How does distance affect speed?

[dan]

Hello.

I'm thinking of switching over from Comcast, but "Your location is about 9870 feet from our local serving office."

I don't really know what this means. I'm assuming it degrades over distance, but from that distance, will I have very low speeds? Starting from a possible 20mbps, what would I be down to?

[cdkeen]

At a distance of 9870 feet estimated download speeds will be between 5 to 6 mbps.

*NOTE* Estimated speeds provided are calculated based on data collected from all Fusion circuits and are provided as estimates only.

Data Source: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r269108 ... ance-chart

[toddfx]

I think my support emails are getting eaten by a spam filter so I wonder if you can help me out.

Two weeks weeks ago I had problems with sporadic drops and it looks like sonic fixed it by throttling my line down to about 2Mbps. A few days ago I saw an AT&T truck working on a pole down the street and it looks like my line is a lot better (if you guys rolled the truck, thanks!). I used to have a max rate of ~900/~6000 and now it's 1228/14396. Is there anything I need to do on my side to crank up my bandwidth? I've tried restarting the router.

Line Info:

Your location is about 5000 feet from our local serving office.

Line Status:Connected
DSL Modulation Type:ADSL_2plus
Annex Type:Annex A/L/M

Upstream Current Rate (Kbps) 892
Downstream Current Rate (Kbps) 2300

Upstream Max Rate (Kbps) 1228
Downstream Max Rate (Kbps) 14396

Upstream SNR Margin (dB) 16.6
Downstream SNR Margin (dB) 20.1

Upstream Line Attenuation (dB) 20
Downstream Line Attenuation (dB) 38.7

Upstream Errors (Pkts) 0
Downstream Errors (Pkts) 0

Router:
300Mbps Wireless N Gigabit ADSL2+ Modem Router
Model No. TD-W8970

[toddfx]

Whoa! And like magic I'm up to 11996/1084.

Thanks Mr Wizard!

[thulsa_doom]

I used to have a max rate of ~900/~6000 and now it's 1228/14396. Is there anything I need to do on my side to crank up my bandwidth? I've tried restarting the router.

The cap on your line was hard-set on our side, so powercycling your device wouldn't make a difference. I poked at your line a bit and got you up to 11,998kbps down / 1084kbps up with numbers that I'm cautiously optimistic will be stable.

[exile]

How does one find out if there is a cap on the line and what the line might be capable of?

I migrated from legacy DSL to Fusion a couple of years ago. As I recall, when I tested the link early on,I got around 7Mbps down. That is better than I had with ADSL1 but not exactly the smoking rates I had hoped for.

My line went to hell over the weekend. After the truck roll, I now sync at 6Mbps. Almost normal and no better than I had with ADSL1.

[thulsa_doom]

How does one find out if there is a cap on the line and what the line might be capable of?

I migrated from legacy DSL to Fusion a couple of years ago. As I recall, when I tested the link early on,I got around 7Mbps down. That is better than I had with ADSL1 but not exactly the smoking rates I had hoped for.

My line went to hell over the weekend. After the truck roll, I now sync at 6Mbps. Almost normal and no better than I had with ADSL1.

We don't have any direct visibility on speed caps for customers, but it looks like your line has been at 6mbps since late June of last year. As a general rule, you can tell that your line could be going faster if you reboot your modem and see your Signal to Noise Margin (SNR) at significantly over 6dB. If you're at 6mbps with a 12dB SNR, there's a fair amount of speed available to squeeze out of that circuit without changing anything about the line itself. If you're at 6mbps with a 5.3dB SNR, you're pushing the current capacity of your line and something will have to change about your circuit to get any appreciable improvement.

The only reason I mention the reboot is that sometimes a line will retrain to a lower speed when there's a disturbance and never train back up to a prior speed. Rebooting the modem causes it to determine its maximum speed from scratch.

[virtualmike]

The only reason I mention the reboot is that sometimes a line will retrain to a lower speed when there's a disturbance and never train back up to a prior speed. Rebooting the modem causes it to determine its maximum speed from scratch.

I've had success by unplugging the phone cord until the modem starts retraining, and then replugging it. That seems to work as well, but takes much less time.

[exile]

As a general rule, you can tell that your line could be going faster if you reboot your modem and see your Signal to Noise Margin (SNR) at significantly over 6dB. If you're at 6mbps with a 12dB SNR, there's a fair amount of speed available to squeeze out of that circuit without changing anything about the line itself. If you're at 6mbps with a 5.3dB SNR, you're pushing the current capacity of your line and something will have to change about your circuit to get any appreciable improvement.

I'm showing about 7db +- 0.1db

I guess that's not much to work with.