TELECOM 247

HI,

I have an ADSL line with BT. Were about 3 miles from the exchange, in a
fairly remote house out in the country.

Ive recently gone from a 512Kbps service to an up to 8Mb and after the
initial test fortnight got a princely speed increase to... 576kbps.

Ive changed the old Belkin modem for a Netgear DG834 which is supposed
to be good with noisy lines, and incidentally allows me to monitor the
line noise stats.

After watching it for a week or so, its obvious that the noise margin is
cyclic and much worse during the hours of darkness: I get around 14dB
margin +/- 2dB between 7:00 and about 15:30 then it drops off to 4dB
+/-6dB(!) for the rest of the time.

I know about extra noise during daylight hours due to the sun heating
things up, but I hadnt come across this one.

Any ideas on the cause, and even better a solution?

In any case, this line is mainly for business use during daylight, but
the abysmal nighttime noise levels have led to the 576kbps speed limit -
can anything be done to get this increased so I can get a decent speed
during the day (steady 12-14dB margin) but accept lots of dropouts at
night(-2-10dB margin)?