Understand attenuation and how it affects your broadband speeds
Attenuation is a measurement of the loss of ADSL signal strength on your ADSL line and is a very rough way of measuring both how far you are from the exchange and how good your connection is likely to be.
You can find out your current line attenuation by logging onto your ADSL router or modem and looking at a page usually labelled statistics or connection status.
No matter how many times you switch your broadband to new providers you are unlikely to make a great deal of difference to your connection if your line attenuation is too high.
The following table will give you an indication of potential speeds based on your line attenuation.
- Less than 12Db = 24Mb
- Less than 35Db = 8Mb
- Less than 60Db = 2Mb
- Less than 75Db = 512kbps
- More than 75Db+ Likely Poor Service
Of course there are plenty of factors that can cause speeds to fluctuate, including;
- Your ISP’s performance and package offerings
- Electrical Interference
- Internal Wiring Issues
- Internal Interference
- Computer Configuration
- Router Performance
- Contention Ratios