Billion UK Forum

My mum’s on a long line from the local telephone exchange, she is 3.3 km from the exchange and the telephone lines cross over the East Coast Main line train electric lines at a level crossing before reaching her!

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/EMGLINT

Bog standard BT ADSL Max product (so I guess 8 meg max)…

I’ve been trying to eek the absolute maximum out of her line and therefore I figured I’d get her a billion 7800N as from what I read it’s the best of the best when it comes to long lines. Currently she has an el cheapo TP Link which works great, but even if I can get a 1Mbps increase it’d probably be worth it. Frankly it’s not too shabby and there is a part of me that wants to stick to the – if it ain’t broke.. maxim. My question is – if I go to the trouble of putting a billion 7800N in – am I likely to see a small increase in performance or is it unlikely to make a difference / marginal?

Line stats currently with the TP Link…

Wed Dec 4 10:00:04 GMT 2013 : Channel: INTR, Upstream rate = 448 Kbps, Downstream rate = 5120 Kbps

ATTN
Wed Dec 4 10:00:12 GMT 2013 Attn(dB): 45.0 28.0

SNR
Wed Dec 4 10:00:06 GMT 2013 SNR (dB): 9.8 22.0

PWR
Wed Dec 4 10:00:10 GMT 2013 Pwr(dBm): 20.1 12.1

Actual real world performance (i.e speed test).
12/04/13 10:01:46 +0000, Ping: 693.798 ms, Download: 4.14 Mbit/s, Upload: 0.29 Mbit/s

The 7800N's strength is in its ability to sustain a stable connection on a longer line and may sync at a slightly lower speed than the TP-Link, but you would only find what it would sync at by trying it.

BT has a performance tester that you could try but as one of the prep steps is to disable your AV, it may be prudent to run it in Safe Mode with Networking as I would be wary of connecting to the 'net without any protection http://speedtest.btwholesale.com/

I'm with TalkTalk and while their earlier routers could sync at a speed of up to half a meg more than the 7800N, they couldn't hold onto the connection when the SNRM would drop quite low late of an evening - which is why I bought my 7800N.

However, they have since brought out newer routers, one being the D-Link3680 which outperforms the 7800N (surprisingly) both in speed and stability which I found when noticing that the SNRM had dropped to 0.1dB without any loss in browsing performance, whereas the 7800N had been borderline on 0.4 with noticeable lag.

I think the 7800N may be getting a bit long in the tooth now so you may want to check out the later Billion routers as you will see on the forum - along with their problems - but you don't get anyone posting on here unless they do have a problem so there must be many more who are running theirs trouble free.

While you can tweak the SNRM with Billion routers, BT's DLM (can't remember its name) will kick in and drag you back to BT's profile which I think is usually G.Dmt, but you could set the router to just use that mode if that is still their standard profile.

Before any major purchase, you should always check Google for any independent reviews - which is why I bought my 7800N in 2011.

I believe some TP Link routers have a similar Broadcomm chipset to the 7800N e.g. TD-W8960N If you have one of these my guess is you won't see much improvement.

I bought a 7800N because other ADSL routers will connect faster but not hold onto the connection and would drop out (I suspect as well as being long my line is noisy). I can't fault the Billion for that, unlike the Asus N55U I recently tried.

The SNR tweak works well if you have a stable connection, in my case I can get faster speeds but with a less reliable connection so your mileage may vary. I would look at the chipset in the current router and make an informed choice on that basis. No question in my mind that the Billion is great if you have a noisy line but depends what you already have.

Chunks

interesting - thanks for the comments..
current router at my mum's reports to be a BCM96328 Broadband Router (tp link).
I'll try the Billion, it's my cast off (I've gone for a dd-wrt one at home now as i have sky fibre and it seemed a shame that the adsl modem in the billion was just going to waste).
The wifi should be much better on the billion too - guess I'll see how it goes.

if your local dslam is broadcom will be very good with your billion ... to see your local dslam should work "adsl info --vendor" or where adsl may needs adslctl, adslcmd or the telnet command prefix of your modem

Incidentally, crazy and total coincidence but I have a feeling the line has "just" been upgraded to adsl2+ ! Line stats quite different now - happened last day or so... note the big change in stats... still with the TP Link (swapping out for the billion in a couple of weeks)...

SYNC SPEED
OLD: Wed Dec 4 10:00:04 GMT 2013 : Channel: INTR, Upstream rate = 448 Kbps, Downstream rate = 5120 Kbps
NEW: Wed Dec 11 13:00:03 GMT 2013 : Max: Upstream rate = 864 Kbps, Downstream rate = 5780 Kbps # nice increases, especially the Upstream

ATTN
OLD: Wed Dec 4 10:00:12 GMT 2013 Attn(dB): 45.0 28.0
NEW: Wed Dec 11 13:00:12 GMT 2013 Attn(dB): 48.0 29.3

SNR
OLD: Wed Dec 4 10:00:06 GMT 2013 SNR (dB): 9.8 22.0
NEW: Wed Dec 11 13:00:05 GMT 2013 SNR (dB): 8.8 7.9 # MASSIVE DROP IN SNR 22 to 7 ? (why is this)

PWR
OLD: Wed Dec 4 10:00:10 GMT 2013 Pwr(dBm): 20.1 12.1
NEW: Wed Dec 11 13:00:10 GMT 2013 Pwr(dBm): 0.0 12.6 # wierd 0.0 reading...

Actual real world performance (i.e speed test).
OLD: 12/04/13 10:01:46 +0000, Ping: 693.798 ms, Download: 4.14 Mbit/s, Upload: 0.29 Mbit/s
NEW: 12/11/13 12:01:16 +0000, Ping: 699.679 ms, Download: 4.23 Mbit/s, Upload: 0.44 Mbit/s # NOTE UPLOAD SPEED INCREASE!

I did the DSLAM vendor test also..
> adsl info --vendor
adsl: ADSL driver and PHY status
Status: Showtime
Retrain Reason: 0
Last initialization procedure status: 0
Max: Upstream rate = 864 Kbps, Downstream rate = 5780 Kbps
Bearer: 0, Upstream rate = 864 Kbps, Downstream rate = 5227 Kbps

ChipSet Vendor Id: IFTN:0x827a
ChipSet VersionNumber: 0x827a
ChipSet SerialNumber: 2301230123012301230123012301230


Looking forward to seeing what the billion might bring. hopefully better still !

That's quite a high Latency - which location are you using for the speed test.

From the ne of England to Milton Keynes I get ~41ms with a download speed of ~5.8 yet when I use Lisbon my Latency increases to ~80ms and drops my speed to ~2.7.

Its Peterborough to hemel Hempstead... Not far.. I think that latency is a red herring though. If I ping 8.8.8.8 I get 40ms.

Only reason I try to eek the most out of this line (apart from the hell of it and joy of tinkering) is the gains are massive. I mean, at my house I have a FTTC service, sky fibre (misnamed of course as it's copper!) I get real world.. 35meg down 8 up.. A half Meg here or there ain't going to matter much (damn fast anyway). On a rural line.. Going from 5 to 7 Meg... Big performance boost!