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Poor speeds after weekend weather

Uncle_Meat
Grafter
Posts: 167
Registered: ‎04-08-2007

Poor speeds after weekend weather

Morning all.  Just a quickie, I hope...
I'm experiencing rather slow connection speeds here, in particular after the rather fun and spectacular thunderstorms we had here in Mid Wales over last weekend. 
I noticed this on the Sunday afterwards, and upon looking at my router stats I could see that it had dropped and resynced about a billion times over the period, and also was only syncing at 800 or so compared to it usually hovering around 2000. I'm on a relatively long overground line here in the back of beyond, and it can be a bit temperamental at times but it usually hovers around that and is reliable enough, just the odd reboot here and there to kick it back into shape. 
So, OK, I rebooted the router and line sync came back up at its usual 2000 or thereabouts.
Fair enough. I thought that after all those resyncs it might take a day or so for my connection to stabilise again, however it's still quite poor compared to usual.
Router stats as follows.
Statistics Downstream Upstream 
Line Rate 2048 448 
Noise Margin 8.7 dB 16.0 dB 
Line Attenuation 57.5 dB 31.5 dB 
Output Power 12.3 dBm 17.3 dBm
Which is about the norm for me, SNR wanders a db or so throughout the day but is usually there or thereabouts.

According to the BT Wholesale line test, which I've tried over the last few days, I'm getting a download speed of 0.51 and upload 0.37, which agrees with me seeing a maximum download speed from various web servers of around 50k a second, compared to the 160k or so that I usually seem to get. 
Unfortunately, the BTW test is not giving me any further diagnostics, when I try the test where I'm obliged to enter my phone number it just pops up with Test Error.  My current line speed according to the checker in member centre is 1.25Mb.
So, am I just being a bit impatient in waiting for things to stabilise after a long weekend of many resyncs, or do you need to give the whole shebang a kick for me? Smiley
Cheers!
7 REPLIES 7
shure
Grafter
Posts: 509
Thanks: 1
Registered: ‎21-01-2013

Re: Poor speeds after weekend weather

I'm guessing you're on ADSL and not on a fixed IP address?  I experienced similar issues, and it turned out that whichever gateway you're on can seriously effect your performance, to a degree i found really surprising.  For example, all the pcl and ptw gateways kept giving me constant dropped packets and high latency times, while the ptn gateway seemed the most stable and consistent, with a negligible amount of either.  I spent half the night last night just reconnecting until I found a good one...
Uncle_Meat
Grafter
Posts: 167
Registered: ‎04-08-2007

Re: Poor speeds after weekend weather

Yep, old skool ADSL but I do have a static IP.  Never thought of checking gateways etc as I've never really noticed any difference between them from here, where my max speed is a bit limited anyway.

Anyway, as if by magic, all is well again this morning.  I noticed my weather charts were popping up a bit quicker than they have this week, so I tried BTW test and that's now up to 1.64.  Just tried a swift download here and it's surging along at 140 kb/s.   
Router stats still the same.
Statistics Downstream Upstream 
Line Rate 2048 448 
Noise Margin 9.4 dB 16.0 dB 
Line Attenuation 57.5 dB 31.5 dB 
Output Power 12.3 dBm 17.3 dBm

So, out of curiosity, and also so I know whether to post if a similar thing happens in the future, is this a result of things automatically stabilising after a certain amount of time (well, 5 days I suppose)  or has someone manually given things a kick?
shure
Grafter
Posts: 509
Thanks: 1
Registered: ‎21-01-2013

Re: Poor speeds after weekend weather

ah, well, bang goes that theory.  Seems to be the case for me though but possible it's a massive coincidence that both times I went on Telehouse North my line became more stable Smiley
Uncle_Meat
Grafter
Posts: 167
Registered: ‎04-08-2007

Re: Poor speeds after weekend weather

Heh. I do remember something similar at my old address, where I was only about 400 yards from the exchange and I was getting maximum line sync.  Some gateways were more responsive, especially for gaming, than others. I played the disconnect/reconnect game a few times to find the "golden gateway", it's just that where I live now with a relatively slow line it does not seem to make much of a difference either way.
adie:quote
chrispurvey
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Posts: 5,369
Fixes: 1
Registered: ‎13-07-2012

Re: Poor speeds after weekend weather

Hi Uncle_Meat,
I've checked your line and it look's like it might be worth placing a SNR reset as has increased recently but your line has been stable. Let me know if you'd like to go ahead with this.
Uncle_Meat
Grafter
Posts: 167
Registered: ‎04-08-2007

Re: Poor speeds after weekend weather

Hi Chris, thanks for that.
I imagine that SNR went ape over the weekend, with my line being a long overground one it does play silly beggars with dodgy weather, I know quite a few folk around these parts whose routers/PCs got fried with last weekends storms so I'm just glad mine never went pop at the same time.
So far, things seem OK but I'll give it a proper hammering when I'm back home and see how things go.  If the increased SNR is going to result in slightly better stability, with only a marginal effect upon sync speeds, might as well leave it where it is.
See how things go, basically! Smiley  If things are not as they were I'll post back and we can try that reset.
Out of interest though, now things are back to normal(ish), was that a result of one of your gang giving things a kick or did it reset itself once it had been proven to be stable again for a certain amount of time?
orbrey
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Posts: 10,540
Registered: ‎18-07-2007

Re: Poor speeds after weekend weather

Latest speed profile change on our side was by delta report early this morning, so it was definitely automated following the stability I'd say Smiley
Let us know how it goes, hope things do stay stable for you.