FTTC Bi-monthly slowdown
Hi Chris,
Well, a Bt man came this morning, as arranged, and tested out the line. He tested the sync speed and got about 73Mb. But could see that when we did a BTW speed test, the data transfer rate was only around 30 to 35Mb. Exactly as I had found, and confirming Plusnets own tests.
He wasn't aware of any scheduled events at the excahnge that happened every 2 months and was basically stumped.
We decided to try a new BT Homehub4 and an ECI based modem that he had on the van, in place of my Netgear WNR1000 router and Huwai modem, this gave a speedtest result of 71Mb! So for completeness, we then put my Netgear back on with the ECI modem, and again got nearly 70Mb. Finally with my router and original modem the speed was 63Mb. i.e. everything working like it should!
Once before in one of the previous slow downs, (when it is only a day away from the fault fixing itself on the first of the month)
I had rebooted modem and router and resolved the problem. But if I try and do that a day or so after the fault first appears, then it won't fix it. So I'm not entirely sure if putting a new modem on was the cure or not.
What I intend to do, is source a different router and leave that on for the next possible occurence, which should be December 18/19th, then if the problem doesn't happen, put the Netgear back on again and see if the fault comes back in February.
This should prove one way or the other if the Netgear is somehow responsible.
Andrue on IDNET changed out his Netgear and hasn't had a problem since, but he also had the line profile reset at the same time, but that may have been a red herring.
As the Netgear WNR1000 was issued by Plusnet as part of the original FTTC trials, i wonder if any of the other trialists had speed problems and just changed out the router at the first occurence, and so had not seen it would happen every 2 months?
Well, a Bt man came this morning, as arranged, and tested out the line. He tested the sync speed and got about 73Mb. But could see that when we did a BTW speed test, the data transfer rate was only around 30 to 35Mb. Exactly as I had found, and confirming Plusnets own tests.
He wasn't aware of any scheduled events at the excahnge that happened every 2 months and was basically stumped.
We decided to try a new BT Homehub4 and an ECI based modem that he had on the van, in place of my Netgear WNR1000 router and Huwai modem, this gave a speedtest result of 71Mb! So for completeness, we then put my Netgear back on with the ECI modem, and again got nearly 70Mb. Finally with my router and original modem the speed was 63Mb. i.e. everything working like it should!
Once before in one of the previous slow downs, (when it is only a day away from the fault fixing itself on the first of the month)
I had rebooted modem and router and resolved the problem. But if I try and do that a day or so after the fault first appears, then it won't fix it. So I'm not entirely sure if putting a new modem on was the cure or not.
What I intend to do, is source a different router and leave that on for the next possible occurence, which should be December 18/19th, then if the problem doesn't happen, put the Netgear back on again and see if the fault comes back in February.
This should prove one way or the other if the Netgear is somehow responsible.
Andrue on IDNET changed out his Netgear and hasn't had a problem since, but he also had the line profile reset at the same time, but that may have been a red herring.
As the Netgear WNR1000 was issued by Plusnet as part of the original FTTC trials, i wonder if any of the other trialists had speed problems and just changed out the router at the first occurence, and so had not seen it would happen every 2 months?
OK, thanks Chris. Could be 6 months before we're certain it's fixed..... 
Just realised I haven't updated this topic with the results of further tests.
Well, I put the Netgear back on and waited for the 18th Feb..... and nothing happened. No drop in speed at all.
At that point I couldn't be bothered to wait for March 18th, so I took the Netgear off and put on the HomeHub 5 I had bought. This has resulted in a slight speed increase, which I had noticed happening when the engineer was here and used a new ECI modem to check if my (then) current
Huawei modem was causing the fault. So it seems my cabinet prefers talking to an ECI chipset!
Which is strange, because my cab was one of the first in Barnet to go fibre (I was on the original trial), so I would have thought it used an Huawei chipset.
But anyway, I've not had any drops in speed since then.
However...... I do suffer the HH 5 problem whereby it doesn't stay connected according to its log file. Seems to reconnect every 2 days or so. But I'm not sure if this is actually dropping sync or just the session.
Could a CS rep have a look at my radius graph and let me know if the drops are likely to affect the DLM please.
The connection speed last night was about 66Mb and my Plusnet current line speed is showing as 63Mb.
Well, I put the Netgear back on and waited for the 18th Feb..... and nothing happened. No drop in speed at all.
At that point I couldn't be bothered to wait for March 18th, so I took the Netgear off and put on the HomeHub 5 I had bought. This has resulted in a slight speed increase, which I had noticed happening when the engineer was here and used a new ECI modem to check if my (then) current
Huawei modem was causing the fault. So it seems my cabinet prefers talking to an ECI chipset!
Which is strange, because my cab was one of the first in Barnet to go fibre (I was on the original trial), so I would have thought it used an Huawei chipset. But anyway, I've not had any drops in speed since then.
However...... I do suffer the HH 5 problem whereby it doesn't stay connected according to its log file. Seems to reconnect every 2 days or so. But I'm not sure if this is actually dropping sync or just the session.
Could a CS rep have a look at my radius graph and let me know if the drops are likely to affect the DLM please.
The connection speed last night was about 66Mb and my Plusnet current line speed is showing as 63Mb.