Internet Too Fast ?

[Seismic]

I started with 1MB with True a few years ago here in bang Phli, I must admit I never had any problems at all. I then upgraded to 2MB, and added my own Wifi-N router, again everything was fine. I later increased to 4MB and on occasions my connection would drop out, and then re-connect. At some point it got quite bad and we had the techs from True around, they tried a different modem (i still had my original billion from day 1) , that didnt really improve things so I upgraded all my telephone cabling to shielded wiring and used cat6 ethernet cables, Still had drop-out but it was manageable. A few months ago while I was overseas working my wife got a promotional upgrade to 8 Mb, when I returned home I noted that I was getting lots of drop-out again until it got so bad I could rarely stay connected for more than a few minutes. I got true to send a Line engineer this time as I was convinced that no hardware was to blame (previous techs had scratched there heads and pointed to my Wifi router, my motherboard, my splitter, or anything else they could think of). At last I got someone who seemed to know what he was doing, He told me that the line was good, around 21db atten, and he even checked out the DSLAM and external wires before bothering me. He re-terminated a couple of dodgy connections in my attic, and Internet was back. So he left, ten minutes later it dropped out again so he drove back and lent me his spare modem (again billion but a much newer model), everything seemed Ok again so he left again. Next morning I woke to the same problem. The same guy came back and I showed him a spare DLINK DSL-520B ADSL model i had and I asked if he could set that up to work with my Cisco wrt610N instead of the billion modem, he did and the adsl light was solid again. After he had run speedtest a couple of times and checked the lines again my wife asked him why we didnt see 8MB on speedtest, his reply was "not possible here in Bang Phli, only Bang Na, here you can only have 4MB", my wife showed him our bills showing 8MB plan, and he told us that we should go and ask for some money back. We have just got 8 months free telephone and 2 months free Internet from True after they confirmed that 8MB isnt available here. Since they dialled back my internet to 4MB it has been rock solid. So my question for anyone still reading this novel is, could their trying to push 8mb to me have caused, or been a large factor, in the constant dropping out of my adsl signal ??

regards

[Pib]

Yes, it could have been. It's not uncommon for areas to be limited to a max speed. For example, here in my western Bangkok moobaan, TOT owns the phone lines. 6Mb is the max speed they provide to my moobaan and they say it's simply because of the length of the lines to the central station/DSLAMs from the moobaan and type of DSLAMs they are using. Almost 3 years ago, the max speed was 2Mb...and up to a year ago the max speed was 4Mb...TOT has slowly been upgrading their central station/DSLAMs because the lines ain't getting any shorter to the same central station where the DSLAM bank is located.

You didn't mention what your Signal to Noise (SNR) ratio was. It's not uncommon for Attenuation to be fine but the SNR to be crappy due to noisy lines, improperly terminated lines, etc. These lines problems can be leading to your residence and/or occur after the line enters your residence.

[thailandbluegrass]

I'm no expert but if they gave you a package of 8Mb and there was only 4Mb available that would surely mix the signal up as the modem is both Transmiter and receiver.

2) Is your connection un-secured? That would allow neigbours to take some of your signal strength away

3) TIT

haha sorry.

[bangkokburning]

I had the exact same issue. Data drops while remaining connected. This did it for me:

http://www.thaivisa....-data-dropouts/

Yes, documentation says USB modem and unlikely you have router hooked up via USB but the web is crawling with angry people with this issue connecting to Internet in variety of ways.

Edited February 11, 2011 by bangkokburning

[lomatopo]

I'm not sure that the provisioning (i.e., setting it up for 8 Mbps, among other things) was the cause of the problem. The DSLAM port, essentially a modem, should negotitate with the modem in your home based on a number of factors (settings on both ends, specifically modulation; line characteristics) to a certain data rate. It sounds like the OP was experiencing a loss of synchronization, which is typically due to problems (too many to mention) in the modem, the DSLAM or the physical wiring. Swapping in the "...spare DLINK DSL-520B ADSL model..." solved the problem, so the cause seems pretty obvious.

[Darrel]

The point about ADSL is that the further you go from the DSLAM (exchange), and the thinner/crappier your line, the slower your sync speed. True will happily sell you a faster maximum speed but if the guy says that your part of town is too far away to get it then that is probably the case, until they move the exchange or give you thicker copper. Cleaning up corroded contacts etc etc can also have a good effect, for the same reason. Changing the filter also, or fitting a master filter if you have more than one phone. And some modems are more or less sensitive than others.

As you get towards the physical limit of the line between you and the exchange the connection will get less and less stable at higher speeds. The easy (cheap!) solution for the provider is to reduce the sync speed to a point where it doesnt disconnect and in the West this is often done automatically by DLM (dynamic line management) at the exchange which gives you a slower but stable connnection. They still bill you for "up to" xMbits of course.