ADSL - Do you get the performance you're paying for?

Technology
1

As many people know, ADSL performance depends very much on the cabling between your property and the 'exchange'. (In an increasing no. of cases, the 'exchange' is no more than a roadside cabinet, but it doesn't change the principle.) There are, however, some 'gotchas' inside your property that can significantly degrade your internet performance, and over which you have control.


Those with an interest in these things should search on both French and International websites. My intention here is not to re-invent the wheel & provide an exhaustive list of everything that can be done to improve things, but more to raise awareness of possible issues internal to a given property. Example sites are //blogs.cio.com/internet/17289/dsl-connection-too-slow-heres-how-speed-it & //www.degroupnews.com/dossier/a3-nettoyer-sa-ligne-adsl-condensateur/#


There are two main things that users here in France should consider: a). Check for a '3-legged monster' where the phone line enters your property and/or on all telephone sockets; & b). Disconnect any cable links to phone sockets that are no longer used. For the really keen, the internal telephone cable could also be replaced by one of the pairs of a Cat 3 or better cable.


The 3-legged monster is shown clearly on the degroupnews.com site mentioned above. Such an item probably doesn't exist on a line that was only originally installed in the last 10 years or so, but could well be there on anything older. Mine wasn't on any phone socket, but in the connection box where the FT line connects to the house phone wiring. My ADSL performance went up by about 20% when I removed this so-and-so.


Item b). relates to disconnecting cable "spurs" which no longer serve any purpose. Before the days of DECT phones giving cordless cover over a wide area, a house might have several phone sockets. Perhaps one in the hall, one in the kitchen, one in a bedroom & another in the study. With a cordless phone in a single location, which is probably also where the ADSL 'box' (router) lives, some or all of the others might become redundant. Those open cable ends effectively bounce back the high frequency ADSL signals, which degrades the 'real' signal by increasing the 'noise'. Noise is something you don't want, as your performance is directly linked to the SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio) - which you might have seen if you've ever looked at the Internet diagnostics of your box. If you can, disconnect links to phone sockets that are not in use, though you mustn't, of course disconnect the incoming pair. Assuming you don't have anything weird like an independent bell, phone (+ ADSL) service only needs a pair of wires, which are usually one grey and one white in France. Disconnecting any of these temporarily is no big deal and the voltage is only a maximum of about 50 volts.


There can be various issues along the route, and no-one should touch cabling unless they're confident that they can return the wiring to its original state if necessary. (Taking photos before changing anything is recommended.) If you have burglar alarm or other emergency systems that use your landline, you must also know how to test that the emergency system still operates after wiring changes have been carried out.


The best approach is to first test your ADSL throughput so as you know where you started from. (mire.sfr.fr if you are an SFR customer, http://www.degrouptest.com/test-debit.php for anyone.) Switch off your router & then make the changes that seem sensible. Then switch the router back on. If it doesn't synchronize, you've probably disconnected the incoming pair. If so, switch off & make appropriate adjustments. When the router does synchronize & you get your internet service back, retest the ADSL throughput & it should have improved. If you were able to remove a 3-legged monster, it will have probably improved a fair bit. (These tests are rather subjective & depend on a lot of things. I'd prefer to use the before & after SNRs, but that can be a bit complex for most users.)


I'd be interested in learning if anyone else has already gone down this road at all, and whether it helps others as it did me.

2

No ADSL here - much too far away from an exchange. However, I have wimax which (when it isn't playing up) is quite fast and unlimited, and a back-up satellite system using Nordnet, which is very fast, but with limited bandwidth if you exceed your quota. Neither is cheap, in fact for some reason I seem to be paying 10 Euros a month more for my wimax, than do my neighbours who have exactly the same system from the same provider (I've written to the provider about this, but, being a French company, they have deigned to reply). The Nordnet service is double the price of wimax. All in all, broadband around here is mega-expensive.

Chris

3

Interesting. I have two lines into my house because I ran a business or two I really had to have a telephone at least. So I had one FT line (voice only) and the other was in sequence, AOL, Neuf, SFR (as they superseded each other) for voice and ADSL. The latter started well then over a period of 4 years gradually deteriorated until I kept a log of downtime to get recompense. Finally SFR sent a technician round to test it all when I was losing Broadband for hours per day. He found nothing wrong but the problems continued and I cancelled the contract (without having to wait for an annual date as they couldn't provide a service.) All our village lines are underground and I wondered if they were getting wet/damp because I had had that problem in UK with an overhead junction box.

So I transferred to Orange for ADSL and voice, on the FT line, and have not used the second line since. Since that change over a year ago I have only lost Broadband for perhaps 30 mins. I test the speed occasionally and get about 4000+ kbps - enough for HD video. (tested with http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/diagnostics#results)

C'est tout!

4

Yes, I think it’s actually quite sad Brian. When I first worked in France thirty or so years ago they were leaders in ICT. For example they were rolling out Minitel which was a sort of forerunner of the Internet before antone else in Europe. Nowadays it all seems to be about sweating the existing assets to fund high taxes and over staffing.

5

I have no doubt you are right John, I am absolutely without your experience so am accumulating advice. Our friend is also of the opinion that fibre optics are best. The issue for him is that FT, Orange and whoever are not investing here at this point in time and are unlikely to do so for a while. As he said, their priority is to get Bergerac entirely sorted out then begin to work outward from there. Whilst in the IT business he worked for short spells in each Spain and the UK for his company and has a rather critical view of the lack of vision here so that the drive to update quickly elsewhere and in areas other than metropolitan France is not an incentive to wait.

We are also Orange and FT users and actually have no real complaints about what we have. When lightning burned out a cable down the road and did other minor damage a few weeks ago it was repaired in days and then because they went for the obvious damage where a burn was visible missed other damage. As soon as neighbours and we reported problems they were out and have replaced several hundred metres of cabling. So we are not grumbling but looking toward the future ourselves.

6

I’ve been in the ICT industry since '76 Brian and have held positions in IBM from operating systems techie to executive. Based on my experience I’d generally prefer a physical connection to my house. Even over tatty copper good speeds are being achieved these days. By that I mean 5, 10 and even 20 MBS. Over fibre there’s pretty well no practical limit. My own problem is twofold. Firstly distance and, as Peter correctly points out, I need to get Orange to invest to improve things. Secondly, my line isn’t unbundled so I’m stuck with France Telcom. Your pal, since he’s in a town, should have access to very high speeds without having to resort to a satellite.

7

Our friend who used to be in the IT industry before changing to teaching is now able to take an impartial, independent look at it. Having been in the business he has high expectations so does his 'homework' before buying. His view is that cable services are only improving where fibre optics are being installed. He is in a sizeable town, he has been self-building his house in which he has been living for a little over a year and his present cabling is therefore 'new'. He says his performance is not impressive. Therefore he is seriously looking at satellite providers. He has dismissed Orange on their poor track record, he suspects that providers like Sat2way or Alsatis will not thrive, despite their claims, he is very uncertain about Nordnet and Bouygues Telecom have a terrible service record for cable services in this area so does not expect their satellite services to be any better. He thinks skyDSL and TOOWAY stand out for him but he is going to take a closer look before deciding. As he said, and it is clearly a good point, no matter how good the provision, it is hardly worth the bother without reliable and quickly available service. That, his research is showing, varies quite a lot from place to place so he says it helps to find users who have had each one for as long as possible, ideally with a full year minimum.

8

Your figures might look 'official' but if you were fortunate enough to get to someone in Orange who knew anything, all you'd probably get would be a Gallic shrug. All ISPs exclude any performance guarantees for the Internet in general, as they have absolutely no control over it. The fact that you experienced enormous latency to a particular site on a particular day is almost certainly outside their control. It could be caused by a problem with one of perhaps 20 routers between you and that site, or with the communication links between them. It may be that the SamKnows box has "been approved by governments and academics" but it isn't measuring anything that any ISP is going to take responsibility for. (I've just signed up to their scheme, as it has a use, but that isn't likely to be beating ISPs over the head!)

All that you can expect from Orange (or any ISP) is that they'll give you a reasonably reliable link between your property and the rest of the Internet. Pretty well everybody has experienced problems with particular websites from time to time, and try a couple of other sites to try to see whether or not they have a generic problem. It's Orange's job to keep the generic problems to a minimum, and to investigate any that arise directly from your personal line. That's where your router statistics come in, and I'll try to find the time to post a guide to a) getting hold of them; & b) understanding them.

As for being digitally under-privileged, that arises, as you know, from living out in the countryside. That's why I suggested trying to get politicians involved. As far as Orange are concerned, installation of a cabinet with ADSL capability (a DSLAM, in the jargon) carries costs that need to be justified. Here, as I mentioned, the Ain politicians decided to provide decent broadband capability across the départment. In the more densely populated areas this is done with a fibre network. Elsewhere, they are to install wide area wireless. It will be interesting to see how well it works, but at least there's a willingness to invest in 21st century technologiess for the benefit of the populace.

Love the sound of your internal cables, even if the fibre is a bit OTT. For the distances involved inside a house, cat 5 should easily carry Gigabit service. (Cable specifications are developed for corporate use, where the service has to be guaranteed for 100 metres of cable, with two intermediate connections.)

9

I agree totally that one should have good internal cabling Peter. We have another house that I renovated in 2001 and I used a type of cable I found in the US that has two cat 5, two fibre and two co-ax bundled into one run. That minimised the installation costs so each room has at least one of these cables running from a six way wallplate back to a patch panel in the garage. I never bothered to terminate the fibre because the cat 5 has been more than adequate up to now. The house is pretty well future proofed regarding cabling and all TVs, set top boxes, PCs, routers, etc. talk to one another perfectly. That house has 20 or 30 MB ADSL so no worries. In this house I use ethernet over power to Apple airport boxes in three locations and the WiFi performance is reliable and adequate. Back-up of our laptops and desktop is automatic through these Apple boxes. I'd like to link the two house together for back-ups in the future if I can get more speed here. Unfortunately for the moment my network strangle point is the local ADSL feed. My router's an Orange box and to be honest I haven't delved into it recently because I guess I'm not optimistic about finding any speed through tweaking it. I did join an ongoing European study way back that gives me all the line info I want.

I attach a screen capture of last month......

I hope to hit Orange with this "official" data eventually to prove I'm digitally underprivileged (despite paying top dollar) and get a mini exchange installed nearer our house :-) but given that Orange customer service is next to zero and I'm not holding my breath.

10

John, That's even more reason to ensure that you have the cleanest possible internal wiring. If you could gain just 1 dB, you might get a 50% throughput performance increase.

Do you ever look at the performance statistics on your router? These are especially important when you're in a marginal situation such as yours. I'll post something here about how to do this & what to look for in the alphabet soup of weird initials that routers provide.

Friends of mine were in an even worse situation, were FT/Orange had actually cancelled their ADSL contract as they were having so many problems. We managed to get the system operational, albeit at about your speed, by installing an SFR box in the basement where the phone pair arrived in the property. The internet service was distributed through the (large) house by using Ethernet-over-Power and the SFR analogue telephone service carried to somewhere more convenient using one of the unused pairs from the 4-pair French internal telephone wiring.

Finally, last year, they were connected to the fibre optic system that is being progressively installed in all the communes in our area. That was magic, although the companies providing the service here are quite small and don't have all that much expertise, so there have been plenty of teething problems.

You might ask in your Mairie if there are any similar plans for your area. At least it would provide an expression of interest.

11

Peter, I think the fundamental issue is that if you are more than eight kilometres from your exchange you’re stuffed. We are on the limit and have a barly acceptable half meg. We’r used to 20 meg or LAN speeds so it’s pretty frustrating. OK for email and surfing but not much else.