Broadband speeds

hamster

Hi,

If you get a 2Mbps connection say with Eircom. Everytime you restart the router (Netopia in this case) - should you always get 2048/256 (kbps)? At the moment I'm getting 512/256 (kbps). I don't mind just now - but would restarting the router help? It was restarted today - as we shut it down last night when we had 2Mbps. Just curious to see how steady these things are.

I'm taking some time to look over Eircom default settings on the Netopia router. Are these generally the best? I guess it best to change the connection to "Always On" for example.

Actually I notice there isn't a sticky here for good net/broadband specific utils here?

One's that I think are good so far are:
NetMeter
NetStumbler

How does boaders manage share broadband evenly when sharing? Is there any recommended software that can either split or monitor the traffic evenly from the router?

Thanks!

MarinoMark

I am on 2mb BB from eircom, on home starter package, I started off on 512 download,128 up. They have upgraded me twice, also on Netopia modem. Generally what you should expect using this http://www.irishisptest.com/myspeed/ is about 1.6/1.7mb Down and roughly about 210 ish up. I think you need to reset your modem and I cant really tell you how to do it. Maybe a more "techie" poster could help you. This post is just to tell you what to expect from a 2mb connection on a netopia modem from eircom, Regards..Mark

hamster

Thanks Mark. I may reset it (the help mentions this is for restoring factory defaults). I haven't tried changing anything yet until I know what it likes best.

The Eircom Netopia's software is quite good in that it provides it stats in an easy manner. Here is my noise ratio and clearly can see the lower 512Kbs connection instead of 2048 last night. Maybe a power down and restart of the router will help. Anyone here think these CRCs are bad? The number is fairly low so I suspect it's nominal.
The Line Attenuation (noise) is 52/31 dB.

Apparently Pctechicians recommend the default channel for wireless to be set to 11. Mine is 7 by default. Anyone swear by this?

The 1.7Mbps speedtest sounds right. I was getting that last night.

hamster

Pity me guys... a simple reset and it's back at 2Mbps! Woohoo! I have been living with dial up since 1995! I'm outta da cage.

MarinoMark

hamster wrote:

Pity me guys... a simple reset and it's back at 2Mbps! Woohoo! I have been living with dial up since 1995! I'm outta da cage.

Go Baby Go....Enjoy..:D

hamster

Heck! Time for bed...early rise for work tomorrow... er today. Roll on the weekend!

Blaster99

You have a poor phone line and it's not unusual for the speeds to fluctuate on lines like that. Resetting the modem usually gets things up to scratch again, as you've noticed. I'm not sure what causes the speed to drop, could be excessive CRC or frame errors on the line that causes both sides to renegotiate to a lower more stable speed.

hamster

Blaster99 wrote:

You have a poor phone line and it's not unusual for the speeds to fluctuate on lines like that. Resetting the modem usually gets things up to scratch again, as you've noticed. I'm not sure what causes the speed to drop, could be excessive CRC or frame errors on the line that causes both sides to renegotiate to a lower more stable speed.

Yeah, actually it was turned on that evening - so it could have been 512Kbps from the word go but a reset from within the Netopia software sorted it out.

To tell you the truth even 512K feels blazing fast (I was still getting around 50K/s) compared to my country ISDN connection (I only use 1 64K channel to keep the phone open - which gives me at best 8 or 9k/s). When I got the 2048K link back I was amazed at rate of 100K/200K coming in. The danger I feel here is to throttle back where ever possible (stop ads taking it and change net radio setting down to a more than acceptable rate of ISDN quality - I don't need a 256K+ rate for radio unless it's music - and even then it would be preferable to store off line for better longterm use).