Interleaving - does it affect line rate AND ping?

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Ben

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#13756 28-May-2007 09:59

Ok so interleaving is turned off on my telstraclear ADSL connection in Te Atatu.
I didn't request it, but it makes for a nice fast ping in games.

My line rate fluctuates between 2000 & 2300, with attenuation up around 55dB.
I've installed a splitter and new, clean wiring from the entry point. I've even jacked the adsl modem from one direct run from the entry point with no other jackpoints connected as an experiment, but didn't get any increase in line speed.

Question: if I turn interleaving off, what sort of ping hit will I get? 10ms? 50ms?
And will it noticeably improve my line rate?

My reason for asking is that I can regularly max out bittorrent at 200-230kbps, so any increase in line rate will directly improve my bittorrent download speeds.

Thanks!

grant_k

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#72483 28-May-2007 10:38

One of the "Pros" here such as Barf, Fraktul, Juha et al will no doubt correct me if I'm wrong, but as I recall:

1) Turning off Interleaving will reduce your PING by around 30 or 40ms
2) You should also get a small improvement in line rate (in my case it was about 10%)

HOWEVER, there is a price to be paid in terms of reliability:

3) If your line rate is only 2000 to 2300kbps, it indicates that you are quite a long way from the exchange (or roadside cabinet). Either that, or your line is of poor quality.

In the olden days, Telecom would not do an ADSL install if they couldn't see at least a 2000kbps sync rate on your line. With so many more people using broadband these days, and so many people taking the self-install option, that policy seems to be no longer in effect. Now you pay your money and take what you get.

4) Additionally, turning off interleaving makes you much more prone to line errors, and given your low sync rate, it is not something I would recommend in your case.

Line Errors will slow down most activities on your connection because they necessitate retries i.e. packet was corrupted, please send it again. This is what happens with HTTP and e-mail protocols such as POP/SMTP. I am not sure what happens with Bit Torrents although presumably there is a similar mechanism in place. With other "non-guaranteed" protocols such as UDP, the erroneous packets are simply discarded so you lose the data completely. This will cause dropouts in VoIP conversations for example.

There's a few points for you to consider Ben.

Cheers,
Grant.

Ben

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#72493 28-May-2007 11:17

Sweet thanks for the info Grant. Just what I was looking for.

I might call up Telstra (IF I can get through) and see what it takes to switch interleaving, and perhaps try with it off for a month. I'm not a competitive gamer, so I'm not to concerned about an extra 40ms... Bittorrent is very capable of dealing with missing data (eveything is broken up into small chunks, so the worst case is going to be a re-send of a corrupted chunk), so it's worth a crack I believe.

And yeah I'm miles from the exchange/cabinet. Te Atatu is notorious for exchange congestion and long runs from cabinets.

B