What exactly is "relative capacity occupation"?

Ripwave

Going through the menu's on a ZyXEL 623-T1 supplied with an IOLBB connection, I noticed a "Diagnostic" entry on the menu.

The "Upstream Noise Margin" test gives these results:

relative capacity occupation: 18% 
noise margin upstream: 29.0 db
output power downstream: 15.5 dbm
attenuation upstream: 11.5 db

The "Downstream Noise Margin" test gives these results:

relative capacity occupation: 5% 
noise margin downstream: 45.5 db
output power upstream: 2.0 dbm
attenuation downstream: 15.0 db

Does anyone know what these figures mean? Are they good, or bad?

Winters

I may be wrong but.

The noise levels on a line will generate errors and lost packets etc. This will slow down your connection. The more noise there is on the lines the worse quality they shall be.

Ripwave

Winters wrote:

I may be wrong but.

The noise levels on a line will generate errors and lost packets etc. This will slow down your connection. The more noise there is on the lines the worse quality they shall be.

That's what I would have thought, but apparently 9according to a number of forums that Google pointed me to), higher "noise" numbers are actually better, and anything below 7 to 9db means that you can't get DSL at all.

Mutant_Fruit

noise margin upstream: 29.0 db

It says noise margin, so i'd be thinking along the lines that you have 29db of signal, before you get pure noise. The margin between pure noise and the signal is 29db.

Thats what would make sense to me, and seems to be verified by Ripwave's googling.

Ripwave

By the way, the reason I didn't post the links Google found for me is because they are full of references to people getting upgraded to 6MB connections, and I couldn't bear the torrent of whinges that that would cause on this forum