It’s interesting, to me, to look at the signal-to-noise ratio values that my current DSL router spits out regarding my ADSL connection. The previous router was unable to present this information to me, and I had no way to correlate the disconnections I was experiencing.

The numbers are a bit off, as I haven’t changed the mrtg configuration to divide by 10, or change bytes to dB. The majority to the right was a 8000/288 kbit connection. The little bump on Thursday was when the downstream rate dropped to about 7000 kbit, and the massive drop on Sunday is when my ISP returned my upstream to 448 kbit. What’s a bit more interesting the cyclic pattern that the downstream signal (green) shows when the line was functioning at 8000/288. The peak-to-trough drop is about 50%, and I think the ZyXEL just couldn’t handle the loss of signal. As the downstream rate dropped, the SnR dips become less pronounced as well.

I’ll see now if the upstream change gives the Billion any grief – I know the ZyXEL had lots of trouble with it.