Line attenuation at 85dB?

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#109952 11-Feb-2008 18:26

STI: I will try the FS/FS with Xnet, then will downgrade if I get slow speeds. Is there anything I can do from my side to improve line attenuation, like rewiring the house? Can I expect faster speeds when the ADSL 2+ connections are enabled?

Install a splitter, a hell of a lot easier than rewiring the house. We are 3k from the exchange, and used to max out at 2.3 megabit for downloads we installed a splitter and now i get 4mbit for downloads. Sync speeds went from 3mbit to 5.7mbit.

All you do is get under the house at the point where the phone line comes up, and cut that. Then you wire all existing phone cabling behind the splitter, and a dedicated ADSL jack comes straight off the line using 2 wires out of a bit of cat5. If you need to move the ADSL stick another jack in.

We know a techy guy who got us the splitter for free from telecom out of a demolished house in corromandel or something, with all the right connection crimper things etc. Apparently its $100 for a telecom guy to install it, and some electronics trade shops sell them

xlinknz: Are you telling me I have to upgrade my plan from FS/128 to FS/FS to improve my download speed on adsl2+

I would be very disappointed to find out that to benefit from adsl2+ I need to spend more money with my ISP ?

Read this

STI

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#109988 11-Feb-2008 21:51

Thanks to everyone who replied. One of the reasons that I didn't go ahead with broadband is the lack of value in earlier ADSL packages. Now that ADSL 2+ is being rolled out it looks like it won't offer me any speed advantage. I guess when one is looking to buy a house they should consider avalability of broadband as well.

I know there are other methods of getting access to high speed internet (such as Woosh, Vodafone/Telecom mobile broadband, satellite etc) but when comparing the speed and data allowance it's hard to compare to ADSL broadband packages.

As I mentioned earlier I will go ahead with a Xnet plan to get a accurate assessment of the speed and the line attenuation. I will update this thread once I get a modem and a broadband connection.

Niel

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#109998 11-Feb-2008 22:23

xlinknz:
Niel:
We are in Edgewater Pakuranga about 3.5km from the exchange and get 7Mbps with XNet. We are now on FS/FS. Before we were on FS/128k and would get 3.5Mbps (the up speed limits the down speed by being slow to return acknowledge packets). My line attenuation is 38dB

Are you telling me I have to upgrade my plan from FS/128 to FS/FS to improve my download speed on adsl2+

I would be very disappointed to find out that to benefit from adsl2+ I need to spend more money with my ISP ?

Going to FS/FS does not give you an improvement on ADSL2+, it simply overcomes a limitation due to the TCP/IP protocol.

What people are missing is that the big benefit of ADSL2+ over ADSL1 is not simply faster speeds. There are 2 steps going from ADSL1 to ADSL2+. The first is ADSL1 to ADSL2 which gives you dynamic adjustment of transmitting power to reduce crosstalk from short cables where high power is not needed. There are other advantages, but that is the main one. The second is from ADSL2 to ADSL2+ which uses double the bandwidth which in useful only for short distances before the losses at high frequencies become too large. So as more and more people switch to ADSL2+, the quality of your connection improves.

If anyone (e.g. STI) is interested, I'm about to remove my 6 month old central splitter. I am now on XNet Fusion (naked DSL) and don't need the filter any more. It is dry and in my roof, exactly the same D-Link filter as what Telecom installs. Simply PM me if you are interested, $20 plus postage. They are around $45 new.

You can never have enough Volvos!

eXDee

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#110002 11-Feb-2008 22:40

I thought that this was the only one that telecom allowed? A site selling them states "Currently the only Telecom NZ approved ADSL Splitter"

Niel

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#110255 12-Feb-2008 22:48

When I intalled mine the only one listed by Telepermit was the D-Link DSL-10SP and that is what I've got. I'm interested to know what is being sold as the only Telecom approved filter. Can you please post a link to the site? Thanks.

You can never have enough Volvos!

eXDee

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#110273 12-Feb-2008 23:21

Refer here: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?ForumId=49&TopicId=10572

Niel

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#110307 13-Feb-2008 04:13

Ah, that central splitter is from Marque Magnetics which is an NZ company. They must have gotten a contract with Telecom. Our company deals a lot with them and they do good work. A bit pricey, but good.

You can never have enough Volvos!

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kingoe

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#112620 24-Feb-2008 10:41

Attenuation is basically the loss over distance from you to the exchange. Other factors is any noise on the line commonly.
If I was you try logging to your router, get your downstream rate so say 5000Mb. Then do a speedtest, also ping the DNS servers of your ISP via command line/terminal, see how great the response time is in 'ms'.

You could go wireless as a final option, but people like Woosh may not have plans suited for you.
In my pick these are the ISP's probably best to go with (I live in Auckland, so based of my experiences, could replace Ihug with TelstraClear if in Wellington possibly):

XNet, Ihug, Woosh.

Xnet, do I need to explain much more, only downside is extra usage charges etc if you download alot.
Ihug, since Vodafone's takeover you could expect them to be the first ISP to obtain independant DSLAM's.
Woosh, best all rounder when it comes to wireless if the copper cable infrastructure sucks where you live, otherwise move house.

JoeRandom

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#113511 28-Feb-2008 11:57

STI: I guess when one is looking to buy a house they should consider avalability of broadband as well.

Amen to that. Just with me renting / flatting I shall be checking to see what speed i shall be getting before I commit to a place and I will also be checking to make shore I will not get the "I'm sorry that exchange is currently full"

heretohelp

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#115912 11-Mar-2008 10:45

im with xnet, my exchange is about 4km - 5kim away, my modem states 64db (modems are unreliable for this though) and im still syncing to the exchange at 6600kbs i get around 5.5mb down at the speedtest.net site. duno if that helps but xnet dont have any contracts so you could try it then change it to the lower one if you having slow speeds any way

Hu? did i do that?
16Mb (EDO RAM), K6-II processor, 2Mb of onboard graphics. 32k dial up modem. 12 speed CD ROM. 5¼-inch floppy drive. 500Mb HDD.

heretohelp

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#115914 11-Mar-2008 10:47

i once had a database that i downlaoded off the net that told you what exchange you were connected to, you look up first three numbers then find the exchange id, then you took that exchange id and looked it up on another database and that told you the location of the exchange you were connected to. you may be able to find those two data bases by doing a google search. hyope that helps

Hu? did i do that?
16Mb (EDO RAM), K6-II processor, 2Mb of onboard graphics. 32k dial up modem. 12 speed CD ROM. 5¼-inch floppy drive. 500Mb HDD.

heretohelp

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#115915 11-Mar-2008 10:53

you mentioned house was 1950's check the wiring in the house if post run some fresh stuff, i rewired my house and got an extra 1.5mb down sync to the exchange, wasnt helping that sombody had soldered the wires together instead of useing the correct joints. worth a look not hard to chuck in new wiring, putting in 2 wire instead of 3 wire helps and its a sinch to do all you need to do is replace the sockets, find where the master socket is and replace the master socket with a spliter box or just some joints bingo, if you are gana do that just use cat 5 i didnt use new wire i just converted from 3 wire to two wire and took out dodgy soldering thanks

Hu? did i do that?
16Mb (EDO RAM), K6-II processor, 2Mb of onboard graphics. 32k dial up modem. 12 speed CD ROM. 5¼-inch floppy drive. 500Mb HDD.

cranz

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#115916 11-Mar-2008 10:54

You can find what exchange you're on here but as for the location Telecom doesn't publically release this information (and for good reasons) but they're not to hard to find

weblordpepe

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#116013 11-Mar-2008 20:20

STI:
No one could actually tell me the distance, but one representative told the line attenuation is 85dB (He couldn’t confirm which frequency this attenuation figure is measured at).

1024KHz. You can email broadbandcheck@telecom.co.nz and ask for the distance/dB etc.

STI

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#116022 11-Mar-2008 21:19

BrendonGyde: im with xnet, my exchange is about 4km - 5kim away, my modem states 64db (modems are unreliable for this though) and im still syncing to the exchange at 6600kbs i get around 5.5mb down at the speedtest.net site. duno if that helps but xnet dont have any contracts so you could try it then change it to the lower one if you having slow speeds any way

Thanks Brendon. I have found these stats about my line,

Distance: 2891.9 m
Resistance: 793.5 Ohm
78.10 dB

so it seems our house may have some bad wiring/connections. I bought a Linksys WAG200G from Dicksmith and will be signing up with Xnet soon. As several people have pointed out this is the only reliable way as to find out what sort of synchronous rate I can attain with the local exchange.

Btw how long does it take to get an ADSL connection with Xnet after signing up? Currently I only have rental telephone connection with Telecom and a dialup account with ihug.

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