Zen Internet Support Forum

Last night was my first night of MaxDSL and I was getting between 2Mbit and 4.3Mbit on www.speedtest.net.  I came home tonight and I can't get over 30kbps when downloading the test files from http://fuller.zen.co.uk/test/.

It's worth noting that, like others, I've been rock solid on 2Mbit for a while now before migrating to MaxDSL.

I've connected my router to the internal socket of my master socket so I've bypassed all of my extensions.

These are my router stats:

 
DSL Status :  Up              
DSL Modulation Mode :       GDMT            
DSL Path Mode :       INTERLEAVED            
Downstream Rate :       8128 Kbps
Upstream Rate :       448 Kbps            
Downstream Margin :       13 db  (this was at 18db when I was on the 2Mbit service)
Upstream Margin :       26 db           
Downstream Line Attenuation :       29            
Upstream Line Attenuation :       13            
Downstream Transmit Power :      

Downstream margin fluctuates between 11db and 13db.  From the estimator I've used (http://212.23.23.177/calc.htm), these stats should be giving me between 2Mbit and 3.5Mbit, not 0.25Mbit.
 
Upstream Margin, Downstream Line Attentuation and Upstream Line Attenuation are almost exactly the same as they were on 2Mbit.

'DSL Path Mode' was 'FAST' last night and I was getting some good >2Mbit downloads.  DSL Path Mode is now 'INTERLEAVE'.  I suspect I've triggered that by moving my router and rebooting it.  (Is that possible?).

Any ideas?  Is this just my training period so I should expect some slow periods?

Support told me to plug my router into the master socket, run a virus scan, run a spyware scan and then reset my router to factory defaults.

At the moment, I'd rather have my solid 2Mbit connection back than flaky 0.25Mbit MaxDSL. 

Regards.

Just an update of my own post. I'm still getting 30kbps (0.25Mbit) and support have told me that this is to be expected and I should wait three days to see if the speed increases.

Support apparently "can't" log this as a fault with BT.   They also told me that there were too many people with Max on my exchange - yet Zen and BT were happy to take the order.

This is my current performance:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtestcomplete.html?id=11655179243134863493

I can upload twice as fast as I can download.  Nice one Zen.  8-)

If you're like I was last week, lurking in these forums pondering if you should upgrade your faultless 2Mbit to MaxDSL - don't do it.

Replying to my own post again, it's therapy. Three days after reaching the dizzy heights of 0.2Mbit I'm now at.... 0.4Mbit, that's roughly 60kbps.

I'm now on Zen's Min-DSL product, £35/month for 60kbps and tech support that basically tells you to wait and see.

I might as well pay some other monkey £10/month for this kind of support.

I wish I'd never migrated from my 2Mbit to this 0.4Mbit service.
 

I wouldn't worry too much at the moment. I was pretty much the same as you - rock solid Home 2000 account and then switched to Max.  First 14 days were terrible, regular re-syncs (always back to 8128/448) and download speeds often as low as 200 k, an all together unpleasant experience.

After 14 days (not the 10 days that is always quoted) my speeds started to pick up and the thing has been pretty damn good ever since.

Biggest problems I have had has been local exchange contention and electrical storms.  My exchange has recently been upgraded and I rarely see below 4 Meg and often into the 6's.  Prior to the upgrade it was a nightmare, down to a crawl at busy periods - and the exchange status was showing green.  A near by thunderstorm resulted in me having to suffer a 192 k connection for 3 days together with interleaving applied.  The speeds recovered automatically after 3 days and I opted out of interleaving.

I know that no two people are the same but I would just hang on in there a bit longer.

Good luck.

Hi

Definitely give it at least 14 days, I no it’s frustrating as we all have gone through this, my average is now 5Megs and highest for me is around 6.7, if your line is stable you should see the same.

I'm considering going from Home 2000 to 8000 Pro. However I'm hoping that I won't have the same problems as I live less than 1/2 a mile from the exchange and it's a small village but we have our own exchange, so maxing it out should not be a problem.

Hi MAC600

I wouldn't bet on not having the same problems. I live less than 1/2 mile from our small rural exchange and also switched from Home 2000 to 8000 Pro.  Our exchange quickly became overloaded with the introduction of Max DSL.  At busy periods I would often see speeds well below 1 Mbps, this was despite the exchange VP status showing green.  The exchange was upgraded in October and the performance has been excellent ever since.  Just done a quick check now and showing a download speed of 6.1 Mbps with three of us online (two of which are gaming).

I think the smaller exchanges were given a correspondingly smaller capacity when they were originally broadband enabled.  I'm not 100% certain but I think some exchanges had as little as 10 Mb capacity - not much if only a few people upgrade to Max.

I guess you already know this and I don't want to offend you by teaching you to suck eggs but if you do go for Max make sure everything is spot on with your own setup.  Max really does show up any weakness.  I have a relatively new house with decent wiring and was using high quality filters on my telephone outlets but still saw a dramatic improvement when I installed a good quality filtered faceplate with a decent quality twisted pair connecting my router (which is remote to my master socket).  And don't count on seeing a dramatic increase in speeds within 3 days or even 10 - it was a full 14 days before my speeds lifted, despite being connected at 8128/448 throughout.

There are generally at least 3 of us using my connection and the most bandwidth we have managed to consume in a month is 27 Gig - that included a couple of decent sized WoW downloads and some 360 demo's.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to put you off Max, it has worked very well for me - especially since the exchange upgrade - just wanted to give you a bit of a heads up with my experience.

Cheers,

Kev

Thanks CarbonCopy and Sibe, it's good to hear that things pick up, much appreciated.

I've been getting frustrated with Zen support really.  I've been paying my £35/month since Jan 2005 for two things 1) unlimited use and 2) the knowledge that Zen had superior support when I needed them.

Now I've been talking to support about MaxDSL I just get the impression that no ISP, not even Zen, can really do anything about connection problems.  I've called them several times over the past week and I wish I had a quid for every time they said "it's BT".

It turns out that my exchange is on 'Red'.  Support told me that today after several days of tring to convince them to log a fault.  They were /very/ reluctant to log a fault despite speeds of 30kbps (thats' roughtly £1 per kbps).  8-) 

Annoyingly, Zen would have known that my exchange was 'Red' when I placed my order so they could have warned me.  Apparently, part of the £35/month deal is that I have to know to check the capacity on my local BT exchange.

Luckily, BT are upgrading my exchange on Friday so on Saturday I'm going to visit Speedtest.net a *lot*... 

It would have been a nice touch for Zen to say "don't migrate to MaxDSL yet, your exchange is Red, wait until 15th December".

Anyway, speeds have picked up today, I'm back up to 1Mbit. 

 

MAC600 - use this site to check your exchange before upgrading, I wish I'd known about it before ordering:

http://status.zensupport.co.uk/exchanges/

Like the others say, it's not everything.  Check your setup, filters, be prepared to run off your master socket test port.

Write Zen support's number on a post-it note.  8-o

Also, check your current router stats using a site like this:

http://212.23.23.177/calc.htm

(The results are only a rough guide though)

Then check back in these forums for therapy if it all goes wrong!
 

 

Have you done a BT Speedtest? not easy I know with speeds like yours!

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Ann [Home Network of 5 PCs] proud owner of one Silver Surfer - BT Voyager 2110