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Disconnections and Inconclusive Tests

saguaro
Rising Star
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Registered: ‎26-01-2011

Re: Disconnections and Inconclusive Tests

If it hasn't settled down after a few more days I probably will. Last time I did that, they put the line in test mode and it was immediately better, and stayed that way for a few months even after the testing came off.
I still haven't completely ruled out that there's something up with my internal setup this time as well as an external problem, but it's hard to tell when I have no control over what's happening on the external side. Last night on the Thomson in the main socket I I lost connection again and couldn't get back, so I left it off for the night. Today I'm on the Asus router on the bedroom socket with a new Maplin filter and it's sort of OK (only one drop in two or three hours), but right now the bedroom phone isn't connected.
saguaro
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Registered: ‎26-01-2011

Re: Disconnections and Inconclusive Tests

OK, enough's enough. I opened an official fault as soon as I managed to get on line this morning.
hottroc
Grafter
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Registered: ‎05-08-2012

Re: Disconnections and Inconclusive Tests

How's it going? Did they solve the problem?
saguaro
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Registered: ‎26-01-2011

Re: Disconnections and Inconclusive Tests

I'm cautiously optimistic. Smiley The line settled down -- seemingly on its own -- about a day into the testing. Then after a couple of days they set SNR to 15dB, which meant a ~20% drop in sync speed, and it stayed like that for a while without many problems. But as I know the line used to be able to do a lot better (even if it's not 'supposed' to according to BTOR), I asked for an engineer visit. To may amazement they scheduled one for the next day, which was yesterday. The engineer came and fitted a proper ADSL socket on the bedroom line, disabling the living room one altogether, and then asked for an SNR reset and put interleaving back on (I thought it was on already!)  As of this morning it was running happily at 15439 with SNR of 6.8, which is exactly where it was until late January when all this started. I shall be interested to see what happens next time we get heavy rain or roadworks, but so far I'm happy. And if it does go wrong again, I guess now I have  a proper test socket to play with ...
(I feel a little bad about making a fuss over the difference between 11 Mbps and 15, which is mostly unnoticeable for practical purposes, when so many people manage with much less. But when I know it's possible, and technology is supposed to get better over time, not worse, it seems a shame to settle for gradually declining performance.)
hottroc
Grafter
Posts: 33
Registered: ‎05-08-2012

Re: Disconnections and Inconclusive Tests

That's good to hear, that it has improved for you. My advice would be to not close the ticket for a while though. They did the same for me, changing the SNR and it settled down also, then they closed my ticket. About a week later the problem reoccurred again and I had to start again with a new ticket.
My SNR change also reduced my speed to less than I had previously (with a stable connection prior to the problem) so it's kind of annoying as the SNR change seems to be their solution but to me it's masking the problem rather than solving it. So you are right to make a fuss. They are now going to change my line to interleaved so we'll see what happens.
I still wonder if they are missing something somewhere. Lots of people on here having disconnection problems. They need to spot the pattern. (The problem often seems worse on a Friday. Strange. But I don't think that's the issue)
Anyway all the best of luck.
Chris
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Re: Disconnections and Inconclusive Tests

Quote
I still wonder if they are missing something somewhere. Lots of people on here having disconnection problems. They need to spot the pattern. (The problem often seems worse on a Friday. Strange. But I don't think that's the issue)

Unfortunately disconnection problems can become more prevalent following spells of wet weather. If the sync is dropping out this indicates an issue somewhere along the line from the exchange>premises causing it. Anything after the exchange isn't going to cause sync drops.
Former Plusnet Staff member. Posts after 31st Jan 2020 are not on behalf of Plusnet.
saguaro
Rising Star
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Registered: ‎26-01-2011

Re: Disconnections and Inconclusive Tests

It started having problems again about 5am -- repeated cycles of loss of connection, sync drop, failure to connect to the internet ...
I just rebooted the router and it's up for now.
Modulation : ADSL2+
Annex Mode : Annex A/L
Line State : up
Lan Tx : 16125397
Lan Rx : 10000643
ADSL Tx : 2747
ADSL Rx : 4094
CRC Down : 0
CRC Up : 43
FEC Down : 0
FEC Up : 1150
HEC Down : 3494
HEC Up : 0
SNR Up : 4.7
SNR Down : 6.6
Line Attenuation Up : 12.2
Line Attenuation Down : 21.0
Data Rate Up : 804
Data Rate Down : 15349

That 'SNR up' doesn't look right.  ...

(Edit: And then it dropped again, synced at 16-something and tried futilely to connect for four hours until I came home and rebooted again. Did the interleaving get taken off again?)
I'm not sure why rebooting the router sometimes helps when the problems still occur with a different one, but it seems like it gets stuck in a loop of trying and failing to connect, and a reboot breaks that cycle and gives me  at least a few minutes of connection.

This looks a bit more sensible, but we'll see how long it holds:
Modulation : ADSL2+
Annex Mode : Annex A/L
Line State : up
Lan Tx : 16207059
Lan Rx : 10046595
ADSL Tx : 1197
ADSL Rx : 1232
CRC Down : 0
CRC Up : 0
FEC Down : 0
FEC Up : 44
HEC Down : 0
HEC Up : 0
SNR Up : 11.7
SNR Down : 7.3
Line Attenuation Up : 11.8
Line Attenuation Down : 20.0
Data Rate Up : 828
Data Rate Down : 15349
saguaro
Rising Star
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Registered: ‎26-01-2011

Re: Disconnections and Inconclusive Tests

Sigh. After Saturday's horrible connection things settled down a bit, but with occasional drops, and by Wednesday lunchtime the downstream SNR had slipped back to 12.. Another engineer called that afternoon and couldn't find a thing wrong -- well, apparently my laptop power supply is rather noisy, but I know that can't be causing all the issues, because there was a drop on Sunday afternoon when the laptop was unplugged and put away. So he did another reset, and all was fine for about 18 hours. It just dropped briefly again, and resynced with a downstream SNR of 9.  Sad Still no CRC errors, though.
I don't know what to ask for at this point -- obviously I can't have an engineer move in to watch until the problems start again, but I don't see what else would help. Perhaps just let the DLM find its own level over the next week or two and see what happens? I don't really want to close the ticket when nothing is resolved. I can't complain about Plusnet's service; I just seem to be up against a pesky intermittent fault that's frustrating for all concerned.
hottroc
Grafter
Posts: 33
Registered: ‎05-08-2012

Re: Disconnections and Inconclusive Tests

Sigh, sharing your frustration. The problem with intermittent faults.
I had a BTOR engineer visit mine today. It had disconnected two or three times that morning but typically when he was there it was fine. But they only test for 5 minutes. Well I reckon when mines bad it drops a couple or 3 times per hour, so obviously testing for 5 minutes is not enough. But as soon as they find no fault on the line they try to blame your internal wiring or something then they go off on their merry way, instead of actually trying to test external to your property (ie at the exchange or junction box etc) where, in my substantive experience, the fault ALWAYS lies. Or sometimes they blame the ISP (and the ISP blame them!). Argh, makes you tear your hair out sometimes. Strange though, after he left the problem seemed to improve somewhat, like he HAD done something external (?). But it has still dropped a few times over the day so not sure.
Like you I'm just waiting to see over the next week, and hoping they don't close the ticket like they did last time.
saguaro
Rising Star
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Registered: ‎26-01-2011

Re: Disconnections and Inconclusive Tests

I hope you get it sorted, but intermittent faults are just a pain.
My engineer seemed quite thorough with the testing inside -- he was here for an hour or so, though the last ten minutes of that were a tea break --- but the line refused to drop or even throw a CRC error while he was looking. I do suspect something external, given what looks like a tendency for problems to crop up when there's been heavy rain or when the pavements between here and the exchange have been disturbed. (But that could be confirmation bias on my part.)
saguaro
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Registered: ‎26-01-2011

Re: Disconnections and Inconclusive Tests

And after being stable for a solid week, it's acting up again. Sad
At 1.40am the connection dropped, and then it couldn't re-establish a connection to the internet (ADSL light was on, internet light off).until I woke up and rebooted the router. Maintenance work, or the same problem again? Of course my ticket was closed a while ago.
runhare
Aspiring Pro
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Registered: ‎09-10-2007

Re: Disconnections and Inconclusive Tests

As has been suggested elsewhere on the forums  try and sign up for a Sam Knows whitebox. If successful you will then have access to full line history 24/7 .
YOu can then have proof of your problem and a lot of data that should enable PN & BTOR to diagnose what is going on
https://www.samknows.com/meet-the-whitebox for more details
saguaro
Rising Star
Posts: 85
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Registered: ‎26-01-2011

Re: Disconnections and Inconclusive Tests

Thanks. I might look into that if it gets bad again. This morning's episode might have been just planned maintenance, though -- I noticed that I had to click to connect to the internet, which isn't what usually happens when it's being bad.  My Asus router does store longer logs than my old Plusnet-provided Thomson 585v8, or I wouldn't have known exactly when it went off.  
... on the other hand, the internet (but not the sync) just dropped briefly again, and 9000 CRC errors in three hours doesn't look good. I was getting a few a day over the last couple of weeks.