Very unreliable service

[#1]

I've been with plus net for more than a year at my current address, and I cannot remember a single month (or maybe even week) where I haven't had internet issues.

The first couple of times I raised an issue, it was traced down to a wiring fault in the cabinet. After that, the next few issues were related to signal to noise ratio. And the most recent time I called, I was told that the problem was inside my house and I should move to the main socket.

But none of these options have helped with the reliability of my connection. I randomly get connection timed out errors and am totally ignoring the slow speeds because I've been told that's due to the capacity in the new build junction box.

Even right now, I am posting from my mobile data rather than broadband because I can't connect from it.

I'm running out of patience, and am considering cancelling my account citing deficient service and perhaps moving to another provider or just moving to a mobile tethering service. However before I did that I wanted to see what advice I get here.

And to clarify, I am not just looking for the current outage to be solved, but some suggestions / advice / explanations on what the problem could be, and how to go about getting it resolved.

Things I've tried:
1. Plugged into master socket (after removing the face plate)
2. Tried 2 different plusnet routers
3. Wired as well as wireless connection
4. Had an electrician check my wiring at home

Thanks and Regards,
Basil Dsouza

[#2]

Hi Basil,

Line tests aren't actually detecting any problems, and the connection from the exchange to your router seems stable.

I've however made some changes to your line which should help with any throughput issues.

Can you let us know how things go within 24 hours?

[#3]

Hello Gandalf,

Thanks for checking my connection. However like I said, I have complained about it several times, and each time it works for a while, and at other times the problem even goes away without complaining. But the frequency of the problem means that I never have a reliable connection.

Is there a program i can run that collects stats from my end that would help identify the problem? Or, I could write a small program to download a web page from Google every minute and log stats over a week to explain my point.

What details would you need to investigate this further? Connect latency / Read latency / number of timeouts / effective speeds are the ones that I can measure easily. But if there is something specific that would help, let me know.

Thanks and Regards,

Basil Dsouza

[#4]

Thanks for checking my connection. However like I said, I have complained about it several times, and each time it works for a while, and at other times the problem even goes away without complaining. But the frequency of the problem means that I never have a reliable connection.

If the change I've put through yesterday has fixed things, I've now placed an order to modify your service to try to stop that from happening again. Basically what's happened is that the software in the exchange has decreased the SNR target too low.

The order should complete tomorrow. Can you let us know if you have any further issues?

Is there a program i can run that collects stats from my end that would help identify the problem? Or, I could write a small program to download a web page from Google every minute and log stats over a week to explain my point.

I'm not sure I'm the best person to ask as I don't really know, but I'm sure the community on here may be able to advise further.

[#5]

Hi,

I'm dont think that the changes have worked. Connection really slow at present, and here is a ping result:

ping google.com
Pinging google.com [216.58.201.46] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 216.58.201.46: bytes=32 time=409ms TTL=54
Request timed out.
Reply from 216.58.201.46: bytes=32 time=277ms TTL=54
Reply from 216.58.201.46: bytes=32 time=418ms TTL=54
Ping statistics for 216.58.201.46:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 3, Lost = 1 (25% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 277ms, Maximum = 418ms, Average = 368ms

And a Tracert

tracert google.com

Tracing route to google.com [172.217.23.14]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     1 ms     3 ms     2 ms  dsldevice.lan [192.168.1.254]
  2     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  3     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  4   376 ms   367 ms   331 ms  be3-3100.pcn-ir01.plus.net [195.166.143.128]
  5   403 ms   336 ms   385 ms  core1-BE1.colindale.ukcore.bt.net [195.99.125.132]
  6   244 ms   421 ms     *     peer6-hu0-6-0-2.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net [62.172.103.13]
  7   477 ms     *      420 ms  195.99.126.185
  8   422 ms     *      420 ms  108.170.246.225
  9   424 ms   417 ms   408 ms  108.170.233.199
 10   423 ms     *      390 ms  lhr35s01-in-f14.1e100.net [172.217.23.14]

Trace complete.

[#6]

Hi,
I've been monitoring this over the last 2 weeks with my router plugged into the master socket, and have seen no improvement. And am having to post this from a mobile connection cause the landline won't connect.

Does anyone on this board have any suggestions? Cause unless there is a technical solution, I see this as unreliable service and should be grounds for me to terminate my contract and try my luck elsewhere.

[#7]

Hi there,

Checking your account the speeds are where we'd expect them to be and the line is looking stable.

Testing the line isn't showing any obvious issues, there are a couple of errors showing but not a large amount.

To investigate further we'd need results from a wired BT Speedtest. Can you run a BT Speedtest at speedtest.btwholesale.com for me, ensuring you do the further diagnostics test after the first one completes. This stores the results on the supplier system and allows us to use this to report the fault.

Line test results.
	Upstream DSL Link Information	Downstream DSL Link Information
Loop Loss:	36.8	59.5
SNR Margin:	9.5	6.5
Errored Seconds:	0	2
HEC Errors:	0
Cell Count:	61639	73935
Speed:	515	1991

Estimates

ADSL Products	Downstream Line Rate(Mbps)		Upstream Line Rate(Mbps)		Downstream Range(Mbps)	Availability Date				Left in Jumper
WBC ADSL 2+	Up to 2.5		--		1 to 4	Available	--	--	--	--

Connection log

[#8]

Hi Basil,

I have just reviewed all of your previous posts here ... Dec 2016 (line / wiring fault) and Mar 2017 (SNR setting).  Whilst each results in the same experience they are very different problems.

In one of your posts, you state that you do not know what metrics to post.  The broadband speed issues topic (see link below) will provide some guidance.  Your previous posts report that you are in a new build.  The stats shared by Chris above indicate that you are over 4kms from the exchange.

To be honest you are on the extreme end of viable ADSL operations, though I would hope that the speeds were a little faster than you are seeing for the reported attenuation.  However there is a big gap between BT estimated speeds and those which physics might suggest for a known line attenuation.  Such gaps can arise due to the use of aluminium rather than copper in the local network ... and just poor joints.

Broadband is not going to work well if the "phone" line is not working properly.

Please perform a quiet line test - dial 17070 select option 2 using a corded phone plugged into the test socket behind the face plate of the master socket. It should be silent. A noisy phone line (or no dial tone) will have a marked adverse impact on the performance of broadband.

If the line is noisy or there is no dial tone, then a PHONE LINE fault needs to be raised with your phone provider. If this is PlusNet, you can report a fault on line using the button below.

• Phone Faults

QLTs are always good tests to run and cannot be run too often, especially at times when you feel performance is not as good as it might be.  Noise is not always there all of the time ... which can make it difficult to identify and locate.

Are there any phone extensions running from the master socket?

You mention logging information.  The practicality of that depends on which router you are using - note Plusnet have supplied many different models, some lend themselves to monitoring, other do not.  Take a look at the router stats link below and see if the router you have (you'll need to know its real identity) works with router stats.

[#9]

Hello Chris / Townman,

Thanks for the replies and the suggestions.

Just to clarify, my complaint is not about "slow" speeds, but about the unreliable connection. When everything works fine, I get 2.2 Mbps, which is slow, but I understand why that happens. However my problem is that at other times I get slower or no connection at all (with pings timing out, and pages not loading etc)

Anyways, I have tried working through the suggestions and here is what I have ended up with:

1. BT Speed Test

This showed me a speed of 2.2/0.57 down/up speed. I ran the further diagnostic and it showed me the same details saying that the IP profile for my line is 2.11/0.83

2. Collecting Stats

The new 2704N routers dont play well with RouterStats, so I wrote a small script to scrape of the stats from the statsadsl.html page, and after collecting stats for a week will write a program to format it into a graph and share it here. Is there any other page that you need me to scrape out as well?

Just for your reference, this is how I am getting the stats:

	TIMESTAMP=`date +'%Y%m%d%H%M%S'`
	echo DATE - $TIMESTAMP

	mkdir $TIMESTAMP
	cd $TIMESTAMP
	ping -n 1 google.com > $PING_FILE


	curl -c test.txt -d "loginuser=admin&loginpasswd=$PASS" http://192.168.1.254/plusnetlogin.cgi
	curl -b test.txt  http://192.168.1.254/statsadsl.html > $STAT_FILE

	cd ..
	sleep 60

3. Quiet Line Test

I dont own a corded phone and havent been able to run a quiet line test yet. I've ordered one and should be able to do this in a week or so.

4. Phone extensions

I have 2 extensions but I have disabled all of that for the last 2 months (i.e. I have removed the faceplate and am running the router straight to the test socket.) And in any case, I never had a phone line connected to any of the extensions.

I am facing a separate issues where my speed drops to 1.1Mbps if I connect it to any of the extensions, but I will write a separate post about that, cause I presume that is more to do with my house wiring rather than a BTOR or Plusnet problem.

But thanks once again for following up, not having a reliable internet connection for me is almost as bad as not having electricity, given that my job requires me to sign in from home from time to time and the general dependance that we have on the internet to get anything done these days.

Thanks and Regards,

Basil Dsouza

[#10]

Hi Basil,

This has the hall mark of a noisy phone line (all BT stuff applicable to any ISP supplying services to your property). Not having a phone connected does not make a difference to bb performance - if the extension wiring is suspect, it's mere presence can be problematic.

Will be good to learn what a qlt shows.

[#11]

Am still waiting for my corded phone to arrive, but I completed writing the program to parse the stats that I am collecting.

A few things I noticed from the stats:

1. I am on ADSL_G.dmt.bis instead of ADSL_G.dmt.bisplus

2. I have a few Super Frame / HEC / OCD / LCD errors and a few Error Seconds, Severly ES increases (I dont know enough about them to know how what is the threshold of errors to worry about)

3. Out of 3.7k minutes monitored, I had a ping outage for 60 minutes and a ping of greater than 500ms for 127 minutes. And I've also not really noticed any internet outages in this timeperiod. So I will wait till I actually face an issue and then look at the stats for that period.

I've attached the excel sheet with all of the stats up till now (This forum doesnt allow xlsx, so have to upload the unformatted csv). 

[#12]

Hi,

I finally got my hands on a corded telephone and did the quiet line test and the line was always quiet.

The first 3 times I tried, the internet was fine as well. But currently my internet is down but the quiet line test is also silent. I have run the test connected straight to the test socket, and have also tried plugging in through the microfilter so the router could be connected as well. In both cases I could not hear any noise on the line.

I've gone through the stats I am collecting, identified periods of outages that span more than 10 minutes (there are more than 200 smaller outages).

2017-10-15 - 02:47 - 03:21
2017-10-16 - 04:52 - 05:31
2017-10-16 - 09:50 - 10:15
2017-10-16 - 15:01 - 15:15
2017-10-17 - 08:00 - 08:30
2017-10-18 - 02:13 - 02:33
2017-10-18 - 10:53 - 11:29
2017-10-19 - 10:49 - 11:45
2017-10-20 - 02:44 - 03:08
2017-10-20 - 06:32 - 07:16
2017-10-21 - 07:44 - 08:29
2017-10-21 - 19:26 - 20:12
2017-10-21 - 20:56 - Ongoing

I can upload the entire csv file, but the connection is too unreliable currently to try that. Will do that once it improves.

[#13]

I've attached the CSV file with all of the stats for the last 13 Days. Each line in the file corresponds to one snapshot of the statsadsl.html, and each column represent one cell.

And I'll reiterate, that I've run the quiet line test during 3 of these outages and twice when the internet was working fine and never heard a sound during any of them.

And here is an update on the number of outages greater than 10 minutes. I cant see any pattern in the outages, but maybe this might help you find corresponding logs on your side or in the stats that I've attached.

2017-10-15 - 02:47 - 03:21
2017-10-16 - 04:52 - 05:31
2017-10-16 - 09:50 - 10:15
2017-10-16 - 15:01 - 15:15
2017-10-17 - 08:00 - 08:30
2017-10-18 - 02:13 - 02:33
2017-10-18 - 10:53 - 11:29
2017-10-19 - 10:49 - 11:45
2017-10-20 - 02:44 - 03:08
2017-10-20 - 06:32 - 07:16
2017-10-21 - 07:44 - 08:29
2017-10-21 - 19:26 - 20:12
2017-10-21 - 20:56 - 21:23
2017-10-22 - 07:09 - 07:41
2017-10-22 - 10:43 - 11:08
2017-10-22 - 11:53 - 12:14
2017-10-22 - 19:28 - 19:41
2017-10-22 - 21:19 - 21:39
2017-10-23 - 04:15 - 04:48
2017-10-23 - 07:06 - 07:14
2017-10-23 - 08:25 - 08:43
2017-10-24 - 02:31 - 02:54
2017-10-24 - 05:02 - 05:12
2017-10-24 - 06:14 - 06:29
2017-10-24 - 18:57 - 19:08
2017-10-25 - 05:45 - 06:15

[#14]

Hello,

Any suggestions based on the above data?

My internet is not getting any more reliable and it is frustrating having to refresh a web page several times before it loads. And especially when I am trying to get work done.