Wednesday 28 November 2007

dg834gt

DG834GT Stats SF:
CRC:
ES:
SES:
RS:
LOF:
D:
HEC:
LOS:
UAS:
Super Frames
Cyclic Redundancy Check
Errored Seconds (Seconds with 1 or more CRC errors)
Severely Errored Seconds
Reed Solomon Forward Error Correction
Loss Of Framing
Interleave depth
ATM Header Error Control
Loss Of Signal
Unavailable Seconds (No Signal)









Enable telnet          launch telnet      to disable type "killall utelnetd" in the console.


Override Target Noise Margin %  86%= 6dB 100%=7dB(default) 114%= 8db...



Add entries to router's hosts file


This is not particularily useful unless your connection is 100% stable as the Netgear's host file will be reset every time the PPP connection is re-established after a drop.

Enter IP address <space> hostname (eg. 192.168.0.10 mel.lan)



Add above to DNS Server

Reset DNS Server



Router based "speed test"

If you think poor speeds are caused by your PC or wireless link - This will download a file to the router and time the download (if this test fails to work choose a download file with a shorter URL) Results are only a very rough estimate.

Input the URL of a file to download and its filesize (url must be quite short).

Please be patient, the page will only open once the file download has completed.

Download url Filesize=




Alternative test: Downloads and displays the start and end times so that you can calculate the speed more accurately

Download url {44668/(end-start) Kbps}


Wednesday 4 April 2007

Slow Speeds? - BT Performance tester

BT's performance tester can be found here http://speedtester.bt.com/ . Note that it will only work on BT IPstream based connections.

If your throughput is below 400 kbps, you will be directed to perform a second test, which requires temorarily changing the ADSL username in your modem/router to bt_test_user@yourISP. Where "yourISP" is the normal bit after the '@' in your normal adsl login.

If this test also produces a very poor result you will be asked to reconnect after changing you username on the modem/router to speedtest@speedtest_domain and run test 3.

Test 3 connects you to BT's network bypassing your ISP, so a poor result here indicates that the problem is not caused by the ISP. It may be a line fault, your own equipment or household telephone wiring or a BT issue such as exchange congestion.


A guide to using the BT performance tester is available from here:- BT Performance tester End User Handbook.


If your speeds are poor, but not bad enough to reach test 3 in the normal BT performance tester, it is possible to run the old BT speedtester while connected using the BT login.

The following trick stopped working when BT discontinued the old fixed rate products, replacing them with capped rate adaptive ones.

This test is only intended for fixed rate connections up to 2mbps, so the results are not as accurate as the proper BT performance test 3.
However it can be a useful test if your ISP blames your equipment or BT for your speed issues and you suspect this is not the case, but can't get as far as test 3 in the performance tester.

Username: speedtest@speedtest_domain
Password: anything


And open the following link in your browser

http://217.35.209.142:50302/cgi-bin/home.page.pl



If you also have poor ping times on your normal connection and want a rough idea of latency to the BT RAS you connect through run a tracert as below.

tracert -h 3 217.35.209.142
and you'll see something like

1 <10 ms <10 ms 1 ms www.routerlogin.com [192.168.0.1]
2 11 ms 11 ms 12 ms esr4.ilford5.broadband.bt.net [217.47.23.143]
3 * * * Request timed out.


Note only the RAS also known as ESR (Edge Service router) will respond.

Friday 2 March 2007

AOL UK

Useful Links
Manage Screen Names
Parental Controls
Refer a Friend
Conditions of Service
AOL Complaints Policy
Broadband/Router agreement


Alternative Aol Member Service phone numbers

(Bristol)    0117 919 1100
(Freephone) 0800 279 6771
AOL Proxy settings
Some UK sites block access to non UK IP addresses, if you are allocated a US IP address you can get around this by configuring your browser with the following proxy settings.

For http: uk.proxy.aol.com port 80
For https: (ssl) uk.proxy.aol.com port 443

Set local addresses to bypass the proxy and add 192.168.* to the list of exceptions otherwise you won't be able to access your router's web interface while using the proxy.

PriceIndex
You can find out your AOL PriceIndex which was once rumoured to determine whether you connection is throttled, by temporarily configuring your browser to use AOL's proxy uk.proxy.aol.com port 80, then following the instructions below.

Copy the script below, or if you prefer add this javascript AOL PriceIndex to your favourites. Because it contains a javascript, your browser may warn you that the link may not be safe, click yes to ignore that or use the copy and paste method instead.


javascript:(function(){alert('PriceIndex='+document.getElementById('PriceIndex').value)})();

Navigate to http://help.aol.co.uk/live-help/article/20060814072509990002, log-in using your master screen name and select "Broadband" and click continue. Instead of submitting a question, paste the script above in the address bar and hit return, or if you added it to favourites, just click on the bookmark.

An alertbox will pop up and display the priceindex eg:- 3436/silver.

Router settings

AOL recommend: PPPoE LLC, with MTU=1450

However, I prefer to use PPPoA VC-Mux, with MTU=1430 (MSS=1390 if router has MSS setting)


VPI:0
VCI: 38

Username: screenname@aol.com


screenname should be a General (18+) aol screen name in lower case with any spaces omitted.
The password must not be longer than 8 characters and consist of letters and numerals only.

Alternate Username: aolnet/aol.dsl.screenname.10460001001000030001GB6183.0000.prod

This alternate username only works with PPPoE LLC - it is used by AOL software with modems and if used in a router you will have to run AOL's software & log-in to access the internet.


AOL Test login Username: ISUR_AOLDSL@americaonline.aol.com Password: roughalien