topic Re: Just joined FTTC, speed lower than expected. in Broadband

Just joined FTTC, speed lower than expected.

Harland84 — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 13:24:29 GMT

Hello,

I just joined plusnet at my new home, only serviced by FTTC, sadly. The "expected" speed when I signed up was 45/8Mbps, but I am just getting 30/6 (very close to the 29Mbps min warranted).

This is the technical log from the router,

Product name Plusnet Hub Two

Firmware version v0.10.00.04201-PN (Thu Apr 20 16:54:19 2023)

Board version R01

GUI version 1.9 16_08_2022DSL

uptime 0 days 0 Hours 22 Mins 6 Secs

Data rate 7.3 Mbps / 32.6 Mbps

Maximum Data rate 7.3 Mbps / 33.3 Mbps

Noise margin 6.1/6.2

Line attenuation 10.6/21.9

Signal attenuation 10.6/29.4

VLAN id 101

Upstream error control Off

Downstream error control Off

Software variant-

Boot loader 0.1.7-PN (Thu Nov 30 09:45:22 2017)

The difference between the line att and the signal att kind of suggest that the cable is damaged or tapped, no?
Is there any hope for this line to get "better", or am I stuck with this until FTTP is deployed here?

Cheers, Y.

Re: Just joined FTTC, speed lower than expected.

jab1 — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 13:34:16 GMT

@Harland84 Welcome to the Community Forum. If you have literally just started on your PN connection, it is possible that the line will be in training, so your speed may fluctuate up/down until the line management equipment finds the best trade-off between speed and stability.

The difference between the attenuation figures is perfectly normal.

Re: Just joined FTTC, speed lower than expected.

Harland84 — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 13:57:04 GMT

John Thanks for the fast reply! The router has been plugged in since last Saturday. With all the moving I didn't pay much attention to it until today.

Let's see how it is in a few more days, I guess.

Re: Just joined FTTC, speed lower than expected.

Baldrick1 — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 14:06:17 GMT

@Harland84

Keep an eye on the SNR as well as the speed. The DLM looks to have been reset to the default 6dB. If the fault count is sufficiently low then the automatic DLM should reduce this figure, which will increase the speed. The bottom limit for SNR is 3dB. The important thing is to leave it switched on and not do anything silly like resetting it, which can be misinterpreted by the DLM. This can take many days to settle out.

Re: Just joined FTTC, speed lower than expected.

jab1 — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 14:12:25 GMT

@Harland84 I should also have mentioned that you line attenuation, although not particularly high is not that low either, but from my experience, the quoted 45 down is the best you are likely to see, to be honest. Do you know - roughly how far you are from your local cab?

Also note you will need a very clean line for the SNR to drop to 3dB.

Re: Just joined FTTC, speed lower than expected.

Harland84 — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 14:34:47 GMT

Regarding the "wait and see"... can I set the router to modem only? (i have my own asus zenwifii mesh routers). I did (this morning) set the plusnet router to bridge mode, and correctly configured the mesh with PPPoe but I had to factory reset it because then I couldn't get the 192.168.1.254 IP back to check the technical param in modem mode only. Not sure if it was my mesh router not allowing traffic to that IP or if the bridge mode not even has access to that menu.

No idea about how far away, but this is a cul-de-sac street, it is one of the last houses and I hadnt seen any Openreach cabinet! I saw in the BT Wholesale DB that is serviced by "Address LONDON on Exchange MUSWELL HILL is served by Cabinet 25".

Cheers, Y.

Re: Just joined FTTC, speed lower than expected.

jab1 — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 14:47:09 GMT

If you have a mesh system, then then Hub2 should be in modem mode anyway. From the data in that screenshot, cab 25 is some distance away, so you will never get great speeds, but as we have said, there is a 'training period' where the equipment in the cab attempts to find the best speed/stability balance. If your data rate does not (slightly) improve, or gets lower, in the next 10 days or so, come back and say so.

Re: Just joined FTTC, speed lower than expected.

Dan_the_Van — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 14:48:27 GMT

@Harland84

The Hub Two in modem mode will not be visible from your home network via the router.

What I did was to setup a spare PC and connected it to one of the free LAN ports of the Hub, giving the PC a static IP Address 192.168.1.1 mask 255.255.255.0 default gateway address not required. Then browse to 192.168.1.254 as usual; you can look at the Technical Log and event logs as required.

HTH

Re: Just joined FTTC, speed lower than expected.

Harland84 — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 14:52:45 GMT

@jab1 Ill be back then! Thanks!

@Dan_the_Van Ok so It IP exists. I can add a route manually on the router to allow the traffic to .254 IP to flow, Ill do that. Thanks!

Cheers, Y.

Re: Just joined FTTC, speed lower than expected.

Harland84 — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 11:46:01 GMT

Hello again, 6 months later.

In the end the line, with the plusnet provided modem ended on an stable 34/7 mbit. The stats in the router said it was higher (40ish) but I never saw a single speedtest getting above 35mbps.

A few days ago I bought a vigor130 on ebay, second hand quite cheap, just to experiment what would happen. So far the upload has gone up to 8 or even 10mbps but I hadnt seen any benefits in the download (if anything it might had made it worse), and the latency is even lower, which is great.

Vigor130 gives this...

VDSL2 Information (VDSL2 Firmware Version: 576D17_A/B/C )

Profile	State	UP Speed	Down Speed	SNR Upstream	SNR Downstream
17A	SHOWTIME	8685 (Kbps)	34585 (Kbps)	6 (dB)	5 (dB)

Is there a way way to ask plusnet to rerun the "training" now that I have this modem?

Cheers, Y.

Re: Just joined FTTC, speed lower than expected.

Harland84 — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 11:51:44 GMT

From the vigor cooler stats...

vdsl status

Re: Just joined FTTC, speed lower than expected.

jab1 — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 12:28:49 GMT

@Harland84 As said 6 months ago, you have a longish 'final mile of copper, so you are never going to get supersonic speeds until you get Full Fibre (FTTP). However, your current stats look about correct.

Re: Just joined FTTC, speed lower than expected.

Harland84 — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 12:35:12 GMT

Yeah I am here scratching 1Mb haha. Thanks for your answer, looking forward to that FTTP! (some point before dec2026, openreach's website says.

Regards, Y.

Re: Just joined FTTC, speed lower than expected.

Harland84 — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 09:46:37 GMT

Hi!

@Dan_the_Van just wanted to add something about your setup to be able to access the Hub behind your router. I have an ASUS router, and what I've done to access the hub behind the router is actually quite simple. The issue is that the router does not give an IP in the IP range for the HUB on the eth0 port (WAN port), since the only IP added is the briddge one and the ppp interfaces one. The simple way is to enable the SSH access in the ASUS router menu and then add an IP for that interface...

So from command line / putty...

ssh username@asus_router_ip

then just add the ip!
ip addr add 192.168.1.10/24 dev eth0 (any ip in the 192.168.1.0/24 subnet does the job, so 10 is fine)

And that's all ! now the HUB GUI can be seen from the router's subnet.

Cheers!

Re: Just joined FTTC, speed lower than expected.

Dan_the_Van — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 10:09:10 GMT

@Harland84

Thanks for the tip, the routers I have do not allow for an IP Address to be added to the WAN port or a second WAN port so I was forced to adopt the method I described.

Hopefully for me within the next six months DSL line stats will be history as the Openreach chamber has been made Full Fibre ready with a CBT put in place.