topic Re: you don't help yourselves plusnet in Plusnet Feedback

you don't help yourselves plusnet

whistler — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:23:50 GMT

When I first got my BB connection with PN I thought - well - there's been problems setting it up but - wow - the 4Mb/s I'm getting over tiscali's p*ss poor 1Mb/s will do me - just fine and dandy.
Oh well - I should have known it was too good to be true. I've only been "up" for two weeks and steadilly over that time the speed has dropped to it's present level of 1.7Mb/s. At this rate, in about a week I'll be back to tiscali's pathertic levels and worse - when's it going to stop slowing down.
THEN - as if to compound it all I get an email this morning from PN regarding my speed. Here's a snippet from it:

Quote
Dear Mr ***********
Account username: *************
When you signed up for your broadband account, we performed a check on your telephone line to give you an estimated speed your line might achieve.
Now that your service has now been active for 14 days, we thought we'd let you know the speed as it stands today, by way of comparison.
Estimated line speed: 6.5Mbps
Current line speed: Not available
You can keep a track of your line speed through our website:

Can one of you geniuses tell me the point in sending me this?

Re: you don't help yourselves plusnet

Mand — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:41:09 GMT

Hi there,
Firstly, apologies for the email, I've raised a problem internally to get this sorted (60334).
Regarding your connection, the speed profile dropped from 6000 to 2000 on the 24th. What's your setup like? We should certainly be able to squeeze more out of your line.

Re: you don't help yourselves plusnet

whistler — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 10:21:38 GMT

Quote from: Mand
Regarding your connection, the speed profile dropped from 6000 to 2000 on the 24th.

what does this mean? and why did it?

Quote from: Mand
What's your setup like?

How do you mean? One thing I can say is NOTHING has changed at my end.

Quote from: Mand
We should certainly be able to squeeze more out of your line.

Squeeze! - an increase from my current 1.7Mb/s to the 4Mb/s I was getting a few days ago is a tad more than a "sqeeze" I'd have thought. You're not exactly filling me with confidence.

Re: you don't help yourselves plusnet

orbrey — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:09:00 GMT

Quote from: whistler
what does this mean? and why did it?

It means that the exchange has picked up a couple of disconnections on your line, and has lowered the speed of your connection - this is to prevent further connection drops as lines running at a slower connection speed are less susceptible to noise and interference. These are the main causes of connection drops like this.

Quote from: whistler
How do you mean? One thing I can say is NOTHING has changed at my end.

Basically how is your router wired to the phone sockets and computers in your house. Is it on an extension cable, and most importantly is it plugged into the master BT socket?

Quote from: whistler
Squeeze! - an increase from my current 1.7Mb/s to the 4Mb/s I was getting a few days ago is a tad more than a "sqeeze" I'd have thought. You're not exactly filling me with confidence.

I suspect that was meant in a slightly tongue in cheek manner, though certainly not to cause offence - your line should indeed be capable of a much faster connection than it is running at currently, and we'll be happy to chase that for you.

Re: you don't help yourselves plusnet

whistler — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:45:22 GMT

Quote from: Matt
[It means that the exchange has picked up a couple of disconnections on your line, and has lowered the speed of your connection - this is to prevent further connection drops as lines running at a slower connection speed are less susceptible to noise and interference. These are the main causes of connection drops like this.

So I've been using the service virtually every day and never had a drop out or a problem and BT decide to improve things by slowing me down by more than 50% - how kind of them - you'd think with all the complaints flying around here concerning BT they'd concentrate on those reporting problems and leave their happy customers alone.

Quote from: Matt
Basically how is your router wired to the phone sockets and computers in your house. Is it on an extension cable, and most importantly is it plugged into the master BT socket?

My system (a router and a single wired PC with my wife's laptop on wireless) is wired exactly the same as it has been for 5 years. The router is not on an extension cable - it's on a "hard wired" i.e. inside the walls - socket. No it's not plugged into the master socket - it's in my upstairs office and the master socket is in my downstairs hallway. I really don't want to move my office downstairs into the hallway if I can avoid it. BUT - (BT's) disconnections on my line can't have anything to do with anything my side of the socket - so where are we going with this?

Quote from: Matt
I suspect that was meant in a slightly tongue in cheek manner, though certainly not to cause offence - your line should indeed be capable of a much faster connection than it is running at currently, and we'll be happy to chase that for you.

No offence taken - maybe my sense of humour is taking a bit of a kicking these days. Certainly my line is capable of much faster speeds - it was doing just fine at 4Mb/s before BT decided to improve my service down to 1.7Mb/s - but then that takes us round in a circle to point 1 again. Ho hum.

Re: you don't help yourselves plusnet

Chris — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:55:41 GMT

It looks like it's corrected itself, the profile increased back to 6000 late last night and updated on our systems now too.
If you try rebooting your modem/router you should see the higher speeds again.

Re: you don't help yourselves plusnet

whistler — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 14:21:59 GMT

well you're the man chris - allways good news when you appear
It's now actually better than before at 5Mb/s. Also just did a check and it's 100% transfer efficiency with 0% (obviously) re-transmited packets.
Interesting however that BT slowed it, but it "corrected itself" - not that I'm complaining. Thanks for getting back.

Re: you don't help yourselves plusnet

jelv — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 14:32:51 GMT

Quote from: whistler
My system (a router and a single wired PC with my wife's laptop on wireless) is wired exactly the same as it has been for 5 years. The router is not on an extension cable - it's on a "hard wired" i.e. inside the walls - socket. No it's not plugged into the master socket - it's in my upstairs office and the master socket is in my downstairs hallway. I really don't want to move my office downstairs into the hallway if I can avoid it. BUT - (BT's) disconnections on my line can't have anything to do with anything my side of the socket - so where are we going with this?

Have any changes been made to equipment plugged in to the downstairs phone socket (including temporary changes which mean putting plugs in and out)?
Have you had any recent different electrical equipment not connected to the phone which is near the route of the cable from downstairs to your office?
Some sort of interference caused a disconnection and synchronisation at a lower speed; if it happened once it could happen again.
Regarding your comment about moving your office downstairs, there are several ways in which your router could be situated near the master socket to give absolute optimal broadband performance and the ethernet extended to your office upstairs.

Re: you don't help yourselves plusnet

whistler — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:41:08 GMT

Quote from: jelv
Have any changes been made to equipment plugged in to the downstairs phone socket (including temporary changes which mean putting plugs in and out)?

Quote from: jelv
Have you had any recent different electrical equipment not connected to the phone which is near the route of the cable from downstairs to your office?

Quote from: jelv
Some sort of interference caused a disconnection and synchronisation at a lower speed; if it happened once it could happen again.

Well - my phone is supposed to be transferring from BT to PN tomorrow and the phone line did go dead during a voice call I think last Friday morning for a couple of minutes. I assumed it was a part of the switch over shenanigans. This has NEVER happened before to my knowlege in 20 years at this address.

Quote from: jelv
Regarding your comment about moving your office downstairs, there are several ways in which your router could be situated near the master socket to give absolute optimal broadband performance and the ethernet extended to your office upstairs.

I was being a little "tongue in cheek" if needs be I'll do this but I'll need convincing first - not least because earlier Matt said

Quote
the exchange has picked up a couple of disconnections on your line

Surely this has nothing to do with what happens on my LAN. For example I could turn my router off or disconnect it entirely and there'd be zilch on the line - BT wouldn't know or care. A "disconnection on the line" has to be an "outside" issue doesn't it?

Re: you don't help yourselves plusnet

orbrey — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:20:45 GMT

Hi Whistler,
The disconnects seen may well be the work on the exchange, which would explain a lot - mostly why your line has been so rock solid, then a wobble for the work, then back to rock solid again. In that case it's nothing to worry about at all.
With regard to disconnections, when you turn off the router it disconnects from the service - the exchange equipment doesn't distinguish this from, say, a drop caused by a cable break or noise/interference on the line. All it sees is that the service is no longer connected. Any disconnection is recorded as such, no matter what the cause.

Re: you don't help yourselves plusnet

jelv — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:44:43 GMT

Quote from: Matt
With regard to disconnections, when you turn off the router it disconnects from the service - the exchange equipment doesn't distinguish this from, say, a drop caused by a cable break or noise/interference on the line. All it sees is that the service is no longer connected. Any disconnection is recorded as such, no matter what the cause.

That's why a lot of people leave their routers on 24x7 - it's also why I have mine on a UPS!

Re: you don't help yourselves plusnet

whistler — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:15:56 GMT

OK - Thanks Matt, but lets just take this one step at a time so I understand it correctly...

Quote from: Matt
It means that the exchange has picked up a couple of disconnections on your line, and has lowered the speed of your connection - this is to prevent further connection drops as lines running at a slower connection speed are less susceptible to noise and interference. These are the main causes of connection drops like this.

Quote from: Matt
The disconnects seen may well be the work on the exchange, which would explain a lot - mostly why your line has been so rock solid, then a wobble for the work, then back to rock solid again. In that case it's nothing to worry about at all.

Taking the above two together - BT do work on the line which causes disruption - then seeing that disruption, they decide to forget they caused it a cut my broadband in half to give me a more reliable service. Have I got that right?

Quote from: Matt
With regard to disconnections, when you turn off the router it disconnects from the service - the exchange equipment doesn't distinguish this from, say, a drop caused by a cable break or noise/interference on the line. All it sees is that the service is no longer connected. Any disconnection is recorded as such, no matter what the cause.

So turning off my kit when I (say) go on holiday results in BT slowing my connection when I come back - cute. Kind of makes a mockery of fire safety - wonder what my house insurance company would say - only kidding - I know exactly what they'd say.
Seriously - are you saying that when I go on holiday and turn my kit off - my speed is likely to be dropped because of it?

Re: you don't help yourselves plusnet

Chris — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:17:36 GMT

Not every reconnection will cause your speed to reduce, if you want some light (not so light really) reading on how it works and speed faults take a look here: link:speed

Re: you don't help yourselves plusnet

jelv — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:21:18 GMT

Quote from: whistler
Seriously - are you saying that when I go on holiday and turn my kit off - my speed is likely to be dropped because of it?

It's how frequently the disconnects occur that BT look at. I'd recommend only turning the router off if it's going to be a couple of days or more.

Re: you don't help yourselves plusnet

Bud — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:23:59 GMT

Quote from: Mand
Hi there,
Firstly, apologies for the email, I've raised a problem internally to get this sorted (60334).

I was under the impression that silly emails was being looked into allready.

Re: you don't help yourselves plusnet

orbrey — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:32:18 GMT

@whistler - as per the link Chris has posted, the dynamic line management system (DLM) based in the exchange works automatically, and as I said a disconnection is a disconnection no matter what the cause. To be fair your profile did jump right back up within 24 hours which is a minor miracle (again that was automatic, there was no intervention from us) - usually this takes a couple of days.

Re: you don't help yourselves plusnet

whistler — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:21:01 GMT

The general tenet here seems to be this: Disconnections, the pattern of which seems to be somewhat of a gray area, may or may not result in BT slowing down a connection. So what happens to modem orientated connections as opposed to router connections?

Re: you don't help yourselves plusnet

jelv — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 11:04:31 GMT

Why do you think we don't like modems?

Re: you don't help yourselves plusnet

orbrey — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 11:31:05 GMT

There's no difference between a modem disconnect and a router disconnect - if the connection is terminated, a disconnection is registered. If there's a number of disconnections within a certain time the exchange equipment picks this up as an intermittent drop and lowers the speed of the line to make it more stable and resistant to further disconnections.

Re: you don't help yourselves plusnet

jelv — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 11:54:20 GMT

Matt,
I think the point of his question is that while routers may be left on all the time, PCs with modems are far more likely to be turned on and off!