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tschmidt
MVM
join:2000-11-12
Milford, NH
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tschmidt

MVM

Re: Goodbye FairPoint


speed test 7266/996 kbps
Well I have a week with G4 under my belt and connection has been stable. Same IP address all week even when I rebooted the modem.

Upstream sync rate is stable 996 kbps with 11 dB of margin.

Down stream sync rate varies a little from a low of 6967 kbps to high of 7266 kbps. If you restart the ADSL connection the modem picks the highest possible sync rate appropriate to current line conditions. Even if line conditions degrade a little sync rate is maintained down to 4-6 dB before speed is downshifted. Downstream transmit power is maxed out at 19 dBm so if line condition degrades the only option is to reduce speed. Surprisingly even when margin is poor end-to-end speed testing reflects the current sync rate. Modem is still able to support sync rate at low margin.

ADSL uses DMT, discrete multi tone, to divide available bandwidth into 256 bins. Each bin is 4.3124 kHz wide going up to 1.1 MHz. Each bin can transport a variable number of bits (2-15) depending on line condition. ADSL2+ doubles the upper frequency to 2.2 MHz doubling the number of bins to 511. This modem has an interesting status display showing each bin. Interestingly even though I am pretty far away DSL is able to make use of 22 bins above 1.1Mhz. As to be expected the upper bins are the most variable with least number of bits per bin. The last few days have been cold with a little snow and rain. That ought to be pretty much a worst case test of line quality and stability.

The »speedtest.net result is based on sync speed of 7,266/.996 Mbps. 6.24/.84 Mbps is a nice improvement over our previous 2.88/.68 Mbps.

Interestingly first hop latency is slightly higher than with FairPoint DSL, 28 ms vs 23 ms. I assume that is due to higher modem interleave but I do not know for sure. Neither the modem GUI nor Telnet CLI has any info about interleave. Traceroute shows latency staying at 28 ms throughout the G4 network.

Landline telephone has been uneventful, incoming and outgoing calls work as advertised. Features I asked to be disabled are in fact disabled.

It is funny how greedy one gets when it comes to speed. Being stuck at 3 Mbps for years I constantly though” if only I had a little more speed all would be right with the world.” Well now I have, and quite frankly speed is better than I expected given my distance. But I cannot help myself wishing I had even more. The reality is for how my family and I use the Internet 7 Mbps is fine, even though I cravenly want more. 20 years ago businesses ran their entire operation on 10 Mbps Ethernet.

Given all that is going on in the world this has been a nice Christmas present and I am happy for what I have.

/tom
DrSmith
join:2009-02-16

1 recommendation

DrSmith

Member

Glad this is working out for you. But I will be sorry to see you leave the Fairpoint forum, at least with direct FP knowledge. We have slow FP DSL and are interested in getting a higher speed connection, but have not dared to pull the trigger. Your G4 experience is very enlightening.