Downtime tonight - 4th Aug

[#1]

Quote from: sputt

Might be a coincidence, but my Internet went down at about midnight on the Aug 4th. Still was not up the next day, so left my router turned off as I was going out. When I turned my router back on yesterday (6th). I could connect to the Internet, but had VERY slow speeds (worse than dial up), and connectivity issues with some sites. But the router show a line speed of about 4Megs. Ping times to the Plus net DNS servers where more than 1000ms, and time outs. I work with a few people who are also on the 21CN trial, and it seems they have the same issue, and we are all on the Weymouth exchange. I have logged a call this morning, and has now been escalated. Anyone else faced similar problems.? Would be interesting to hear from anyone else on the Weymouth exchange on the 21CN trial.

I am also from Weymouth and experienced exactly the same fault at exactly the same time - I also have friends and colleagues with the same problem.  Although BT and PlusNet status says everything is OK I believe there is a serious problem with the Weymouth 21CN.  I cannot even browse now, where prior to Tuesday I was getting nearly 14Mbps.  Pinging the dynamically assigned DNS I get ping times of 1500ms.  Pinging the same DNS server from an alternative location I get 16ms.  OK - now this is a moan:  When I call PlusNet support  I am given the impression that the majority of support staff do not know how to troubleshoot 21CN issues - this may not be actually the case but it is certainly my perception based on my reality.

[#2]

I've flagged the possible weymouth issue to Dave, will let you know what happens there. As regards our CSC staff, there are a few members who are trained to raise faults and arrange the provisioning of the lines and such and it's true that in general troubleshooting is the same as for ADSL Max, but by the same token this is a trial and as such no, not all of our CSC staff have had training or indeed much exposure to the 21CN service yet. This will of course become less and less the case as time goes on and 21CN gets closer to general release, but there are very few enabled exchanges and - relatively speaking - triallists, so at present please bear with us.

[#3]

When I phoned to report a 21CN fault, I was informed that these tickets had lower priority than max faults - because it's a trial.

[#4]

@ dave
it would be cool if you get word from BTw on there thoughts of the banded sync rates.
my fastpath line  on 20cn ran at 12db varable sync giving me a 3000kbps profile which was stable as a rock.
on 21cn BTw have taken away my choice away from me of what sync rate is best for my line and have me fixed to 15db 3072kbps sync no matter what time of day i sync.
you can even see what is the bottom end of this banded sync on the 1st graph here. to me the spike on the 2500kbps profiles is due to people being locked in to fixed 3072kbps sync (give or take a kbps or 2)
http://community.plus.net/blog/2009/07/28/plusnet-speed-distribution-july-2009/

[#5]

Also on the Weymouth Exchange, and having the same issues.  Sync speed high, profile speed high, throughput speed worse than dialup!
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE can Plusnet fight out case against BT Wholesale - I have heard from a company on the Granby in Weymouth who has 2 connections on ADSL2+ connected to the Weymouth exchange, 1 with Enta and 1 with BT Retail - BOTH WITH THE SAME ISSUE!
BT Wholesale needs to wake up and see that there is a major service affecting issue on our exchange.
To SPUTT and BUCKIN_BILLY, where abouts in Weymouth are you based?  Do you have engineer visits booked (by Plusnet)?  I do for Monday morning.  Be very interesting to hear from you.
Also, would Bob/Dave/Matt from the Plusnet comms team provide an update here, as the CSC seem unable to give any more information apart from to say that BT have done extensive remotely diags and connot find an issue.  I will be most unhappy at having to pay £144+vat if they claim nothing is wrong and issue the charge. 
Many thanks
Mark Damen
ps.  Rant Over.

[#6]

Seems BT may have found the on/off button on the 21CN kit in the Weymouth exchange.  Running much, much faster now.  Still not full line profile speed, but running well.
Are the other people on the Weymouth exchange able to connect OK now?

[#7]

Interesting.....
I'm not on the Weymouth exchange, but mine also decided to speed up considerably last night at around 16:50. Went from a synch rate of 8533 to 11491 with a reduction in SNR from 12+ to 9.1.
Maybe they've decided that the Banded profiles ain't that good after all, let's hope so !!!!

TTFN

toulouse
P.S. forgot to mention, I'm on Weston super Mare exchange.

[#8]

Quote from: Crucibleofevil

When I phoned to report a 21CN fault, I was informed that these tickets had lower priority than max faults - because it's a trial.

Depends how you class priority. For faults (20CN or 21CN) the initial diagnostics will be done by the first line tech team. They'll determine the type of fault, make sure you've done the appropriate checks (e.g. speedtests for a speed fault or try the BT test logins for an authentication fault). While the diagnostics between 20CN and 21CN are pretty much identical do bear in mind that as we only have 800 customers on 21CN some of the first line analysts may not have dealt with many 21CN faults. They'll then raise the fault via the fault troubleshooter. On 20CN that goes off and runs a series of automated checks, on 21CN it doesn't (yet) because we haven't built the automation (it's on the way though).
The faults then go off to second line to analyse the results of the tests, do further tests and diagnostics and report the fault to BT.  Because in the early days of the trial we wanted to create a number of subject matter experts who would handle all of the issues that came up, put together training material and handle pretty much everything on either the prov side or the fault side we haven't trained everyone who is on second line on 21CN yet. We will do when we start ramping up the numbers of course and that training will be made a lot easier because of the subject matter experts.

[#9]

Thanks Dave.
I can understand that - but the guy I spoke to via phone didn't want to touch 21CN with a barge-pole.
He said I had to raise the ticket myself and that it (verbatim) "would have a lower priority".
I think he shouldn't have said anything about priority - I could have understood it if he had simply said it would need to dealt with by the 21CN team.
I suppose he was being honest - but it's the sort of thing that's easily misunderstood.

[#10]

Quote from: markdamen

Seems BT may have found the on/off button on the 21CN kit in the Weymouth exchange.  Running much, much faster now.  Still not full line profile speed, but running well. Are the other people on the Weymouth exchange able to connect OK now?

I've just called BT Wholesale and they're now reporting a major service outage on the Weymouth exchange, there's a failed card in the exchange. It has been replaced (around the time your speeds went up I believe) but doesn't seem to be working properly (hence the speed not completely back to normal yet). The card supplier Fujitsu are due on site tomorrow to try and fix the problem so fingers crossed that it will all be resolved then.
There's also a major outage in Leamington Spa, I don't have any further details on that one yet as it's only just been reported.

[#11]

Glad BT have finally admitted a fault!  It has been ongoing since Wednesday night, without acknowledgment of it!
Dave, can you cross reference mine  (damensadler) and other PN accounts to see if they all died at the same time.  It would appear to be only 21CN, is that correct?
Thanks

[#12]

Got back home last night after a busy weekend to find my connecting was working again, but not up to full speed. Hopefully by the time I get home tonight the faulty card at the exchange will of been replaced, and thing will be back to normal (or with any luck better than normal).
To Mark: I am in the Lanehouse area of Weymouth. The last thing I got on my ticket was on Friday. "Your fault has been raised to our supplier. Please note that they can take between 48-72 hours to provide a response" Before the fault , my last recorded speed test was 4557 kbps (570kB/s). Only about an improvement of 300kbps over my speed before I was on 21CN. Would be interesting to hear what speeds other people in the Weymouth area get.

[#13]

my thoughput was very low an chopy last night between 10pm- 2am. ive had this happen once before.
If it happens again i will try gather some eveindnce of it as it was very anoying.
Streaming tvcatchup at 800kbps was buffreing quickly every say 20 seconds and trying to browrse the web at same time with what should of been a spare 1700kbps bandwidth on my line was a no go

[#14]

Folks since he maintenance at the beginning of the month my speed dropped from 12k to around (today) 9k.  I raised a ticked with PN but all I am getting is "fill in the broadband fault checker".  This is a waste of time as it assums that the maintenance didn't have any problems and we know it did.  Also it assums that everyone has filters -which I don't (faceplate).
Can someone explain why I am forced down this "lets look at your hardware/line" first - and not lets see what happened with out maintenance.?
We all expect problem being on a trial, but if after reporting them they go no-where - whats the use of the trail.
I ended up closing another call as I got fed up being asked about filters even stating multiple times I have none.  I gave the whole experience a negative review and got a call .... that at least was customer service.
This isn't a grip (maybe it is) but on the trial is the ticket system something we should use or just this forum?
Thanks
Tony

[#15]

As Dave says you should be fine with a ticket as the initial diagnostics are the same for any fault whether it's 21 or 20CN, plus you've got the option then of posting here - especially if the ticket needs a kick