Last update 7 December 2014

ADSL2+ speed estimator by Farina. In my opinion the most accurate one around. Feed it your ADSL connection speed, attenuation and SNRM (see Kitz line stats below) and it gives a good idea of potential ADSL+ speeds on your line based on it’s actual performance now, rather than others based purely on attenuation or unreliable BT databases. Also useful if you are on a fixed speed service and want to know what an upgrade to a variable speed might give you.

ADSLn/VDSLx speed v attenuation graph.  Note that such graphs are not guaranteed accurate, but useful as a rough guide.

BT Wholesale line broadband availability checker. I prefer this to the BT Broadband one. They don’t always give the same result, so it is worth seeing what it says. Both tend to under-estimate speeds considerably.

DMT. A popular software tool for monitoring and adjusting the parameters of a number of ADSL modems/routers.

InSSIDer. Lists and shows a graph of all the Wireless Access Points your computer can see, including the channel and signal strengths.  Works on Vista as well as XP. I believe Net Stumbler is only XP.

Kitz interleaving. A good explanation of how interleaving works.

Kitz line stats. Describes how to obtain detailed line statistics from many modems and ADSL routers.

MKD’s O2/Be comparison. Compares all O2 and Be packages, with a very useful stand-alone prices page. (Unfortunately not updated since 10 September 2010, but the only significant change I am aware of is that Be Value is now up to 12Mbps.

This link also has pages comparing O2 Home Phone with BT, Primus and the Post Office. Not updated since 1 October 2010, but very useful as a guide for charges to consider when doing your own comparison.

O2-specific help by Oliver341 on thinkbroadband forums. Not an official O2 site but has many useful bits of information that either aren’t present or aren’t easily found on the O2 website.

RouterStats. A brilliant tool for monitoring noise margin and sync speed, plus many other features such as noise margin tweaking. I prefer the Lite version (scroll down the linked page) which doesn’t do tweaking, as it does what I want and I find is far easier to set up.  I also like to set it to “Log to File” as well as graph so there is something easy to copy and paste, or scan quickly.

Samknows exchange search. LLU and other information for UK telephone exchanges

thinkbroadband ring wire FAQ. Shows the ring wire (bell wire) attached to the back of a BT NTE5 faceplate, and describes how to remove it. Doing so can add over 2Mbps to connection speed. The BT iPlate (Broadband Accelerator) does the same.

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