Line far worse than my neighbour - same cable on same pole

[#1]

Hi all,
I have just joined plusnet and am in the process of migrating as I got fed up with terrible service from Sky.
I have a query which I would really like to resolve and I'm sure someone here will have some ideas, Sky were useless.
I am on a fairly long rural line which feeds a small hamlet of around 20 houses, a pub and a restaurant. It is fed from the Widegates exchange which has no LLU kit installed and is not yet 21CN (the exchange checker says 21CN scheduled for Q4 2009 so I guess its due to be upgraded soon).
I have tried numerous routers to try to get good speed on this line and am currently running a Netgear DG834GT with DGTeam firmware to try and tweak the speed up a bit by varying the SNR as I seem to be stuck with a 9dB target snr. Whilst I can achieve a sync of 3008 during the day at 6dB this falls off into the evening, its already down to 4.9 as I'm typing this at 18:00Hrs. Even the Netgear cant keep sync all night and resyncs, last night it resynced at a little over 2500
With the 9dB margin my synch is around 2240 and my IP profile is just at 2000.
Now, I have taken a look at my neighbours router stats. They are kind enough to have given me the WPA key so I can connect and take a look. They are Gigaset router as supplied by Tiscali.
Their dropwire comes from the same pole as mine, is about the same length etc. I have a filtered faceplate, no extension wiring, a short screened cable to the router and its well away from any sources of RF.
They just have normal microfilters, extensions around the house etc and yet, whilst my router is struggling away, they have a sync of 3740 with a snr of 11dB!!! They have decent throughput too, a speedtest showed 2.9Mbps downstream so I guess they have a 3000 ip profile. My line is showing an attenuation of 60dB whilst theirs is 51dB too!
My question is, will BT (with a push from plusnet) do anything about this. If we all had a similar kind of service then I would just sit back and accept that its the price of being rural but I dont see why I should when it is obviously perfectly possible for me to have a similar service to them. The neighbours are on the same exchange and cables as me, the same line length and worse internal wiring yet have a far better ADSL service.
Any ideas would be very gratefully accepted.
Many thanks in advance,
Jules

[#2]

welcome to Plusnet.
First  are you actually on a PN connection yet, you say  you are just migrating.
Second who is your neighbours ISP?
Third I am not the tec bod you require, but it might be that when you connect you might have to go through a new retraining period

[#3]

Hi,
Thanks for the quick reply. I was a plusnet user many years ago but made the mistake of changing ISP a few times. I'm coming back though as Plusnet seem for more friendly and interested in the technology than just about any other ISP.
I am still on the Sky connection at the moment, projected changeover day is next Monday (19th), however I would have thought that the circuit between me and the exchange would be the same no matter who my ISP is (although maybe I am wrong).
My Neighbours ISP is Tiscali. I have checked the router settings, definitely PPoA, VC-Mux so same type of circuit as myself. Their router is a Simens Gigaset SE587 supplied by Tiscali which doesn't seem to have the best reviews on the web and yet is giving them a nice connection.
If a line retraining occurs when I migrate and I get the results I am after then I will be one of Plusnets happiest customers. I think somehow that it will need some BTWholesale attention though.

[#4]

Looking at your exchange there aren't any LLU options so you will just be migrating to Plusnet and there won't be any retraining.
The first thing to try to find out is whether your internal wiring is affecting the result.
Can you connect to the test socket without anything else connected and report the router stats - noise margin, attenuation and speeds - just click on Show Statistics at the bottom of the router login page

[#5]

Please dont take this the wrong way, I really do appreciate any suport and advice.
I know that everything my side is good. I have a filtered NTE5 faceplate which is on the front of mt BT line box. The dropwire comes from the pole, down the front of my house, through the wall and straight into the back of the linebox. Plugged into that is the router into the ADSL socket and my phone (and Sky HD box) into the phone socket. There is no extension wiring. No microfilters anywhere as its a screened faceplate.
I also have a screened high quality cable to the router. I dont have any extension wiring within the fabric of the house. Router states are identical whether plugged into faceplate or test socket behind it. These are from the test socket just for the sake of completeness.
Router stats for DG834GT running DGTeam firmware but no SNR tweak at 20:29Hrs
Connection Speed    2080 kbps       448 kbps
Line Attenuation         60.0 db             31.5 db
Noise Margin                8.9 db             12.0 db
Router stats for DG834GT running DGTeam firmware with SNR tweaked to be closer to 6dB rather than 9  (5 minutes after previous stats for no tweak)
Connection Speed    2464 kbps       448 kbps
Line Attenuation         60.0 db             31.5 db
Noise Margin                5.7 db             12.0 db
Stats from nextdoors Siemens Gigaset (presumably not plugged into their test socket).
ADSL Link                  Downstream  Upstream
Connection Speed    3744 kbps       448 kbps
Line Attenuationvv       51.5 db            29.0db
Noise Margin                  8.5 db             23.0db

[#6]

Well there is the difference
You - Line Attenuation      60.0 db 
Neighbour - Line Attenuation      51.5 db
Something is really hitting your attenuation figure.
I know you have a good setup but please try the test socket without anything else connected and see if anything changes.

[#7]

Those stats were from the test socket via a microfilter with nothing else connected.
I have just put the faceplate back on, connected the phone back up and router back into the faceplate, stats are almost the same except downstream noise margin is now 5.8dB so no real change.

[#8]

Than I have no idea - perhaps after migration Plusnet can run some tests to pick up a hint as to the problem.
I assume you don't have any noise or crackling on the line when you do a quiet line test

[#9]

I have tried quiet line and its exactly that, a quiet line. There is no noise on the line at all that I can here.
I have my suspicions that the joint box at the top of the pole at the roadside is where the fault may lay. Its quite old and looks its age. When the neighbours had broadband which was a couple of years after me (mine started off as 512kpbs fixed rate) BT openreach came out and spent a good hour messing around at the top of the pole. When the engineer put his ladders away a new small grey box had appeared at the top of the pole next to the old black one and from what I can see from the ground, the neighbours cable goes into it. I did try quizzing the engineer when he came down (even tried bribing him with tea) and he said something about 'was shared service' and 'now got their own line'. Unfortunately he would not elaborate.
I have seen BT out in the road fairly recentl and pose the question of why my neighbours broadband was far faster than mine but the engineers had absolutely no interest.
I guess I will have to wait until I'm migrated and then raise a support ticket with screen shots of both routers (I have two machines so I could actually capture the two routers at exactly the same time). Do you think customer support will help me get to the bottom of it all?
Sky just seemed to come back with 'its within the expectations for your line' and that was it, no help at all.

[#10]

It's worth a try - the problem is getting BT openreach to actually do anything about it 

[#11]

Thats what I am afraid of 
Maybe I could arrange for a local tractor to accidentally pull my phone line down, the openreach would have to come out!
Today I am going to try my router, cable and face plate at the neighbours house and record what it syncs at. That will rule out it being anything to do with my hardware. It will also be interesting to see how the Netgear and gigaset compare on the same line.
I also have an old Belkin F5D7632-4 so I could try that too. On my line the Belkin reports the attenuation as 1db less than the Netgear.
At least I will be able to put all this info into a package for a plusnet ticket and hopefully they will kick BTs posterior.

[#12]

I'm guessing that your neighbour was on a DACS line when he wanted to go on to broadband.

[#13]

Is it possible that your neighbours line is routing to a different cabinet?

[#14]

Quote from: julesandtash

I am on a fairly long rural line which feeds a small hamlet of around 20 houses, a pub and a restaurant.

Would there be more than one cabinet?

[#15]

Perhaps not for the number of connections, but if it's a long road would BT normally have more than one?
I honestly don't know the answer - I don't even know where ours is on our road.