadly :( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.