topic Re: My 'up to 20 mbs broadband' has slowly deteriorated to half speed in Archive

My 'up to 20 mbs broadband' has slowly deteriorated to half speed

reab — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 10:38:35 GMT

Seems that the forum doesn't work correctly with Explorer 9 so posted text in reply below using Firefox 4

Re: My 'up to 20 mbs broadband' has slowly deteriorated to half speed

reab — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 10:37:32 GMT

Hi all,

For the last 5 months or so my business broadband on a residential line has worked reliably well at around 12656/1042 kbs with one Voip and one static ip address.

I have one phone, one filter and a BT2700HGV router connected and even the extension to my home/office was carried out bt BT.

Around three or four weeks ago it started to go slower and has now settled at 6656/1022 kbs so I'm running at around 50% of previous. Even this slow speed is of course within the acceptable window of service - well not for me it isn't!

I do turn evertyhing off at night but then again I always did when running at the higher speeds!

Any suggestions as too what could be the culprit here for a slow downturn other than BT giving more bandwidth to its BT vision customers??

Roger B

Re: My 'up to 20 mbs broadband' has slowly deteriorated to half speed

JohnE — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 11:18:33 GMT

reab, it's worth knowing that you should keep your ADSL router plugged in and powered on. If you regularly switch off your router, then BT Wholesale's systems can interpret that as instability and will reduce your connection profile to find a stable speed. If this continues, you may find yourself on a minimum connection profile.

Re: My 'up to 20 mbs broadband' has slowly deteriorated to half speed

reab — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 08:27:00 GMT

Thanks John but my point is why should it decide to do this after 5 months of behaving in a reasonable manner, with me powering down at night (eco friendly!) at the same time - is the exchange unable to recognise line problems from no response, exactly how does this work or has something changed - such as bandwidth policy? I've never understood why the exchange equipment needs up to 10 days to make its mind up, that is 240 hours of continuous interrogation after all !

Needless to say I'm being bombarded with promises from other companies that seem to think that they can do better!

Roger B

Re: My 'up to 20 mbs broadband' has slowly deteriorated to half speed

JohnE — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 14:44:57 GMT

Any kind of disconnection has the potential for causing this, reab. All I can say is that it's not generally a good idea to regularly power down the connection, in case it is mis-calculated as "erroring" on the line. It is important because unstable lines have a knock - on effect on other broadband lines at the exchange. It is worth knowing that keeping your connection active will likely help to recover the connection profile.

Re: My 'up to 20 mbs broadband' has slowly deteriorated to half speed

reab — Thu, 12 May 2011 08:48:48 GMT

OK - so here I am a month later with the router having been on continuously except for two restarts due to it 'locking up' or just not responding (nothing unusual).

The stats from the BT hub mananger shows the download at 8497kbs with upload unchanged at 1040kbs.

It also shows the line capped at 8817kbs where previously it was capped around 22mbs so that it would settle down to it own level which for many months was around 12mbs - not totally unhappy with that!

Now I've changed nothing so this is a BT issue, I'm appalled that the exchange equipment is unable to tell the difference between a router not connected and be able to discount the stats from it as apposed to a poor line, noise etc.

Maybe it is something to do with BT vision and it bandwidth requirements - something has changed and it has done so without my permission!!! Some one is to blame!

Any suggestions before I have a go at BT business, residential, business, bus . . . . . . .

Roger B

Re: My 'up to 20 mbs broadband' has slowly deteriorated to half speed

JohnE — Thu, 12 May 2011 13:17:25 GMT

If you have BT Vision, then you are a Residential customer? In any case, reab, please contact the helpdesk and get this investigated as a fault. Contact Us

If you are a Residential customer, the residential forum is here: BTCare Community Forums

Re: My 'up to 20 mbs broadband' has slowly deteriorated to half speed

reab — Thu, 12 May 2011 13:37:56 GMT

Thanks but this is the thing John - I have a residential line with business broadband. This was so that I could have a static ip address for communication with the company that I work for remotely on the internet from home, not a heavey user mostly email and occassional Citrix remote access.

I don't have BT vision but assume many others around here do and hence the possibility of bandwidth restriction.

I've now sent an email for support as a business broadband customer and await the response with some trepidation, last time residential blamed business and vice versa!

Roger B

Re: My 'up to 20 mbs broadband' has slowly deteriorated to half speed

JohnE — Thu, 12 May 2011 15:08:21 GMT

To be honest, reab, for connection issues, use the phone or Live Chat contacts. It's impossible to troubleshoot a line issue using e-mail contact. It's not simply a matter of "reporting" a fault, we need to run diagnostics with the customer actually on the line, on location.

Re: My 'up to 20 mbs broadband' has slowly deteriorated to half speed

phileast67 — Thu, 12 May 2011 22:51:03 GMT

If only I could get anywhere near those speeds - tonights download speed = 16Kb/s - this is not what I signed up for for my business.....looked to move to Infinity but apparently no plans to upgrade the exchange (haven't even brought it out of the dark ages yet).

R's

Phil

Re: My 'up to 20 mbs broadband' has slowly deteriorated to half speed

MHC — Thu, 12 May 2011 23:29:39 GMT

@phileast67 wrote:
If only I could get anywhere near those speeds - tonights download speed = 16Kb/s - this is not what I signed up for for my business.....looked to move to Infinity but apparently no plans to upgrade the exchange (haven't even brought it out of the dark ages yet).

R's

Phil

If you really are as low as 16kbps then you need to report that as a fault.

Even with high contention and peak usage you should not be anywhere near that.

What speed is your router currently sync'ed at?

Re: My 'up to 20 mbs broadband' has slowly deteriorated to half speed

reab — Fri, 13 May 2011 15:34:46 GMT

Oh dear Phil, I feel bad about moaning about my little problem now but hey ho . . !

Sent an email to business broadband support, received an automated response and they did phone me as promised.

However . . . they agreed I should receive somewhere between 4.5 - 12mbits and I'm currently on 7.5mbits and so is within the service window.

I am, according to the BT hub management software rate capped at 8689kbs. How do I get this back to the 20/22mbs that I had previously managed to get set? Someone must be able to reset my profile or whatever is required.

Support person was friendly and as helpfull as they could be but his computer was god and had to be believed so he denied any rate cap at all - after all, his computer wouldn't lie, would it!

Any help appreciated

Roger B

Re: My 'up to 20 mbs broadband' has slowly deteriorated to half speed689

MHC — Fri, 13 May 2011 22:18:32 GMT

Roger,

Going from memory, the 8689kbps figure is not actually set but a figure that the modem calculates.

Can you give your full line stats? That may tell a bit more about what you should be seeing ...

You also appear not to have read the PM I sent through to you

Re: My 'up to 20 mbs broadband' has slowly deteriorated to half speed

reab — Mon, 16 May 2011 10:03:49 GMT

OK thanks MHC,

Missed the PM but I'm looking at it now.

Some figures taken from the router manager:

Current DSL Connection:
                        Down              Up

Rate:                8685 kbs          1048 kbs
Max Rate:          8849 kbs         1278 kbs
Noise Margin:     15.4 dB8.6 dB
Attenuation:     36.5 dB18.2 dB
Output Power: 20.6 dBm -31.0 dBm

Protocol:         G.DMT2+ Annex A
Channel:         Fast

DSLAM Vendor Information Country: {46336} Vendor: {TSTC} Specific: {4101 }
ATM PVC:0/38

Rate Cap: 8849 kbs
Attenuation @ 300kHz:36.5 dB
Uncanceled Echo:-21.2 dB Ok
VCXO Frequency Offset:13.3 ppm Ok
Final Receive Gain:17.9 dB Ok
Impulse Noise Comp. Tones:0 Ok
Excessive Impulse Noise:0 Ok

This rate cap was changed once before without me touching the modem, maybe BT can talk to it remotely? and I'm sure it was set to above 20mbs. Not happy about the attenuation figure - maybe thats where the problem is, I'm sure it used to be lower? In any case if its capped at just above my operating speed it seems a little too close and may be another clue?

Next time I'll do a screenshot when I can get it back to a reasonable speed!

All help appreciated.

Roger B

Re: My 'up to 20 mbs broadband' has slowly deteriorated to half speed

reab — Mon, 23 May 2011 13:02:12 GMT

Well, looking at other peoples values for line attentuation/noise margin and having gone direct into the master socket with no difference, I conclude that there is a line fault causing this issue. One phone, one router and one filter is all thats on the line, even the new master socket and extesion were installed by BT !

Called BT (this is business broadband on a residential line) who did a line check and stated that the line is fine even though I impressed on the agent that its a broadband problem caused by a line fault!!! A line check seems to be a rather simple affair.

So . . . booked an engineers callout for tomorrow after a difference of opinion with a supervisor about a possible call out charge as I'm not satisfied with the line check response.

I'll update this when the engineer has called (and the problem simply and quickly resolved) with the details.

Still don't know why the profile cap remains the same!

Roger B

Re: My 'up to 20 mbs broadband' has slowly deteriorated to half speed

JohnE — Tue, 24 May 2011 10:33:18 GMT

I understand that this may come as no surprise but I concur with the helpdesk on this, reab.

These numbers:

Noise Margin: 15.4 dB8.6 dB
Attenuation: 36.5 dB18.2 dB
Output Power: 20.6 dBm -31.0 dBm

Indicate that you should be able to sustain a stable connection in the 3-5MBps range. If your profile is continually dropping it is likely that it's due to instability external to the phone line or possibly a pattern of usage which may affect how your connection profile is calculated. Obviously, we'll know more after your engineer visit.

Re: My 'up to 20 mbs broadband' has slowly deteriorated to half speed

reab — Wed, 25 May 2011 09:06:04 GMT

Trouble is even BT agree that the line should quite stably support up to probably 12mbs - which is exactly what I had for around 5-6 months or more. I would reiterate, with no change in my working practice's or hardware the speed dropped over the course of a few weeks to the current 8mbs which again is quite stable but never the less sunstantially lower.

On a previous thread I found that I had the following stats:

DSL Diagnostics - Training History Physical Line 1 General Information

DSL Line (Wire Pair):	Line 1 (inner pair)
Downstream Rate Cap:	24384 kbps
Downstream Atten. at 300kHz:	27.7 dB
Uncancelled Echo:	-20.1 dB	Ok
VCXO Frequency Offset:	13.1 ppm	Ok
Final Rx Gain:	17.9 dB	Ok
Impulse Noise Comp. Tones:	0	Ok
Excessive Impulse Noise:	0	Ok
Impulse noise protection:	0.00
Delay of latency path:	0.09 ms

Something has changed, the line attentuation and the rate cap. This is held either in the router or a BT database and can therefore be reset - it was after all reset once before because thats how I acheived the higher rate cap after the bulk exchange upgrade fiasco!

WORSE.

BT arranged to send an engineer to sort the residential line out yesterday between 1pm-6pm. As usual waited in, no one turned up, no one phoned but when I checked the call status online in the evening it had been apparently been fixed, closed and confirmed as OK by me!

Actual wording:

"This fault is now closed and we confirmed with you that you were happy with the repair within the last seven days."

I'll give it a few days to see if the speed increases before re-opening the call and complaining, I'm sorry to say that BT could certainly learn lessons from other utilitiy companies on customer relations.

Re: My 'up to 20 mbs broadband' has slowly deteriorated to half speed

JohnE — Wed, 25 May 2011 10:28:24 GMT

reab, please allow me to explain once again. Your rate will depend on the stability of the line. The line's stability is affected by the quality of the phone line. If your phone line's characteristics change or if you have a fault on the line, BT Wholesale's systems will reduce the line speed until stability is achieved. Once a line fault is resolved, it will take a little time for your line to recalculate the maximum stable rate. In your particular case, you will need to ensure that the fault on the phone line is actually resolved.

The BT which provides your phone line is an entirely seperate entity from BT Business Broadband who provide you with broadband service. It is arranged this way for compliance with the Competition Act. Furthermore, your telephone line is Residential, you will need to check with them that this fault is completely resolved. The questions are fairly simple: Do you have dial tone? Is there noise? Is the line particularly quiet (low gain)?

Speed profiles do get stuck, however and if this is the case after you have had the fault on the phone line resolved, you will need to contact us: Contact Us

Re: My 'up to 20 mbs broadband' has slowly deteriorated to half speed

MHC — Wed, 25 May 2011 11:34:52 GMT

I believe that the "Rate Cap" figure you see is locally generated in the modem/router and not informatioin from the DSLAM.

The BT DLM may have applied a low IP profile which will reduce throughput, but it will not cap the sync speed - your sync speed is dependent on te line characteristics at a specific point in time.

If you want additional impartial assisatnace, I have suggested a forum where there will be plenty of assistance available.

Re: My 'up to 20 mbs broadband' has slowly deteriorated to half speed

JohnE — Wed, 25 May 2011 12:30:57 GMT

The "Rate Cap" figures reported by reab's router diagnostics appears to be 24Mbps which is correct for the ADSL2+ service.