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Would a cold snap slow my tinterweb speed?

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    Would a cold snap slow my tinterweb speed?

    OK a bit of background first.

    For the last 2 years, I've been getting shyte download speeds via different ISP's. What was once around an average 5.8meg had tumbled to an average of around 4.2meg (yes, I know some folk get near 20meg but this area isnt cabled or FTTC \ FTTH).

    Im only 1.2km from the exchange although BT say the line from exchange to house is about 4.5km as it goes all around the houses!

    Anyway, I'd put off getting an SFI engineer out as I know BT just love to charge 200 sods for the privilege then say there's no fault with their equipment and yours must be at fault.

    So, I changed everything on my line that I could. I changed from a cordless phone to a corded one, I changed the router 3 times, I changed the filters god knows how many times. I also plugged my router and phone direct into the NTE 5 test socket permanently. There was no extension wiring on the circuit but i kept getting disconnects and slow speed even via LLU.

    So, I grasped the nettled about 6 weeks ago and ordered an SFI. The guy came and did his usual tests and saw my speed was hovering around 5meg. He put a new filtered face plate on the NTE 5 socket. He found outside the house that two cables had been 'pinched' between the grey BT external box and the wall. He replaced two wires from the external box into the NTE 5.

    Bingo! My speed went up to 7.2meg. Every since its been hovering between 6.8 and 7.1meg. Meanwhile, BT have said as the engineer found 'no fault with the BT infrastructure,' there will be a charge of 200 sods. Sod that I said and am in the process of complaining about this since whatever the engineer has done, it had increased my speed so there clearly was a 'fault' in the BT infrastructure.

    Anyway, getting back on track, logged onto the net this morning and thought 'that page took longer to download' so checked my router stats. Net connection download to 5.1meg

    Now, I cannot see anything that has caused this considering I've been experiencing speeds between 6.8 & 7.1meg since the visit. The only difference is this morning there is a heavy ground frost outside. The noise margin has also shot up from 2db to 7db!!

    Surely a ground frost couldnt \ shouldnt result in the loss of nearly 2 meg download speed? Or could it? i mean damp in any external connection box etc?
    Last edited by BolshieBastard; 14 January 2012, 11:28.
    I couldn't give two fornicators! Yes, really!

    #2
    Electrical resistance increase with temperature, I think, so cold should be better for getting a signal over a longer distance. Although it's the signal to noise that's most important. Do you have the heating on? Electrical interference could well have an effect. I think the vacuum cleaner knocks mine out sometimes too, as the plug in the hallway is next to the master socket.

    Mine's been extra flakey of late, but seems to be better this weekend. I called out BT last year, complaining about crackling on the line rather than a broadband problem, and they said there was nothing wrong but fortunately didn't try to charge me.

    What's annoying me is although I get about 16Mb down, I'm stuck on 400K upload, whereas I used to have 1Mb last year. I've been looking at FTTC again, but not for the extra download, just in the hope of more reliability and decent upload speed.
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      #3
      Originally posted by VectraMan View Post
      Electrical resistance increase with temperature, I think, so cold should be better for getting a signal over a longer distance. Although it's the signal to noise that's most important. Do you have the heating on? Electrical interference could well have an effect. I think the vacuum cleaner knocks mine out sometimes too, as the plug in the hallway is next to the master socket.

      Mine's been extra flakey of late, but seems to be better this weekend. I called out BT last year, complaining about crackling on the line rather than a broadband problem, and they said there was nothing wrong but fortunately didn't try to charge me.

      What's annoying me is although I get about 16Mb down, I'm stuck on 400K upload, whereas I used to have 1Mb last year. I've been looking at FTTC again, but not for the extra download, just in the hope of more reliability and decent upload speed.
      Heating is on but there again, it was on before and after the engineer's visit so it cant be that.

      I made a landline call last night and watched the Noise Margin increase to 5bd when on the phone. This morning it was 7 db but has now dropped back to around 6.2bd.

      My upload is pretty constant post engineer's visit at 1.1 to 1.2meg
      I couldn't give two fornicators! Yes, really!

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        #4
        Maybe there's a bit of exposed wire on an overhead cable from birds landing on it, and the frost is getting into the wire core.

        My connection was down to ~5mbps yesterday morning when it's usually around 16 to 18mbps. I just did the usual power off/on of the router for 20 seconds and it was back to normal.
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          #5
          Maybe in warm weather the neighbours go out and garden, in cold weather they stay in and catch up on corrie on-line.

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