What speed should my line support?

[Julian2]

The up/down stats reported by my router for my current 4Mbps line are

Bandwidth 512 / 4096 kbps
Output Power 6.0 / 8.0 dBm
Line attenuation 8.5 / 15.0 dB
SN Margin 13.0 / 17.0 dB

I ask because I requested an upgrade to 8Mbps from Telkom (via my ISP) and, after a month of waiting, Telkom finally came back to say my line wouldn't support 8Mbps due to distance from the exchange. I find this odd since my neighbour 3 doors along the corridor in my building has a rock solid 10Mbps line and from the research I've done my stats don't look too bad at the moment. Maybe if my stats are bad but my neighbour is getting 10Mbps it might be my 6 year old router to blame.

Alternatively might Telkom be lying and in fact the reason they won't upgrade me is because they already know that they have congestion at my exchange and are trying to control that by effectively throttling people by rejecting requests for speed increases. Or have I misunderstood some of these stats and I am genuinely pushing the line as hard as I can with the 4Mbps service I'm on at the moment?

- Julian

 

[Soul Assassin]

The up/down stats reported by my router for my current 4Mbps line are

Bandwidth 512 / 4096 kbps
Output Power 6.0 / 8.0 dBm
Line attenuation 8.5 / 15.0 dB
SN Margin 13.0 / 17.0 dB

I ask because I requested an upgrade to 8Mbps from Telkom (via my ISP) and, after a month of waiting, Telkom finally came back to say my line wouldn't support 8Mbps due to distance from the exchange. I find this odd since my neighbour 3 doors along the corridor in my building has a rock solid 10Mbps line and from the research I've done my stats don't look too bad at the moment. Maybe if my stats are bad but my neighbour is getting 10Mbps it might be my 6 year old router to blame.

Alternatively might Telkom be lying and in fact the reason they won't upgrade me is because they already know that they have congestion at my exchange and are trying to control that by effectively throttling people by rejecting requests for speed increases. Or have I misunderstood some of these stats and I am genuinely pushing the line as hard as I can with the 4Mbps service I'm on at the moment?

- Julian

Your stats will get you 8Mbps easy, I don't know what the issue is, when I upgraded from 10Mbps to 20Mbps they didn't check a thing and my speed was upgraded within the hour.