Found the below and thought it might help somebody.
Optimising ADSL2 and VDSL service performance
Optimising ADSL2 and VDSL service performance
The List Of Things To Try
Try power cycling your ADSL2+ router
This might sound elementary, but some routers are running software and hardware that is less than perfect and that can develop some forms of ‘bit rot’ after running for a long time.
In addition, over the course of a long held ‘full rate’ connection, short term bursts interference and other similar factors can lead to some router chipsets progressively disabling ‘buckets’ (64k chunks of overall link capacity) in the connection. This can lead to your connection getting progressively slower in small increments over time. Depending on the router, chipset, and what caused the buckets to be disabled in the first place, those chunks of disabled line capacity don’t necessarily come back again once the line interference passes.
Power cycling your router (turning it off, waiting a few minutes, and turning it on again) can sometimes do a world of good.
In a perfect world you wouldn’t need to do that.
But here in the real world, its really the very first thing to try before working harder to fix an issue with slower speeds than expected.
It also makes sure that your router hardware is clear about who is in charge in the relationship.
Have a Central Splitter professionally installed and/or have your wiring re-run by a licensed cabler
This is usually the most effective single thing you can do – it won’t make things worse, it will eliminate this (single most common) cause of problems, and it almost always helps to some extent.
In some cases, this work can raise the speed dramatically. This is because having one installed results in a new, clean, wiring path from the incoming connection in the street to your ADSL2+ router, bypassing any bad wiring or incorrect filtering in your premises.
In the case of customers using Naked DSL services (where no splitters are needed at all), having a licensed cabler run a new cable to your ADSL router and physically disconnecting all other cabling in the house from that incoming line is the equivalent thing to do.
Doing this has the same potential for (sometimes dramatic) performance improvement if you have old, crufty, or complicated wiring in your premises.
And once you’ve done this, you don’t need in-line filters in the rest of your house any more – making your life simpler (and more flexible) in terms of your use of that phone line for ADSL and non-ADSL devices.
Filter non-ADSL devices properly
Unless you’ve actioned the previous step (to eliminate this issue entirely), its important that you properly filter all non-ADSL devices.
That literally means anything at all on the line that is not your ADSL router. Every other device, regardless of what it is, needs an inline filter (unless you have centrally split/filtered your premises as above).
That includes phones, fax machines, Foxtel box phone line connections, alarm systems, answering machines, extension bells… whatever and whereever they are attached, they need a filter.
If you have more than three such devices attached along with your ADSL router, you will find that you are likely to suffer ADSL performance problems and dropouts, and that Central Splitter really is the way to go. That removes all device-count limits from the line as well as removing the need for separate in-line filters at all.
Common symptoms of un-filtered devices on your line (beware, especially, things like old monitored alarm systems, even if they are switched off) are that the ADSL service drops out when there is an incoming phone call and/or when an outgoing phone call is made, and the presence of audible electronic ‘hash’ (noise) on the line when you make a voice phone call.
Confirm that you are using decent quality ADSL2+ in-line filters
If you have not, or can’t, or don’t want to, install a central splitter or have your wiring professionally checked, and if you have no more than three such non-ADSL devices, you should also check your inline filters are good ones.
Many older filters are not actually rated to work properly with ADSL2+ and their presence substantially reduces performance or tends to lead to frequent drop-outs.
And some cheap filters are just… cheap.
If you’re not sure, replace them. They don’t cost a lot compared to the frustration that not replacing them can cause.
Try different ADSL2+ profiles via the Internode profile changer.
You may find that you can move to a higher performance ADSL2+ profile and get a faster, but stable, connection. Though if you find the connection is not stable, simply move back to a more stable profile. In the end, for almost everyone, stability actually matters far more than absolute speed.
To do this, Internode provides a variety of line profiles that you can select between on your ADSL2+ “Extreme” or “NakedExtreme” (or Agile port based Internode Easy Broadband service). These can be viewed and configured online by logging in to “My Internode” and then selecting the profile changer.
It is also possible to request the moving of your service to a ‘stability’ profile on other ADSL2+ service types offered by Internode – though this must be done by a manual request to the Internode helpdesk.
These line profiles represent a spectrum of alternatives that you can think of as points along a line.
At one end of the spectrum, on that line, is the greatest possible speed. Along with that speed comes the lowest possible ‘Signal To Noise’ (SNR) margin, which is the margin available to overcome line noise or signal degradation factors that may be present.
It represents that motorcyclist running flat out and hoping he doesn’t hit a bump in the road or… ‘oops’…over he goes.
At the other end of the spectrum is greatest possible stability – with a consequent reduction in achieved line speed (sometimes a large reduction in that speed, in order to generate enough signal margin to make the link work reliability under current line conditions).
At this ‘stability’ end of the spectrum, the service can withstand a quite substantial level of external interference of all sorts, without dropping out – but it will be slower as a result.
Currently, new Internode ADSL2+ services are configured with an initial line profile somewhere in the middle, but toward the ‘stability’ end of the spectrum.
This ‘ADSL2+ Initial’ profile includes the a nominal downstream data rate limit of 8 megabits per second. Thats really quite fast – but not as fast as ADSL2+ can potentially provide. Limiting this speed maximum in this way creates a very much larger margin for errors and line noise (SNR) than running ‘flat out’ does. It further increases stability against line faults and line noise as a result.
The aim is to ensure that our customers have a stable connection if they are unaware of the various factors in this post, and if they have not yet considered the implementation of the many steps possible (as listed here) to potentially improve that situation.
You are very welcome to try, and you are encouraged to try, various different line profiles to see how they perform on your line.
In doing so, you can find the one that, right now, represents the highest speed you can obtain while still keeping an acceptable level of connection stability (i.e. the best trade-off between speed and stability for your current circumstances).
Once you have run through the rest of the items in this checklist, and have improved your line conditions as a result, you may find that you can then come back and ‘crank up the speed’ somewhat more on your line by selecting a profile further toward the ‘speed’ end of the spectrum of choices provided to you.
Try an Isolation Test
An isolation test simply means – disconnect all non-ADSL devices from your phone line to see whether the ADSL service gets faster (or stops dropping out). If it does, then something you unplugged is the source of that reduced speed and/or dropouts.
If you do see such an improvement, progressively re-connecting other devices will help to you find the source of some (or all) of your reduced performance.
Every device you re-connect (up to a maximum of three) also needs to have an ADSL2+ certified line filter in the line; Alternatively a central splitter does this splitting job just once at the ingress point in your premises and you do not then need (and should not then use) line filters on any individual devices. And you no longer have a limit of three other devices that you may attach.
Try an ADSL1 connection mode instead of using the ADSL2+
This one sounds counter-intuitive, but if your achieved ADSL2+ speed is in the 4-6 megabit per second range, try locking your modem into ADSL1 mode (or using the Internode profile changer to lock the DSLAM port into full-rate ADSL1 mode – both achieve the same outcome).
We observe that this can often provide higher speeds for some customers than ADSL2+ can, and can sometimes cure drop-out problems that are present in ADSL2+ mode as well.
There are sensible reasons for this, based on ADSL1 being a fixed power protocol, and ADSL2+ being variable power based on line conditions; In this intermediate speed realm, ADSL2+ can have a tendency to be ‘too nice’ compared to neighbouring ADSL1 services in the same cable bundle, by not using quite enough output power to be heard over the worst case line noise.
So sometimes, rather than getting mad – you may find this is a way to get even.
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