Foobys' I'll fix your internet thread'

[Kezzieboy]

Not asking for a fix, but advice. Could you do the thing where you find out who has the best hardware in the area of my new flat so I can get the internet set up, please? It's only 2 people, not massive usage, and is at B30 2AF.

Cheers 'en

[Razorback_Rob]

EE will charge a fortune for the engineer, however you can argue that the situation wasnt as it should have been installed correctly, i doubt they will be interested as they still have to pay openreach..

Technically the line is BT's responsibility up to and including the master socket

Realistically, there is no reason you cant do it yourself (just remove the extensions and connect the wires back up to each other), i would hesitate to say however that if it isnt working properly, then you will definately have to foot the bill for fixing it

i would ring round a few local telephone engineering places, quite often electricians will be able to help or point you in the right direction


Ahem fooby.... http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3625977987

---

Razorback_Rob


and yes, i am on the 40meg fibre, (they havent allowed the faster 80 or 100meg on the exchange yet as we only just went fibre)

Ah would you reckon when my fibres set in I might gain a better speed? Other cabinets due to be enabled on my exchange are due the full 80 or 72-80 in some places.

[toseland]

you will be on "fibre" already razor, the speed still seems low for fibre, as the restriction is now not hte run to the exchange but the run between your house and the cabinate.. my cabinate is about 500 yards down the road and i get 38-40meg consistantly

i would have a talk with them, 18 meg is ADSL speed.. should be at least 30 i would say

[Razorback_Rob]

you will be on "fibre" already razor, the speed still seems low for fibre, as the restriction is now not hte run to the exchange but the run between your house and the cabinate.. my cabinate is about 500 yards down the road and i get 38-40meg consistantly

i would have a talk with them, 18 meg is ADSL speed.. should be at least 30 i would say

I know I'm fttc not ftth/fttp my adsl speed was about 6 meg. I get 18 meg constant and I'm 0.6 miles from cabinet. I meant by saying how 40 meg could be changed to 80/100 because I think only my cabinet is enabled. Or one of very few.

---

you will be on "fibre" already razor, the speed still seems low for fibre, as the restriction is now not hte run to the exchange but the run between your house and the cabinate.. my cabinate is about 500 yards down the road and i get 38-40meg consistantly

i would have a talk with them, 18 meg is ADSL speed.. should be at least 30 i would say

I know I'm fttc not ftth/fttp my adsl speed was about 6 meg. I get 18 meg constant and I'm 0.6 miles from cabinet. I meant by saying how 40 meg could be changed to 80/100 because I think only my cabinet is enabled. Or one of very few.

[nominous]

Hoping you might be able to give a littel advice on what to ask for specifically as I've had a lot of problems with my internet and average 8 months before having to call someone out to look at it.

When I moved in it was slow. So I removed all the house wiring back to the master. That helped.
Then I set about getting an engineer out to fix the slowness. They replaced the in house wiring to the master box and the wiring from the pole to the house. No help on speed but better SNR.
Then they switched the trunk from the village to the exchange. Two trunks, one older than the other, now on the newer one and that made a difference.
Then I managed to get them to change the port in the exchange I was connected to (lift ans shift?). Boom. head shot. problem gone.

So I get when it's working just over 3Mb down (various from 3 - 3.5) and 768K up max.
Not bad if you consider it was 512/64 when I moved in

Then I started having problems. I'd loose connection. router would say still connected but nothing. Then I got what sounded like cross talk.
Every time we'd have a phone call the line would disconnect.
So they came back out, no fault found. but changed the master for one with a filter (which failed after 24 hours and had to be replaced!) and all then was fine for a little while.

Next came a problem with upload speeds. Connection would drop and then come back with 64Kbps indicated, but in reality I couldn't use the internet as data was not getting sent out, despite their and my end saying it was connected. Several power off / resyncs made it work again, but I was plagued.
The ISP (Plusnet BTW) suggested an upgrade to ADSL2+ but wanted money for that, said no and we settled on a hybrid line.
I also got one of the ADSL faceplates fitted too. Which are great if not a little deep !!
So I've not got - to my understanding - ADSL down stream and ADSL2+ upstream. Confused the hell out of the last Openreach engineer that visited, but apparently that's what I've got now.

Been solid for a good while and then recently it's been playing up again doing silly buggers and dropping upload sync speed.

Now fibre is due end this year, but it's going to be FTTC and the green box is a fair way away, this house is 60year old and the boxes around tend to fill with water which tends to cause call outs so have a feeling it's not going to be the top whack when it does get here.

Regardless of that, is there anything specific I should be asking them to look at ?
I will have to suffer a home visit again, the 5th in 4 years, despite everything in the home being new and having been put there by BT themselves
Just for them to say everything tests fine and then later on inevitably I'll drop again.

Since it's a fault that has never in any of the visits manifested itself whilst an engineer is on site, what can be done to persuade them to look at the green box or the exchange for the source of the problem ?

---

Current stats:

Code:

ADSL Link           Downstream   Upstream
Connection Speed     3520 kbps    576 kbps
Line Attenuation     59 db        15.5 db
Noise Margin         5 db         10 db

So its' not performing well on the up right now

For what it's worth, I care more about the up than the down as there are home systems I want to be able to access and right now 3.5Mb is fast enough.
I'd happily take 1Mb up/down as a compromise if only it was stable !!

[toseland]

Holy christ that atenuation

Get him to check the parity of the lines if it is.. we had an issue with the lines here, causing drops in sync speed because it was flooding the hell out of their end with errors and it was trying to compensate

[burnmw]

Potentially that splitter could be screwing the whole schebang up.. it doesnt take much to interfere with a line..

...

you need to rewire the telephone cabling in your house thus...

Code:

[pole]-----[master]-------------[extension]--------[extension] (daisy chained)

Exactly what Toseland said

Those connections before your master socket are 100000% your problem.

You need to sack them off and re-wire them into your master socket.

Guys, I owe you both a drink, just disconnected those two sockets -



Just under 2.7Mbps now I'll ring them and ask them to change the line settings as well Fooby.

[Fooby]

Ahem fooby.... http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3625977987

Challange accepted: http://www.speedtest.net/result/3626892976.png /smugface

Not asking for a fix, but advice. Could you do the thing where you find out who has the best hardware in the area of my new flat so I can get the internet set up, please? It's only 2 people, not massive usage, and is at B30 2AF.

Cheers 'en

Sure, your exchange is (based on postcode) Kings Norton : http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/CMKING

Its always best to check on telephone number since sometimes different lines can go to different exchanges.

It all depends on what package you want and how much you are prepared to pay. I'd personally stay away from TalkTalk and AOL.

Hoping you might be able to give a littel advice on what to ask for specifically as I've had a lot of problems with my internet and average 8 months before having to call someone out to look at it.

When I moved in it was slow. So I removed all the house wiring back to the master. That helped.
Then I set about getting an engineer out to fix the slowness. They replaced the in house wiring to the master box and the wiring from the pole to the house. No help on speed but better SNR.
Then they switched the trunk from the village to the exchange. Two trunks, one older than the other, now on the newer one and that made a difference.
Then I managed to get them to change the port in the exchange I was connected to (lift ans shift?). Boom. head shot. problem gone.

So I get when it's working just over 3Mb down (various from 3 - 3.5) and 768K up max.
Not bad if you consider it was 512/64 when I moved in

Then I started having problems. I'd loose connection. router would say still connected but nothing. Then I got what sounded like cross talk.
Every time we'd have a phone call the line would disconnect.
So they came back out, no fault found. but changed the master for one with a filter (which failed after 24 hours and had to be replaced!) and all then was fine for a little while.

Next came a problem with upload speeds. Connection would drop and then come back with 64Kbps indicated, but in reality I couldn't use the internet as data was not getting sent out, despite their and my end saying it was connected. Several power off / resyncs made it work again, but I was plagued.
The ISP (Plusnet BTW) suggested an upgrade to ADSL2+ but wanted money for that, said no and we settled on a hybrid line.
I also got one of the ADSL faceplates fitted too. Which are great if not a little deep !!
So I've not got - to my understanding - ADSL down stream and ADSL2+ upstream. Confused the hell out of the last Openreach engineer that visited, but apparently that's what I've got now.

Been solid for a good while and then recently it's been playing up again doing silly buggers and dropping upload sync speed.

Now fibre is due end this year, but it's going to be FTTC and the green box is a fair way away, this house is 60year old and the boxes around tend to fill with water which tends to cause call outs so have a feeling it's not going to be the top whack when it does get here.

Regardless of that, is there anything specific I should be asking them to look at ?
I will have to suffer a home visit again, the 5th in 4 years, despite everything in the home being new and having been put there by BT themselves
Just for them to say everything tests fine and then later on inevitably I'll drop again.

Since it's a fault that has never in any of the visits manifested itself whilst an engineer is on site, what can be done to persuade them to look at the green box or the exchange for the source of the problem ?

---

Current stats:

Code:

ADSL Link           Downstream   Upstream
Connection Speed     3520 kbps    576 kbps
Line Attenuation     59 db        15.5 db
Noise Margin         5 db         10 db

So its' not performing well on the up right now

For what it's worth, I care more about the up than the down as there are home systems I want to be able to access and right now 3.5Mb is fast enough.
I'd happily take 1Mb up/down as a compromise if only it was stable !!

Firstly well done on managing your ISP (plusnet are actually pretty decent from what i've seen) getting a lift and shift done (correct term) is basically a tie pair change at the exchange. Normally does fix a lot of problems.

It should be quite easy to determine what ADSL modulation you have (ADSL, ADSL 'Max' (upto 8meg) and ADSL2/2+) The modulation is known as G992.5 (thats for ADSL2+) if you can tell me what modulation you have i'll tell you what connection you have.

Now; you get 3.5meg on 59db. I have to say, thats pretty impressive given the line length. Since according to my calcs, and 'average' line is max 2.9meg. So your line must have pretty decent copper going (which it sounds like it does from all the work that you say has been carried out)

Upload is generally harder to get on the longer line distances. But if we check your modulation we'll be able to see if thats a limiting factor.

There most likely isn't much more you can do, because unfortunately i suspect your issues are going to be down to battery faults and water damage. Problem only arising when it rains and by the time the engineer gets there its dried out.

And again, your ISP will be reluctant to keep working on it since you are getting better than average speed.

Best thing to do would be to monitor it and when you get poor sync speed, record it like the above. Feel free to paste it in here and i'll have a gander when it happens.

Potentially that splitter could be screwing the whole schebang up.. it doesnt take much to interfere with a line..

...

you need to rewire the telephone cabling in your house thus...

Code:

[pole]-----[master]-------------[extension]--------[extension] (daisy chained)

Exactly what Toseland said

Those connections before your master socket are 100000% your problem.

You need to sack them off and re-wire them into your master socket.

Guys, I owe you both a drink, just disconnected those two sockets -



Just under 2.7Mbps now I'll ring them and ask them to change the line settings as well Fooby.

WOW amazing, you've gone from 64db to 39db. Insane.

Even still, you still have some issues but lets let it settle, Since i bet your BRAS profile (also known as your IP Profile) on the line will have you limited, it will take a while to reset itself. But i'd be estimating you should be getting between 8 and 10meg down. But get that fastpath off

[WiNgNuTz]

Jesus Christ Fooby, who do I have to kill for Interwebz speeds like yours?! Never known such high speeds!

[burnmw]

WOW amazing, you've gone from 64db to 39db. Insane.

Even still, you still have some issues but lets let it settle, Since i bet your BRAS profile (also known as your IP Profile) on the line will have you limited, it will take a while to reset itself. But i'd be estimating you should be getting between 8 and 10meg down. But get that fastpath off

Not quite, up is/was around 39db, down has gone from 64 to 62db, and I'll I've done is removed the spur connections for now. I'll ring them soon and get the Fastpath switched off.

[Fooby]

WOW amazing, you've gone from 64db to 39db. Insane.

Even still, you still have some issues but lets let it settle, Since i bet your BRAS profile (also known as your IP Profile) on the line will have you limited, it will take a while to reset itself. But i'd be estimating you should be getting between 8 and 10meg down. But get that fastpath off

Not quite, up is/was around 39db, down has gone from 64 to 62db, and I'll I've done is removed the spur connections for now. I'll ring them soon and get the Fastpath switched off.

doh!!! sorry i was tried and i've completely mis-read that!

In which case thats pretty good, i reckon you should be getting 1.8-2.1 so to get 2.7 is good

[burnmw]

doh!!! sorry i was tried and i've completely mis-read that!

In which case thats pretty good, i reckon you should be getting 1.8-2.1 so to get 2.7 is good

Not to worry, I did exactly the same if I'm honest! I looked at it and thought - wow, that's incredible! And then looked properly and realised I'd got the figure back to front. But if you say the attenuation is to do with line quality then the fact that it's dropped by 2db is quite a good start given that I've done nothing to it!

[nominous]

It should be quite easy to determine what ADSL modulation you have (ADSL, ADSL 'Max' (upto 8meg) and ADSL2/2+) The modulation is known as G992.5 (thats for ADSL2+) if you can tell me what modulation you have i'll tell you what connection you have.

Firstly many thanks for your input
My router is a DG834 running the DGteam firmware.
Granted not the newest router but it works fine and it's happily running a VPN to my folks place so I can fix their gizmos at times.
ADSL is set to Multimode. Other than that I cannot see to find a report page which has the info on as to which mode is in operation.
I dumped this from the ADSL driver stats page but I don't see the mode in it

Code:

AR7 DSL Modem Statistics:
--------------------------------
[DSL Modem Stats]
    US Connection Rate:    576    DS Connection Rate:    3520
    DS Line Attenuation:    59    DS Margin:        6
    US Line Attenuation:    31    US Margin:        10
    US Payload :        373539360    DS Payload:        2020001040
    US Superframe Cnt :    50746484    DS Superframe Cnt:    50746484
    US Transmit Power :    0    DS Transmit Power:    0
    LOS errors:        0    SEF errors:        0
    Errored Seconds:    0    Severely Err Secs:    0
    Frame mode:        3    Max Frame mode:        0
    Trained Path:        1    US Peak Cell Rate:    1358
    Trained Mode:        3    Selected Mode:        1
    ATUC Vendor Code:    4946544E    ATUC Revision:    1
    Hybrid Selected:    3    Trellis:        1
    Showtime Count:        1    DS Max Attainable Bit Rate: 3520 kbps
    BitSwap:        1    US Max Attainable Bit Rate:    n/a
    Annex:             AnxA    psd_mask_qualifier: 0x0000
    Power Management Status: L0    DS HLINSC: 0
    US ACTPSD:         -345    DS ACTPSD: -358
    Total init. errors:     1    Total init. timeouts: 0
    Showtime init. errors:     0    Showtime init. timeouts: 0
    Last showtime init. errors: 1    Last showtime init. timeouts: 0
    ATUC ghsVid:  b5 00 49 46 54 4e 71 c8
    T1413Vid: 00 00        T1413Rev: 00        VendorRev: 00
    ATUR ghsVid:  b5 00 54 53 54 43 00 00
    T1413Vid: 00 00    T1413Rev: 00    VendorRev: 00

    [Upstream (TX) Interleave path]
    CRC:     1255    FEC:     158508    NCD:     0
    LCD:     0    HEC:     0

    [Downstream (RX) Interleave path]
    CRC:     145939    FEC:     551399507    NCD:     0
    LCD:     0    HEC:     0

    [Upstream (TX) Fast path]
    CRC:     0    FEC:     0    NCD:     1
    LCD:     0    HEC:     0

    [Downstream (RX) Fast path]
    CRC:     0    FEC:     0    NCD:     0
    LCD:     0    HEC:     0

[ATM Stats]
    [Upstream/TX]
    Good Cell Cnt:    7782070
    Idle Cell Cnt:    1164174466

    Tx Packets Dropped Count:    0
    Tx Bad Packets Count:    234

    [Downstream/RX)]
    Good Cell Cnt:    42083355
    Idle Cell Cnt:    2824084560
    Bad Hec Cell Cnt:    434784
    Overflow Dropped Cell Cnt:    0
    Rx Packets Dropped Count:    0
    Rx Bad Packets Count:    0


[SAR AAL5 Stats]
    Tx PDU's:    1876819
    Rx PDU's:    2127785
    Tx Total Bytes:    296436108
    Rx Total Bytes:    1970471730
    Tx Total Error Counts:    0
    Rx Total Error Counts:    1631


[OAM Stats]
    Near End F5 Loop Back Count:    0
    Near End F4 Loop Back Count:    0
    Far End F5 Loop Back Count:    0
    Far End F4 Loop Back Count:    0
    SAR OAM Ping Response Drop Count=0

There most likely isn't much more you can do, because unfortunately i suspect your issues are going to be down to battery faults and water damage. Problem only arising when it rains and by the time the engineer gets there its dried out.

And again, your ISP will be reluctant to keep working on it since you are getting better than average speed.

I thought you might say that
That echos what essentially they told me, but they did go above and beyond in getting me that upload speed and I certainly appreciate it.

From the outside looking in I would not have expected the level of support I've had from an ISP like Plusnet, big, volume, owned by BT.
But once you get to teir 3, their guys are very good. It's just getting there that is the difficulty - like any company Each time there is a problem it seems I have to start at the ground floor as their records on fault expire after 6 months ? Well, they've not had my history saved at any rate.

[toseland]

i didnt realise plusnet were BT owned, i knew they used the BT infrastructure..

i am with sky and their support has been exemplary, i ended my contract early with O2 as it took them 8 months to beleive me that i had intermittant connection during wet weather, as the line was not showing any issues, it turns out that there was a bit of degraded insulation that was allowing the pairs to interfere with each other and cause lots of errors.

not to mention with O2 you had to speak to the first level every time and they couldnt (according to them) put you through to second line regardless of whether you had any open case or not and invariably they would ask me to go through the troubleshooting BS every damn time (master socket, reset connection connected via a wired connection etc) ...

engineer (that they argued with me about sending it out) replaced the cable from the pole outside my house, recognised the problem within about 20 seconds. and then set about finding where it is..

sorted.

[zx_volcane]

Heres one, typically seems fine atm, but is infuriatingly slow most of the time.


ADSL Line Status

Connection Information

Line state: Connected
Connection time: 8 days, 13:39:22
Downstream: 7.938 Mbps
Upstream: 448 Kbps

ADSL Settings

VPI/VCI: 0/38
Type: PPPoA
Modulation: G.992.1 Annex A
Latency type: Interleaved
Noise margin (Down/Up): 8.9 dB / 29.0 dB
Line attenuation (Down/Up): 25.6 dB / 13.5 dB
Output power (Down/Up): 19.9 dBm / 12.4 dBm
FEC Events (Down/Up): 154593 / 1094
CRC Events (Down/Up): 76 / 54
Loss of Framing (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Signal (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Power (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
HEC Events (Down/Up): 796 / 36
Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 11 / 8

[Fooby]

We'll just gloss over the date of your post :/

But your SNR is a little high but nothing to worry about. You are on G.992.1 Annex A Modulation, basically you are on an "upto 8mbps" service. If you got an "upto" 24mbps service you'd probably get 18ish meg.

You have no loss of Framing or signal, so nothing to worry about there and only a handful of CRC events which (given 8 days uptime) would be fine.

Has the connection been ok since this post?

[WiNgNuTz]

We should rename this the "Fooby's I'll Fix Your Internet.......In About Six Months thread"

[zx_volcane]

We'll just gloss over the date of your post :/

But your SNR is a little high but nothing to worry about. You are on G.992.1 Annex A Modulation, basically you are on an "upto 8mbps" service. If you got an "upto" 24mbps service you'd probably get 18ish meg.

You have no loss of Framing or signal, so nothing to worry about there and only a handful of CRC events which (given 8 days uptime) would be fine.

Has the connection been ok since this post?

Hah cheers for the reply, better late than never

Its mostly absolutely crap

[Fooby]

Well thats not good.

Your line does seem fine at the modem.

Are you connected via wireless? can you plug your laptop into the back of the Router via a cable and test again?

[zx_volcane]

This is the connection at my parents btw

Going in direct to the router doesn't seem to help any. It's a bag of balls.