LHector:

We got any tech boffins here?

I'm in a new build development site, I have Sky Broadband at the maximum level and yet despite the fact that my setup is no different from the average user and my building should have up to date cabling, Sky claim I can only manage UP TO 2MB?!!?

WHAT?!!

I live in Portsmouth, I'm not even what more than 1.5 miles away from the main Exchange in Portsmouth and yet I get a worse speed here than I do living in a rural town.

I can't believe Sky even think of charging money for speed this bad. Do we have any tech boffins that know how to reset routers or tinker with internet options lalala to get my speed up to what it should be, such as at least up to 5-6MB?

While not a boffin, I can perhaps shed some light on SKY BB and how it doesn't always works as expected.

First off does SKY have it's own equipment in your local exchange? If the answer is no, you will never get the speeds you are expecting. A neighbour near to me had this problem, but could only get 1.3mbs in the evening, but 6.7mbs during the day, she was promised up to 20mbs!. Reason was it's a BT exchange and equipment and at 5.30pm BT restrict the speed to 1.7 or thereabouts to non BT customers. You can check your phone line download speeds at www.speedchecker.bt.com do it in the daytime and in the evening to get the picture!
Said neighbour managed to get out of the Broadband deal but is stuck with the phoneline. She has gone back to Virgin.

Happily I'm with Virgin and on a cable connection that works wonderfully well!

LHector:

We got any tech boffins here?

I'm in a new build development site, I have Sky Broadband at the maximum level and yet despite the fact that my setup is no different from the average user and my building should have up to date cabling, Sky claim I can only manage UP TO 2MB?!!?

WHAT?!!

I live in Portsmouth, I'm not even what more than 1.5 miles away from the main Exchange in Portsmouth and yet I get a worse speed here than I do living in a rural town.

I can't believe Sky even think of charging money for speed this bad. Do we have any tech boffins that know how to reset routers or tinker with internet options lalala to get my speed up to what it should be, such as at least up to 5-6MB?

While not a boffin, I can perhaps shed some light on SKY BB and how it doesn't always works as expected.

First off does SKY have it's own equipment in your local exchange? If the answer is no, you will never get the speeds you are expecting. A neighbour near to me had this problem, but could only get 1.3mbs in the evening, but 6.7mbs during the day, she was promised up to 20mbs!. Reason was it's a BT exchange and equipment and at 5.30pm BT restrict the speed to 1.7 or thereabouts to non BT customers. You can check your phone line download speeds at www.speedchecker.bt.com do it in the daytime and in the evening to get the picture!
Said neighbour managed to get out of the Broadband deal but is stuck with the phoneline. She has gone back to Virgin.

Happily I'm with Virgin and on a cable connection that works wonderfully well!

LHector:

We got any tech boffins here?

I'm in a new build development site, I have Sky Broadband at the maximum level and yet despite the fact that my setup is no different from the average user and my building should have up to date cabling, Sky claim I can only manage UP TO 2MB?!!?

WHAT?!!

I live in Portsmouth, I'm not even what more than 1.5 miles away from the main Exchange in Portsmouth and yet I get a worse speed here than I do living in a rural town.

I can't believe Sky even think of charging money for speed this bad. Do we have any tech boffins that know how to reset routers or tinker with internet options lalala to get my speed up to what it should be, such as at least up to 5-6MB?

While not a boffin, I can perhaps shed some light on SKY BB and how it doesn't always works as expected.

First off does SKY have it's own equipment in your local exchange? If the answer is no, you will never get the speeds you are expecting. A neighbour near to me had this problem, but could only get 1.3mbs in the evening, but 6.7mbs during the day, she was promised up to 20mbs!. Reason was it's a BT exchange and equipment and at 5.30pm BT restrict the speed to 1.7 or thereabouts to non BT customers. You can check your phone line download speeds at www.speedchecker.bt.com do it in the daytime and in the evening to get the picture!
Said neighbour managed to get out of the Broadband deal but is stuck with the phoneline. She has gone back to Virgin.

Happily I'm with Virgin and on a cable connection that works wonderfully well!

There is a master socket, I will give it a try tonight or tomorrow depending on time as I'm revising.

This is why I hate builders and contractors, they never do anything right! How hard can it be to wire up a new flat with a decent cable and not make it 20 million miles long? The fact is that my connection is not around 2meg its 3/4 of a meg! It's pathetic and I can't live with such slow speeds.

Assume that's LLU then, in which case if that attenuation figure is correct around 2 meg is about right and unless they have you on a Dynamically Managed line you would need sky to adjust your profile manually. Stability might be a problem though.

If you haven't already then connect your router to the test socket behind the master faceplate (lower half removeable).

See if figures improve ie. attenuation reduces and or connection rate increases and noise margin reduces. Test socket eliminates household wiring which may be iffy. BT supply bits to housing contractors now and they wire things up.

May well be you have an external nte5 box if it's a new build in which case there isn't any facility to use test socket AFAIK.

It's Sky Broadband Unlimited.

Downstream attenuation 61.5 db indicates very long line. http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/adslchecker.php gives estimated direct and by road distance from exchange.

In saying that downstream noise margin at 19.8 db is high and hence connection rate low. Try getting those stats immediately after a reboot, that will give default downstream noise margin. Rebooting around 1000 hrs will give higher speed than rebooting late at night.

Are you on sky connect or LLU?

Here are some of the stats.

PORT STATUS TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time

WAN PPPoA 351399 322724 0 0 131 49:39:48
LAN 12375901 10082949 0 0 0 264:19:38
WLAN 2985 397 0 0 0 264:19:10

ASDL Link Downstream Upstream

Connect Speed 714kbps 605 kbps
Line Attenuation 61.5db 34.9 db
Noise Margin 19.8 db 11.2 db

I only live like a mile from the exchange, it's hardly a marathon distance, but my friends who live further away get higher speeds than I do easily.

You need to get the line stats from your router - http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/frogstats.php . Downstream attenuation on it's own will give a rough idea of speeds you could get as that's a measure of line length from exchange so if it's in the high 50s then 2 meg+ is about right.

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/socket.htm has hints on how to improve your line.

Distance from exchange is what counts so immaterial if it's a rural or urban area. We have relatives living on the West Coast of Scotland miles from anywhere but happen to live next to the exchange and get the full 8 meg. We live in a major city and get 4 meg.

Sky charge for an "upto" rate as do others, just depends on location and there's nothing that can be done about that apart from moving house.

Coz that's what I've been used to with every other broadband setup I've had including Sky. If anything my setup now should be more efficient!

It's not giving me 2mb download speed, thats just the connection speed, at any time other than early morning hours I'm lucky to download at more than 50kb a sec and streaming vids keep intermittently pausing/refreshing or something. I'm fortunate that I can at least have some ok pings in games though, but still for unlimited broadband, I'm dissapointed.

You can contact BT or whoever does the phone line and you can try different providers. My opinion is that it's better not to commit to anything long term until you've given the service a try. There are loads of broadband deals available for a month at a time.

If you've got a connection that gives you 2Mbs, you shouldn't be grumbling in my view. My "7.2Mbs" mobile broadband occasionally tops 1Mbs and I let out yelps of joy when it happens. Why are you expecting 5-6 Mbs?

We got any tech boffins here?

I'm in a new build development site, I have Sky Broadband at the maximum level and yet despite the fact that my setup is no different from the average user and my building should have up to date cabling, Sky claim I can only manage UP TO 2MB?!!?

WHAT?!!

I live in Portsmouth, I'm not even what more than 1.5 miles away from the main Exchange in Portsmouth and yet I get a worse speed here than I do living in a rural town.

I can't believe Sky even think of charging money for speed this bad. Do we have any tech boffins that know how to reset routers or tinker with internet options lalala to get my speed up to what it should be, such as at least up to 5-6MB?