Can Somebody Help Me, Before I call It A Day

[tfc]

For 2 years I had been enjoying? Speeds of 5 to 5.3 Mbps. Suddenly, about a month ago, the speeds dropped to 3 to 3.2 Mbps.  Once the drop had happened, the speeds could only be recovered by resetting the broadband connection, but the result only lasted for up to a day.

I contacted BT, and they asked me to try another router. We did that, with no difference in the results. They then decided to send me a 2701 router. I installed that, with the same settings as before. The result was the same. They sent an engineer, who tested the wiring and the line and pronounced everything was OK as far as he could tell. However, he did alert me to the possibility of this being some electrical interference on the line.

BT asked me to monitor the line by doing daily speed tests with the BT speed tester. I did this with the results being exactly as before, except for the fact that the new 2701 router never dropped the line. Instead the margin varied from 6 to 12 dB, with the speed going down as before. After the week of testing BT pronounce they were satisfied, and pronounced the call ‘closed’. When I enquired why, I was told that there was no fault, because under the conditions that I was reporting the lowest speed is above 2MBps.

Since then I have monitored the line with RouterStats (a very useful tool) (http://www.vwlowen.co.uk/internet/files.htm) I have monitored the line for 13 days non-stop. It is apparent that what is happening is that at certain times during the day, the line suffers a massive degradation almost instantaneously (certainly within the 20 seconds sample time). The Max3 speed shown by the Router drops from 5200 to 4000, and the Margin (Mgn2) jumps to 12dB. It then operates at this lower speed until a later time (a few hours later)when, again almost instantaneously, the speed recovers, and the margin goes back to 6dB. (The attenuation remains constant at about 43dB. I am about 2.1 Km from the exchange.)

All the time however, my practical speed is limited to 3000 to 3200 as my IP Profile is now 3500.

I have contacted BT a number of times of the last few days and I have been told again that there is no problem because the lowest speed is above 2Mbps. I have been fed all the usual lines :-

1. The line is just getting old.
2. It’s the amount of traffic at the exchange.
3. It’s within BT’s contractual specification.
4. My BTOpenzone hotspot should be switched off as it’s using up the bandwidth.
5. It’s the other computers on the link (1) which are slowing it down.
6. You will never get more than 4Mbps from this connection as BT’s records show that it is running at ‘its maximum capacity’.

Nobody seems to understand, or want to understand, that these are not explanations for the sort of behaviour of the line. Nobody wants to recognise that the line performed perfectly well at up to 5.3Mbps for 2 years.

Something is interfering with the service massively at specific points in the day. The line just doesn’t degrade slowly, neither is it just a dodgy few seconds of noise. The times in the day when the problem occurs are not consistent, apart from the fact that most of the start times are very close to 06:00. The times certainly don’t correspond to BT’s peaks. But all this is just seems to be wasted breath. Nobody listens, but just recites the party line.

For interest I attach my graphs from the past 11 days. As it is 11 days, the horizontal scale is necessarily compressed. So, please don’t pronounce it as just spots of noise. The solid intervals are hours and days long (the longest at 5Mbps+ is over 3 days.) The drops and recoveries are seconds in length, hence the vertical on the graphs. The Router has not been rebooted, nor reset during this whole time. There have been no Link Retrains during this time.

 

I don’t know what to do next, except to apply for my MAC code. But therein lies the rub, and probably the institutional cause of the problem. The last engineer I spoke to warned me that I would not see any difference moving, as the same lines and exchanges would be being used. So much for competition driving up standards!

Thanks

[tfc]

Interesting. not even a comment.

I notice now that even the BT SpeedTester doesn't work any more since last night (tried several times).

"Tester Error

The Performance Tester is currently unable to run a speed test for your broadband connection. Please try again shortly, however if this problem persists, raise the issue with your service provider."

Why is this?

[markp]

Hi tfc,

I have sent you private messages about this issue, if you can have a look and reply please?

regards

markp

[tfc]

My apologies Markp.

I didn't have the PM notification set, so I have only just seen the messages. I will reply now

Thanks

[tfc · Accepted solution]

I closed this fault today, because I found the cause of the problem, after more than 2 weeks monitoring of the Speed, and Noise on the connection, and monitoring locally for RFI interference, in conjunction with other broadband users in the locality.

The problem is caused by radio frequency interference which is in the range of  600-625 KHz which is the same part of the spectrum as parts of the ADSL signalling.

In this case, it is caused by a control panel on a heating boiler control. (The manufacturer is investigating to find the faulty competent which is actually radiating.  The noise is quite strong and is being radiated with a range of  approximately 30 metres.)

I do understand that the problem is not something under BT’s control, but I am rather disappointed with BT’s response to the problem. No-one in BT, as far as I am aware, followed up on the original engineer's suggestion that it might be radio/electrical interference and so there were no tests for it. This is despite the fact that detailed monitoring information was presented to BT and they were informed that the fault was causing problems for other users in the locality.

Even after raising the problem here, and markp (Thanks!) raised it again with support, the only response was to monitor the line further. Fortunately, today we had completed our own monitoring by the time BT contacted me to close the call. If I had not done my own monitoring to determine the cause of the problem, we would have probably been no further forward, as the engineer today simply wanted to know if the line was OK now.

It is ironic that when I told BT that the problem had been resolved, I was told that the speed would now increase back to its original setting. This is the same line which previously was “old and  incapable of handling a speed above 4Mbps”.

For other users who may be experiencing the same problems of  suffering large sudden drops in the speed of their broadband which last for some time, but then recovers suddenly, and there are repetitions of this, suspect Repetitive Electrical Impulse Noise (REIN). I found the following links useful :-

Repetitive Electrical Impulse Noise (REIN) and How clean is your home ?