topic Re: Poor Synchronisation of Plusnet and BT I/P Profiles in Plusnet Feedback

Poor Synchronisation of Plusnet and BT I/P Profiles

jack21 — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 06:37:58 GMT

I've been with Plusnet since 2008 and I'm immensely impressed with the overall quality of service and support; in particular, the ticketing system is the best I've encountered and puts to shame all the other ISPs I have to deal with in the course of my duties. In the main, I'm happy to recommend Plusnet to new clients.
But there is one glaring weakness that I come across time and time again when helping Plusnet customers; the appalling question of the performance of the Plusnet I/P profiling 'dualing' with the BT/Openreach I/P profiling system.
The BT/Openreach I/P profiling is bad enough in itself; 3, 4, 5 days to wait for a profile increase after an improvement in the line sync rate is bad, some other ISPs on unbundled exchanges don't use this restrictive technique, with no apparent ill-effects.....but what really frustrates me is the often consequent wait for a further 1,2,3,4,5+ days for the Plusnet I/P profiling system to synchronise itself with the BT profile, and the frequent necessity to have to contact Plusnet Support to get the 2 profiles synchronised. It annoys both myself and the customer I'm helping.
I'm familiar with the Plusnet explanation for the existence of their profiling system, and I'm content to live with it, providing it performs as intended.....ie the profiles being synchronised within 24 hours of a change. But the thing I'm extremely unhappy about is the often very poor performance of the synchronising system, and I've read many other similar expressions of dissatisfaction on this Forum.
I therefore ask Plusnet to look at this issue in depth, and strongly urge them to make an effort to get the process working properly, quickly and consistently, and to publicise the results of such work and improvements.
One quick-fix method to make an improvement whilst the process is being corrected would be to include a 'Profile Resync' option on the Control Panel.
Please, Plusnet, take notice of this, and do let me and the Forum know that you are doing something about it.

Re: Poor Synchronisation of Plusnet and BT I/P Profiles

adamwalker — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 08:45:21 GMT

Hi there,
We have already taken notice of what's been discussed on the forum with regards to profiling issues. As you clearly feel strongly about this we'd like to reassure you that this is something we're continuing to look into. At the moment we're looking at any reported examples of where the profile hasn't updated and in each case we're needing to check at which level the issue lies (i.e is the delta report being issued correctly when the line resynchs and if so is our system processing it).
This isn't something that seems to affect everyone but we do acknowledge that it is impacting some of you and I'm certain we'll push things further forward with this if a single clear cause for such problems can be identified.

Quote
Please, Plusnet, take notice of this, and do let me and the Forum know that you are doing something about it.

There's not much more I can add to what I've already mentioned at this stage but we will be discussing this with you guys further if we do spot something that we're able to make movement on.
You mentioned that you're having to contact support regularly to update the profile, how often do you find yourself doing that roughly? if you want to PM over the username of the customer your helping I can check for you on there account if you prefer as it should be logged there.
Adam

Re: Poor Synchronisation of Plusnet and BT I/P Profiles

jack21 — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 10:04:29 GMT

Hi Adam,
I have PM'd you......similar to the following:
At one time, I'd say this happened monthly; I'm on a marginal long line 69.3db, and my village is 5km from the exchange. In ordinary circumstances, apart from thunderstorms, the line would be remarkably stable, and it does hold a default snrm of 6 very well for last 18 months. But have a neighbour who has some piece of kit that drops my SNRM by 2-3db at times during day/evening - when they are out-of-house, or on holiday, no such snrm drop is evident, but they won't cooperate with me to identify the fault. So, when the router is forced to do a resync because of the snrm drop, the sync rate drops. Then I have to retrain when the snrm drop ceases to get normal sync rate back.......sometimes 2016 or just over, or at least 1728+......but then I face the BT+Plusnet profile wait, at one point 10 days.
I began by raising tickets to get the profile resync'd (after BT 3-day wait, plus 2/3 day P/N wait.). But I found that tortuous; often the ticket would be misunderstood, or I'd be asked to go thru the standard check filter, master socket etc etc and it would take further days to resolve. So I switched to phoning in; but it depended who dealt with me - some of your staff would do the profile resync there and then, but others, less-experienced?, would want to go thru the whole fault procedure, or some would do an unwanted reset on my line. So that put me off too; I usually suppress my impatience for up to 4 days.
Sometimes, especially the last few months, the profile resync would happen within 24 hours, but, for example, my BT profile rose to 1750kbps this tuesday morning, but still no movement from the P/N profile. So you could check why mine is stuck. The 'stickyness' is also evident when the BT profile drops, but that doesn't cause me a problem.
I've had several other P/N customers in the village who had the same issue.
The whole issue just irritates me so much, especially as the rest of your services are of such high quality.....I can see on the Forum that lots of others frequently ask for a profile nudge. I really wish you could sort it out once and for all, for everyone, and clear the problem.
Regards,
Jack

Re: Poor Synchronisation of Plusnet and BT I/P Profiles

adamwalker — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 12:14:53 GMT

Thanks for getting back to me, I appreciate your frustration.
We have as you may be aware resolved a problem which we identified on our systems where the profiles weren't always updating on our side. I will check against your account (and the others mentioned in your PM) but what we are seeing when examples of this are reported that when our systems checks for the file for the latest delta report (which determines the BT profile) is that the files simply aren't there.
At present this is something that particular issue is out of our hands but I do know that we are pushing back on this and we will continue to do so if we see any further mentions of the same problem.

Re: Poor Synchronisation of Plusnet and BT I/P Profiles

Oldjim — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 12:30:46 GMT

As one of the sufferers of this would a monitored trial help
I can resync at a lower speed, wait for the profile to drop (usually happens within 12 hours) then resync at a higher speed (profile increase usually takes 2.5 to 3 days)
I can do this as often as needed by fiddling with the default noise margin

Re: Poor Synchronisation of Plusnet and BT I/P Profiles

jack21 — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 12:39:42 GMT

Thanks Adam, the other named users were quite some time ago, except the one ending in npo ; most of my clients would not recognise the scenario, or contend with profiles - the issue only comes to light if their profiles are down in the sub-500 category, and they call me in!
My own profile is still in this stuck state after 2 nights; my general impression is that either the P/N profile gets equated to the BT one the same day-night the BT one is updated, or that it then takes many days to auto-re-equalise, if at all; I did wait for 6 or 7 days on one occasion, but it never auto-happened, and I was forced to ask for a 'nudge'.
Suggestion: How about having an open topic under 'Broadband and Routers' similar to what you did for 21CN Profiles so that anyone with a stuck profile can simply leave a note, and your staff check it frequently and action the relevant stuck profile, investigating if appropriate.
I'm happy to work with you on this; I can probably cause a misalignment on demand! Having said that, on one occasion, the BT profile took 3 days to drop in response to a sustained large sync rate fall (as opposed to the usual few minutes)......in that 3 day period, after 1 day,, I recovered the original higher sync rate, and sustained it, only to find, 2 days later, that the BT profile finally decided to drop to match the previous lower sync rate.

Re: Poor Synchronisation of Plusnet and BT I/P Profiles

adamwalker — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 14:33:34 GMT

Thanks for the ideas guys, give me a little time to discuss these with the rest of the team and I will come back to you.

Re: Poor Synchronisation of Plusnet and BT I/P Profiles

jack21 — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 14:50:59 GMT

Good-o, Adam; a couple more thoughts/options:
1. For an affected user, be able to 'fix' the P/N profile at a mutually-acceptable value.....unaffected by the equalisation process.
2. Have a Control Panel option to 'Resync Profiles'
3. In the process logic: if no delta file found, set P/N profile to that band-matching the current sync rate.
4. If this is widespread, turn it off altogether until a foolproof process can be devised.
5. Make it easier to phone Support and get a 'nudge' without over-complications.

Re: Poor Synchronisation of Plusnet and BT I/P Profiles

Townman — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 17:12:43 GMT

Any chance of a simple description of what to look for so that more of us can provide feedback to Adam to help (forgive the pun) profile the issue?

Re: Poor Synchronisation of Plusnet and BT I/P Profiles

jelv — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 18:08:05 GMT

1. Run the BT (diagnostic) speed test and note the IP Profile.
2. Go to https://portal.plus.net/my.html?action=stable_rate and check that the "Current Line Speed" is the same or just below (it rounds down to nearest 100).
3. If they are different and stay like that for more than 12 hours you have a problem.

Re: Poor Synchronisation of Plusnet and BT I/P Profiles

jack21 — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 06:53:57 GMT

Adam,
My P/N profile hasn't updated overnight, so that's getting on for 70 hours since the BT profile changed.
(BTW, the BT profile took 5.8 days of sustained higher sync to rise)
Please don't give my profile a nudge, but do use its current non-updating as part of your investigations.
Jack

Re: Poor Synchronisation of Plusnet and BT I/P Profiles

orbrey — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 08:48:01 GMT

Hmm, still not updated (realise it's only a couple of hours later but you never know). Have you resynced the router at all since the BT profile updated? That can sometimes help. Having said that we will continue the investigation and thanks for the heads up about the example.

Re: Poor Synchronisation of Plusnet and BT I/P Profiles

jack21 — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 09:52:23 GMT

Matt,
No, I wouldn't do a router resync or reboot or line retrain; that would put the current sync rate at risk; if it even briefly dips below the i/p profile band, I'm likely to be back to the beginning of the whole horrendous BT+PN wait-for-profile cycle. Anyway, it should not be a necessity - the BT profile is already correctly set.
Please don't manually adjust my profile; better to try and find the underlying reason why it won't auto-update.
Regards,
Jack

Re: Poor Synchronisation of Plusnet and BT I/P Profiles

jack21 — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 06:02:08 GMT

Hello Plusnet,
Would you tell me how your investigation is proceeding please; is my non-updating profile helping you to pinpoint the wider root cause of why Plusnet profiles don't auto-update?
And has your team considered my various suggestions about what to do about it whilst also engaged in finding/fixing the problem for the whole Plusnet community ? ie....
1. For an affected user, be able to 'fix' the P/N profile at a mutually-acceptable value.....unaffected by the equalisation process.
2. Have a PN Control Panel option to 'Resync Profiles'
3. In the process logic: if no delta file found, set P/N profile to that band-matching the current sync rate; you really should have some alternative to cover situations where no delta file is found.
4. If this is widespread, turn it off altogether until a foolproof process can be devised.
5. Make it easier to phone/ticket/Forum Support and get a 'nudge' without over-complications.

Update: My own P/N profile still hasn't auto-updated after 8 days since the BT profile rose, covering tue, wed, thu, fri, sat, sun, mon, tue nights, so surely that must give plenty of evidence.....or is it the case that if the profile isn't updated within 24 hours, then it is never going to be auto-updated?
Jack

Re: Poor Synchronisation of Plusnet and BT I/P Profiles

jack21 — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 05:33:52 GMT

Hello Adam or other Plusnet,
Are you yet able to respond to my posting (above) of 8 Sep?
Thanks
Jack

Re: Poor Synchronisation of Plusnet and BT I/P Profiles

ejs — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 07:00:21 GMT

Quote from: jack21
Update: My own P/N profile still hasn't auto-updated after 8 days since the BT profile rose, covering tue, wed, thu, fri, sat, sun, mon, tue nights, so surely that must give plenty of evidence.....or is it the case that if the profile isn't updated within 24 hours, then it is never going to be auto-updated?

In my experience, once it has missed its chance to change, then it will remain stuck. But a future ADSL resync and subsequent profile update may or may not work automatically.

Re: Poor Synchronisation of Plusnet and BT I/P Profiles

orbrey — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 09:00:19 GMT

Hi Jack21,
Bear in mind we've already fixed (from what we can see) everything possible from our side, as Chris has posted elsewhere in a number of cases we go to download the update file for a user and it's not actually there. We are talking to our suppliers and are pushing as hard as we can but it's certainly not going to happen instantly. We are of course still checking for other issues on our side as well.

Quote from: jack21
And has your team considered my various suggestions about what to do about it whilst also engaged in finding/fixing the problem for the whole Plusnet community ? ie....
1. For an affected user, be able to 'fix' the P/N profile at a mutually-acceptable value.....unaffected by the equalisation process.

This depends on us being able to set the profile on demand on our suppliers' side and also requires the user to understand profiles and set one that will actually work for their line. The former isn't possible and the latter.... let's just say the users in these forums are far more interested in how their service works than our average customer is.

Quote from: jack21
2. Have a PN Control Panel option to 'Resync Profiles'

If the system was working correctly there'd be no need for this as the profile would update on our side as soon as it was updated on our suppliers'. In the mean time it's a lot of work for something that wouldn't actually fix the main problem we're seeing at the moment - i.e. we go to download an update file and it isn't there.

Quote from: jack21
3. In the process logic: if no delta file found, set P/N profile to that band-matching the current sync rate; you really should have some alternative to cover situations where no delta file is found.

On the one hand this is a good idea, but the trouble is it goes against the reason we have profiles on our side - if we don't have a profile set the traffic management system is essentially pointless as packets are dropped at the exchange rather than sent there at a rate that ensures they all get through as prioritised by our equipment. If we were to base the profile on our side on the sync rate it would almost always be above the supplier profile on the line leading to the problem I mention above.

Quote from: jack21
4. If this is widespread, turn it off altogether until a foolproof process can be devised.

As per previous answer, this would make our traffic management platform ineffective unfortunately.

Quote from: jack21
5. Make it easier to phone/ticket/Forum Support and get a 'nudge' without over-complications.

There was a thread that we were checking regularly for profile updates, failing that I guess you could PM one of us but I'm not sure how much easier we could make it? If it does get any worse then I'll see what we can do about resource but at the moment it doesn't seem that things are out of control.
I'm sorry if that seems overly negative, thanks very much for thinking about it and coming up with the ideas. I assure you we're not letting this drop.

Re: Poor Synchronisation of Plusnet and BT I/P Profiles

jack21 — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 09:24:15 GMT

Thanks for your detailed reply, Matt, much appreciated. Could anyone imagine getting such an appropriate, detailed response from any other ISP, because I can't!!
One point re item 3 of my suggestions: you say that your delivering a faster service than the BT profile permits would cause problems....but that is exactly the case when the Plusnet profile fails to drop whenever the BT profile drops - I see that happening too, as well as the Plusnet profile failing to follow the BT profile upwards. And yet I see no ill-consequence of the Plusnet profile being higher than the BT profile. Very oddly, the Plusnet profile DOES eventually fall to match the BT one - 3 days is the longest I've seen it remain higher, so you must have a fallback process to cope with that.
I recall that when I joined Plusnet from BT way back in 2008, this profile sillyness was present then; it must be a very obscure issue indeed to track down and correct if it is still defeating the Plusnet and BT experts.
Plusnet profile mismatching is probably quite widespread, but I'm prepared to be contradicted - I have no definitive overall evidence other that the numbers of profile-nudge compaints and request I see in the Forum. But after all, who is likely to notice a profile mismatch? If your normal sync rate is above maybe 3Mbps then unless you performed speedchecks, or curiously went looking at your profiles, would you even notice a difference of one 0.5Mbps profile band? On the other hand, if your normal sync rate is 1Mbps then you would notice if the Plusnet profile got stuck at say 0.5Mbps. Out of my 200 or so 'clients', I estimate that only 1 would go looking for profile mismatches, even tho most are like me, in a very low syn rate area (3Mbps at one end of the village, 1Mbps at the other - long village, poor and variable quality wiring and attenuation). Many of such 'clients' affected by a profile mismatch would just tell me that their computer has slowed down.
Don't let me over-cook this tho; Plusnet services are still among the best in the business as far as I'm concerned, and apart from this issue, I have nowt to complain about. I will continue to recommend Plusnet to my long-line clients where appropriate, tho I still find PostOffice phone+line+broadband to be more appropriate to some others. The reason that Plusnet doesn't see significant numbers of referals from me is that I refrain from asking for mentions from my clients in order to avoid any thoughts of my having any self-interest motive for recommending Plusnet.....a few have given my name without saying so though (that's OK by me).
I simply wish/hope/trust that Plusnet will stop 'living with' this problem, as it (probably incorrectly) appears to me after 4 years of experiencing it , and take determined and positive steps to fix it properly for all their customers. And to publicise the progress!
Regards,
Jack

Re: Poor Synchronisation of Plusnet and BT I/P Profiles

jack21 — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 10:20:33 GMT

Matt,
Could you give me an idea of how widespread this profile problem currently is, by telling me the approx number of delta-file-not-found reports you typically get per day?
Thanks,
Jack