Broadband Issues Sorted - With “DMT TOOL”
February 3, 2008
BE Broadband — over the past few weeks i have been working myself up with the speed of the internet i was told i could recieve. Well to cut things short, i was told by BT, Sky, BE, Virgin Media and also ADSL speed checkers on the internet that i could only recieve half a meg! I wound my self off the clock and pulling my hair out to try and find a faster provider, but because i am 6.5KM away from the exchange and wasnt in a Virgin Media “Cabled Area” that was what i was going to put up with! So i decided to go with BE, i had kinda a brain wave and thought with them pumping out “ADSL2″ speeds maybe, just maybe i might get something faster than half meg. I was correct i connected at a wopping…….2MB! I thought to myself better than half, but no….that still wasnt good enough for me, i wanted at least 9MB.
After reading on some of the forums, something hit me, i realised i had my sky+ box and sky box (normal) plugged into the phone line, and realised i didnt have ADSL filters on them. So changed that and straight away my router rebooted and i got 7MB. Great stuff i was nearly at my 9MB target!
After abit more research i came across a program called “DMT Tool” its kinda complicated to use, but i got there eventually.
Basically this is what it does…
SNR
1. Signal-to-noise ratio is an engineering term for the power ratio between a signal (meaningful information) and the background noise.
2. When your modem attempts to negotiate ADSL it looks at the line and basically sees attenuation and noise put together. Attenuation gradually increases as frequency increases and noise is a random pattern of low level interference in the background.It’s very similar to a conversation at a party and it’s dealt with in the same way; we naturally account for both distance from the other person and the amount of background noise. When we do we don’t just talk loud enough to be heard, we speak a bit louder waiting for the idiot with the stupid, loud laugh to start up again. We add a bit extra on to make sure we’re louder than the average change in background noise. This is a SNR margin.
ST516v6
3. The SpeedTouch 5×6 products are ADSL2+ replacements for the SpeedTouch 510E, 536 and 510 switch models.
The 516v6 uses the Broadcom chipset, BCM6338 which is the cheaper, more integrated version of the BCM6348.
DMT Modem Tool
4. A nice bit of software (from Germany) that allows you to tweak and monitor certain models of Speedtouch routers (516 536 546 585 608 706 716 780).
Although this software is in German it can be switched to English via ‘Extras>weitere Einstellungen’ (Special>Misc. Options) and then initiating a program restart OR it will automatically switch to English if it detects a Annex A connection.
After tweeking with the line i am now connecting at “9498Kbs” so great i recieved my 9MB target! i know BE can provide 24MB, so 9MB to me still isnt good enough!
I will be messing about with the “DMT tool” more and more until i cant go no further! 
June 7th, 2008 at 11:05 am
[...] Broadband Issues Sorted - With “DMT TOOL” Broadband Issues Sorted - With “DMT TOOL” BE Broadband — over the past few weeks i have been working myself up with the speed of the internet i was told i could recieve. Well to cut things short, i was told by BT, Sky, BE, Virgin Media and also ADSL speed checkers on the internet that i could only recieve half a meg! I wound my self off the clock and pulling my hair out to try and find a faster provider, but because i am 6.5KM away from the exchange and wasnt in a Virgin Media “Cabled Area” t [...]