I tried to make myself not do it, but I’ve spent the last week playing around with settings on my router and configuration profile settings with my new ISP to wring the most I can out of my internet link.

The fastest I have managed so far is shown here:

The sad thing is is that I’ve been playing with settings so much that I can’t remember exactly what the settings are that produced that result. That said though, the one thing I am sure of is that I have now switched to the Be Unlimited (or Be Home) package as the distance I am from my BT Exchange means that I can’t get the full benefit of the more expensive package, so I’ve downgraded so that I get the same speed for £4 less a month.

To get improved settings I’ve been evaluating what is called fastpath, or interleaving removal. I was reminded reading a post that ADSL technology originated in cable tv over copper, so some of the technologies (like interleaving) are really targeted at video delivery. Leaving TCP/IP to deal with error correction improves latency.

The other thing I have been playing with is signal to noise ratio margin, or at least I think that is what it is. Using a downloaded tool to talk to my router and make it run closer to the wind on this margin ups my speeds to what you see above.

MORE SPEED ! 🙂

Had enough so kicked a couple of bittorrent downloads into action and crashed against my 60Gb limit for the rolling 30 days, so I’m now capped to 128k during the day – a slight difference in speed:

Although 128k is the figure Demon quote, you get an illustration above of the congestion on these speed tester sites. Either that or the kids and my proxy server are using bandwidth.

Line stats are much the same as before:

ADSL Link	Downstream	Upstream
Connection Speed	5856 kbps	448 kbps
Line Attenuation	42.0 db	22.0 db
Noise Margin	9.4 db	22.0 db

Well, a few hours after that post about changing wifi channel numbers and I have learned a little more than I expected about WiFi configuration. Turns out that changing the channel number made a big difference to a particular machine on my network, my desktop PC.

The other machines were happy following the wifi around the different channels, but my Dell 5000 (with exactly the same card and drivers as the old Dell 4100) would only work on Channels 1,7,8,9,10,11,12 and 13. As you can guess I was working my way through the channels in sequential order and that big gap at the top lead to all sorts of changes by me to try and trace the problem.

Of course the engineer side of me should have said “The only thing that has changed is the channel”, but I was in there rebooting routers and fixing wep keys. Then I discovered a post about channel powers and worked through the options – that was the issue.

But what was really confusing was that everything else was happy reconnecting, just not the machine I was using. Strange. So I’m sticking to channel 7, which has the best connection speed.

While I’m on the topic of networks and the like, I have been reading over the Be Unlimited user forums and someone mentioned clashing wifi channels. I’d thought I was ok as my router does rangemax stuff to adjust and frankly throughput has been fine.

It got me to check though, as I’ve seen the problem at work when our wifi channels clash with wifi networks in the building and houses around us. I had a look in windows xp but it didn’t tell me much about the other wifi network it could see. So I turned back to an old wardriving application I had a great amount of fun with in the past. It is called WiFiFoFum and it runs on my Orange SPV M600, using its built in wifi to do its thing. It lists all networks it can see around – including those that are trying to hide their SSIDs. It logs results to xml files that you can play around with. The real fun bit is when I hook up my bluetooth GPS receiver and it adds latitude and longtitude to the information. I once left this setup running in the car and plotted the results on google maps – cue one mapped list of open wifi between the office and home!

This flushed out an access point running without SSID on the same channel as my setup, plus the other two networks I usually see from home. Time to change myself from channel 11 to one that isn’t used by the other guys.

I mentioned previously that I’m switching from Demon Internet to Be Unlimited. Speed claims are great, but it is really the unlimited aspect I am going for. With more folk on my network and me playing with new toys, there will be a risk in the future that I would hit Demon Internet’s Fair Usage Policy limit again and I can’t be bothered network shaping.

Anyway, in the last few days I have been monitoring the stats on my Demon connection so that I can get a comparison after the switch. I’ve been given Tuesday 20th May as the activation date, though not a time so that will prove interesting. Firstly for fun, I include a result from Speedtest – an online speed checker. I’m more interested in the change, rather than the actual figure. I try a few servers as the nominal nearest isn’t alway what I get the best result from. The first result is against the Maidenhead server, which gives the best ping.

The second is from the Paris Server, which gives a better download but longer ping.

And finally some of the stats on my line with Demon Internet:

ADSL Link	Downstream	Upstream
Connection Speed	6624 kbps	448 kbps
Line Attenuation	42.0 db	22.0 db
Noise Margin	6.9 db	22.0 db

From what I read on forums the Line Attenuation makes a difference to the potential speeds in DSL implementations, what I found interesting is that the distance to exchange using an online calculator puts me at around 3km from it in cabling terms, which makes a lot of sense. The BT Exchange is between our and the next villages, and we have a tributory of the river Almond between those too, which will dictate the routing somewhat.

Went to boots for a contact lense eye test today. Apparently I’m supposed to get my eyes checked with contact lenses annually but the last time I got them looked at was about two years ago at my last eye test. I’m not on their direct debit scheme because I only wear them on the motorbike, and that isn’t every day of the week.

As I have astigmatism it was a bit complicated last time and the prescription didn’t quite match but things have moved on in the last two years and the new set they have given me to try are excellent. A different make of daily disposables and they have ordered another set that will be even closer to the prescription for my glasses.

The new kind are called 1 day acuvue, I used to have focus daillies. The only tricky thing is that the material of these new ones is floppier and therefore harder to put in but the effort will be worth it for the better clarity. Just took them out after wearing them since midday and they have been superb, very very close to the prescription of my glasses. It was a revelation to see so clearly, without the loss of peripheral vision and the areas blocked out by the thick frames of my glasses (my wife said they were more fashionable).

I’m the proud owner of a Powerbook G4, bought second hand from Colin at work who was upgrading to a bigger better mac, which was due to Raj at work upgrading to one of those thin Macbook air thingies.

Just watch me slide into wearing a beret, growing my goatee back and being known as Gustav (check dilbert)

I’ve been a bit of a boring fart and stuck with the same Internet Service Provider since I first got a dialup account about a decade ago. Since then Demon Internet grew up, got bought by Thus, chucked away the infrastructure they had established. Got broadband, etc etc.

But their speeds haven’t been great and I was on their best consumer product with no way of buying my way out of it with them. Knowing folks with cable just rubs salt in the wounds of speed. And then I got a new server toy and downloaded loads and started getting emails from Demon saying I was running close to their FUP limits and look out.

That was the nudge to switch to a cheaper ISP who suggests they can give me up to 3 times the speed I do at the moment. Frankly, with ADSL technology being what it is I take this speed claim with a mild pinch of salt. But if they can give me the same speed and not threaten to disconnect me if I use it then I will be happy enough.

So I’ve boosted the infrastructure behind alistairl.com to switch from mail forwarding to mail hosting (sounds posh – I clicked an option on a web page) and I’m in the process of switching online accounts over to my personal domain. So that could be the end of goajl.demon.co.uk, and my dodgy website to go with it.

I’m going for a pro account with Be Unlimited, which compared to the £25 a month for 8Mb Broadband from Demon, is supposed to be £22 for 24Mb Broadband. Of course both speeds are a bit of a joke, but here goes.

 

I read an article about CAFE with interest, they are in the business of promoting personal fuel-efficient flight.

I think they are right that anyone who has the option of sitting in a queue of cars or up free in the air would choose the latter, but the point I think they miss is that the ground is so congested because there are so many people wanting to get somewhere, who all have the money to have their own vehicle. Over a hundred years or so ago a few people had cars and frankly the only thing to get in the way was pedestrians and horses. So no congestion because noone else could afford to have a car.

Roll forward a hundred and thirty years and all those early adopters will spend goodness knows how much to get flight, just as all us folks from council houses start aspiring to it. Roll forward 50 years and us plebs will all have planes too and we’ll all be flying in circles in a stack over the Pentlands while traffic control shows us a red light to stop at a junction.

 

I’ve been off for a couple of days to get a bit of a break from work pressures, and had a day out with my wife in Edinburgh. To save fuel and parking costs etc, I parked up at the Hermiston Park and Ride on the outskirts of Edinburgh and got the bus in. Coming back at 6pm we were walking back to the car and I noticed a wheel clamped Fiat, a bit of an unusual sight – the car park is free and well out of the city centre. But there it was in big letters – DVLA, so it looks like they have been out checking over the cars in the car park. I’ve been having a bit of a ranty week (on a permanent soap box) and had a bit of fun at someone else’s expense – both my vehicles are taxed, MOTd and insured. Fancy that though, trawling the park and ride facilities for cars without road tax etc!