FTTC speed or lack there of.

[#1]

The engineer and his oppo arrived at 1.30ish as he had said when he phoned at  midday. I had my laptop plugged directly into the modem so i could show him the speed problem without the router being in the equation. Apparently you cant do it like that because it gives you false speed readings!
During the conversation he plugged his network tester in and informed me that the line was syncing at 80/20.  I mentioned that my laptop was able to connect via PPPoE just as the router would. The engineer said that the router had special firmware which made it able to connect better! I disagreed to which he got rather agitated told me that he was going "to get angry in a minute" to which I said "go ahead get angry" . I did a CCNA in 2006 so know enough about networking, to know that he wasn`t being 100% accurate.
He calmed down and did a ful line test which came back with a clean bill of health. I suggested doing a line speedtest using my laptop. I ran the test at BTWspeedtest several times. the results where similar to those I have already posted. He thought it might be one of the ethernet cables and said him and his oppo would go back to their Van and get a new one to try.
When They came back he appologised for his little outburst and said the problem has him stumped. I relayed what has been said in this thread regarding congestion. He said there was no problem with congestion on fibre as there were only a hundred or so lines at the exchange.. He replaced both ethernet cables and did the speedtest again, No change. He swapped the modem for a new one just incase, No change.  He left saying no more could be done and he thinks it`s probably down to Plusnets software! He did say he would ring round again to see if anything had cropped up in the last half hour at the exchange but he doubted it. I thanked him for his time and for ruling out my hardware.
15mins later the engineer phoned back saying that there was a throughput problem at my fttc cabinet but it was a known problem and it was being looked into. No eta though..
Interesting afternoon really
So Finguz you must be at the same cabinet as me( Dean Rd near the dress shop ) or perhaps it`s more than just my cabinet ?

[#2]

Same cabinet, P1  
" Looked into "    Nothing quite like having a monopoly  
It makes the statement about the VP's at the exchange being amber sound, well......., less than accurate, but your tetchy engineer might have pulled that out of thin air of course.
Ah well, back to thumb twiddling, the connection isn't any good for anything else.

[#3]

These two tests were done one after the other

[#4]

@Finguz  it`s a shame there isn`t more competition for BT as it would certainly improve things .

[#5]

Indeed..
Maybe if we both run a speedtest at the same time we can score 0 on the test /facepalm

[#6]

Are your VPs still suppose to be upgraded by tomorrow? I thought one of the big advantages of BT's 21CN network was the quick, simple upgrades for capacity if required. Seems to be a fair few people with speed problems in the North East and South West at the moment that have been waiting weeks rather than the quoted two working days to upgrade their VPs.

[#7]

Not so sure if there is any need for the VP's to be upgraded after what the engineer said to pod000 today. Although at one point I think he was going to start shouting at him so who knows  
However yes, I was told that the issue would be resolved by Thursday.
Sadly the only thing that would surprise me with regard to waiting for BT to act, is if they ever took as long to collect a payment.

[#8]

No disrespect to any BT engineers, but I think most of them don't have a clue how the technology they are installing actually works. The two guys who installed my fibre were happy to openly admit this too.

[#9]

True ^!!
Anyway I'm off to bed now and I'll call Plusnet in the morning to enquire if the engineer was talking out of his behind 

[#10]

Let's hope its rectified tomorrow. I do have my doubts 

[#11]

This morning the speed is just as bad, if not possibly a little worse 

[#12]

Looking unlikely your problem will be fixed today then...
There also doesn't look like any planned maintenance in your area on those checkers any more.
PN need an estimated completion date from BT.

[#13]

They keep telling us it will be done in 48 hours and of course nothing happens,
I have my doubts that the VP's are even an issue to be honest, amber does not equal almost zero throughput. Pod000's engineer from yesterday may have been clueless for all we know, but he rang the office when he couldn't find an issue and was apparently told that this is a cabinet throughput problem that they know about, yet Plusnet haven't said anything about a cabinet issue.
We are all thoroughly fed up here, and now looking forward to a long weekend of unlimited crawl with added packet loss and lag and another debit going out the bank today to pay for the priviledge  

[#14]

A VP issue might make sense as it's like in the old ADSL days where you had 50:1 contention ratios. The fact that you're seeing speed slow downs, but acceptable pings and no massive packet loss would indicate some form of contention is in place. But BT really should be telling PN exactly what the issue is and when they are to resolve it.
As you're failing the BT speed test (below the acceptable level), I would have thought BT should be compensating PN which gets passed on to you.

[#15]

Just got off the phone with customer options who are going to be refunding us for the duration of the issue, so that's one aspect sorted. With regard to an estimated fix date, they apparently have no idea, it could take up to a month or two and we won't know anything about how long until maybe today, tomorrow or your guess is as good as mine /facepalm