It’s good to get to know your modem/router whichever ISP you are using, log in to the control panel and explore what kind of data it can give you.

You can most likely access your admin page here:

https://192.168.1.1 or https://192.168.2.1

If that doesn’t work, or you don’t know the login/password please RTFM or JFGI.

The basic thing to check when your line is activated is that you are getting the speed that you signed up for (512k/1mb/2mb etc.) and the DSL line is synced at that speed. Whichever modem/router are you using, it should show you that under the general status or ADSL status page.

Mine looks like this:

It is supposed to be a 1mb so at least it’s synced at that speed. Ok that’s the basic part to make sure you have the right line speed, now DSL is running over some pretty old technology (copper lines) so the quality of your Internet connection depends on lots of bits of wire such as…

The wire from your phone socket out of your house, the wire from your house wall to the pole or underground. Or if you’re in a condo the wire from the distribution box into your condo/appt. If the wire is shit, so is your Streamyx connection.

Now this is the part most people are unaware of and I had to do a fair bit of Googling to make sense of the numbers so I’d share it here. In every modem I’ve tried so far, in one of the status screens you can also see the Noise Margin (Signal to Noise Ratio) and the Attenuation level, mine looks like this:

Ok so what do these numbers means? Here’s a break down.

Noise Margin (AKA Signal to Noise Margin or Signal to Noise Ratio)

Relative strength of the DSL signal to Noise ratio. 6dB is the lowest dB manufactures specify for modem to be able to sync. In some instances interleaving can help raise the noise margin to an acceptable level. The higher the number the better for this measurement.

• 6dB or below is bad and will experience no sync or intermittent sync problems
• 7dB-10dB is fair but does not leave much room for variances in conditions
• 11dB-20dB is good with no sync problems
• 20dB-28dB is excellent
• 29dB or above is outstanding

Line Attenuation

Measure of how much the signal has degraded between the DSLAM and the modem. Maximum signal loss recommendation is usually about 60dB. The lower the dB the better for this measurement.

• 20dB and below is outstanding
• 20dB-30dB is excellent
• 30dB-40dB is very good
• 40dB-50dB is good
• 50dB-60dB is poor and may experience connectivity issues
• 60dB or above is bad and will experience connectivity issues

As you can see from the above numbers, as for Noise Margin – my upstream (22db) is better than my downstream (15db) but both are within an acceptable range and won’t cause any disconnection problems.

As for the line attenuation, that’s where it get’s ugly. My phone line is super quiet (on the few occasions I’ve used it for voice) and has some kinda hissing which gives me a clue..it probably got wet somewhere along the way and it sucks basically.

Both upstream (63db) and downstream (53db) are at dangerous levels..and may cause me connectivity issues. Which is right, when I fully load the line (download something at 1mb) it drops like shit and ping times can go up above 1000ms.

So to be realistic, what you should hope for on your Streamyx line is Noise Ratio of between 10-20db for both upstream and downstream and as for line attenuation, the lower the better but being in the 30-50db range would be fine. If you manage to get these numbers out of your router/modem do share them here,

I’m writing this, cos well soon I won’t be able to give any Streamyx tips because I’ll be on Unifi wuwu 😛