Most engineers ever involved? DSL speed issues progressed to line disconnection - Still not solv

[#1]

Thank you!

So, picking some numbers off t'internet, .14uF / mile is about 'normal'. Which puts us by the capacitance alone at ~2.3 miles from the exchange, which is not too far off if I am understanding the routing correctly. So that's good.

The local stub appears to have disappeared - it's dry, which makes me think it maybe is an abraded section of that cable which got wet up in the air (and therefore just appeared as a capacitive rather than resistive load).

The other 'problem' is that BT has left the cable (as a testing measure) draped over a farmers gate, which is... Somewhat against what I understand their SOP to be. Would be good to get this properly up on the poles...

SNRM is interesting - I wonder what the target is currently configured at.

Stupidly tried streaming Amazon the other night, don't know what I was thinking. It was not a relaxing experience.

Anyway, thanks again for the diagnostics, Gandalf and Townman. I personally don't suspect this to be a REIN issue, given that there are virtually no properties near the line until about 600m from the exchange - and they've ruled out that section of cable.

[#2]

No problems Allan, hopefully (and I know I've said this before) we make some progress next week.

[#3]

"we are expecting an update on Monday and will be back in touch once we have it."

Would it be possible to pass on this update?

Also, there appears to be some miscommunication : -

"Our suppliers have advised us that they've received the below responses from the DSO.

"Hi guys,
The technical coach is working with the other guys and is arranging with the customer for a suitable time and date to visit and continue investigations."

This has not happened. Can I have some assurance that this issue is being worked on since we have reached the point of almost a month with NO-ONE touching the line.

Cheers,

Allan.

[#4]

Hi Allan. Apologies for not getting back to you yesterday, I wasn't in the office though I periodically checked my emails and didn't receive a response from our suppliers escalation team. I've checked the escalation now and I can see they're due to update us this afternoon.

[#5]

OK, so. I was fairly convinced this couldn't be REIN, for a couple of reasons. However.... I've now increased the resolution of logging - it's now capturing every 2 seconds or so (which is around the limits of my ability). I had assumed I was just seeing collection noise / a normal distribution, but... It's got a heartbeat. Average between pulses is 58 seconds. Which is really very odd.

[#6]

News just in (As of about half an hour ago):

"DSO team informed that I've spoken with the chief technical coach and engaged directly with the chief engineers. They're both working together still as in all honesty, they're really struggling to identify what's going wrong to cause the faults. The team on the ground are finding that this is extremely unusual and currently cannot find a way to resolve.

I'm waiting for more feedback from the Chief engineers, and the technical coach is planning to visit this weekend to investigate further with some specific engineers that he's arranging with.

I'll be in touch with you in a couple of days and before the weekend, and I'll update you fully by 29/06."

[#7]

Allan,

Simply stunning diagnostics - a good start point for BTOR investigations.

It might be worth looking at SNRM with the same granularity.

This really does show the importance of fine granularity when investigating such issues.

[#8]

@Gandalf,

Is there a means of getting these graphs over to the DSO / the on the ground team?  This might not be the detailed level they are looking at.  There is a finite risk that this is an artefact of the measuring methodology giving rise to this 'heartbeat', but it is something which might prove helpful to the investigation.

I've done the ilk of this before, leading to recognition that passing WCML Virgin trains were the culprit for the intermittent REIN.  Deviations correlated to the train timetable!

[#9]

@Townman I've passed the link to this thread onto the escalation team advising them to pass it on to the DSO.

[#10]

No obvious correlation. I suspect that's at least partially down to the granularity which the firmware passes the stats back to the driver. I'll look at the actual bins shortly.

[#11]

Something else interesting about this graph compared to the prior one. There are _downward_ spikes in FEC activity, which are on a similar timebase, but drifting...

[#12]

Hi Allan.

Updating you here possibly the last one until Monday, we've not received an update from our suppliers yet, but we're expecting one tomorrow.

I'm on annual leave tomorrow until next week so I may not be able to pass the update on to you tomorrow but in the background our suppliers will be proactively chasing the DSO.

[#13]

This is the response from the DSO that our suppliers received before the weekend.

We have 3 senior guys going out to work on this on the weekend. The customer does not need to be present and they're going to work on the line thoroughly to see if they can apply conditions to different points in the line, while having one engineer in the exchange, one near the premises, one at the DP etc etc. The technical coach will be one of them and leading the investigation. I'll speak with him on Monday for a detailed summary of their work and findings and update you.

As of 90 minutes ago they received the below response:

The work yesterday was a success, in that the team identified that there was an earth leak from a transformer on a Scottish Power pole. We are today, arranging a joint meet with Scottish Power. At this point we have proven that the actual Openreach network is absolutely fault free and performing at its optimum for the customer, however we are happy to continue to try to provide a resolution for the customer.

Looks like we're moving forward and hopefully when this is fixed your service will be back to normal.

[#14]

Thanks for the update.

Unfortunately, due to BT deciding that climbing a pole all the way to the top to restring a wire was too tricky, the wire has now been snapped by passing traffic.

They also have NOT restrung the section of cable that is jauntily draped over a farmers gate.

Can we please have the line reinstated. Properly.

Cheers,

Allan.

[#15]

Sorry to hear this Allan. I’ve made our suppliers to aware of this to pass onto the DSO as soon as possible.

As this is obvious damage to the Openreach network, it may be worth you reporting this to the Openreach damage reporting team on 0800 023 2023 selecting option 1 then option 1.