Fibre woes

[#1]

@toodeep,
I'm glad to hear that the engineer arrived on time and completed all the requested work.  Having checked over your line this morning I can see that the sync rate is 38Mbps and your line is stable.  It's also handy to have the spare VDSL modem.  Again apologies for all the trouble caused during the installation.  All of the issues experienced have been fedback via the relevant channels internally and to BT and will be used to improve our service in the future.
All that is left to do is to monitor your line to ensure that the speed and stability remains as is.

[#2]

Alex et al,
A week on I attach up-dated speed graphs for comment. The plot of download vs time of day is with data only since the last two engineers' visits. It can be observed that they have... reduced my bandwidth. Whereas downloads used to max out at ~37Mbps I'm now reduced to ~34Mbps. That's not horrible of course, but my connection was supposed to be improved rather than made worse. Also, evening speeds are reliably ~10Mbps less. Is this normal for Plusnet's fibre product? (On the plus side the family is enjoying the lack of ethernet-across-carpet trip hazard.)

[#3]

Hi toodeep,
Browsing is limited to 20Mbps on your product between 6pm-11pm so maybe that's what your seeing with the decrease in the evening. For a full table of speeds from your product see here
Jojo

[#4]

  Thanks Jojo.

[#5]

Appending: I had an unreliable network connection and intermittent BT Wholesale error messages when browsing this week until until I switched from the default (apparently BT) DNS to Plusnet's own.

[#6]

Plusnet have never used BT DNS servers by default, they have always issued the IPs of their own for all broadband connections.
What IPs were you using for DNS?

[#7]

Per default, and there not being instructions to the contrary, the router was set to getting DNS automatically from my ISP. Now I'm explicitly looking to .49 & .50. 'Any idea why I had started getting the BT errors?

[#8]

Landing on BT Wholesale pages can happen if there is a problem with BT's routing from your exchange to Plusnet. That is a fault and should have nothing to do with DNS. Once the fault was cleared access to the Internet should work again.

[#9]

I'm about to start a thread, all too similar to this, except worse!!  Keep your eyes peeled...

[#10]

Quote from: spraxyt

Landing on BT Wholesale pages can happen if there is a problem with BT's routing from your exchange to Plusnet. That is a fault and should have nothing to do with DNS. Once the fault was cleared access to the Internet should work again.

Well I experienced the fault for two evenings until I telephoned Plusnet and was told to change the DNS and coincidentally the problem was gone. Should I not be hardcoding the DNS then?

[#11]

There should be no need to hard code the DNS unless you want to. However doing so should not be a problem.

[#12]

If you see a BT Wholesale page whilst using your Fibre connection the issue is caused by a DNS issue.  It occurs because the BT Openreach modem is hard coded with BT DNS server addresses.  Most of the time your Netgear router will override these settings but occasionally it doesn't.  To fix the issue you have to hard code the DNS server addresses in to the netgear.  This forces the router to permanently override the DNS configuration in the BT Openreach modem.

[#13]

Quote from: Alex

It occurs because the BT Openreach modem is hard coded with BT DNS server addresses.

Are those BT Retail or BT Wholesale servers?

[#14]

Thank you Alex for the explanation.
@ jelv: I was seeing Wholesale error messages.

[#15]

@jelv
We're not sure which addresses are used exactly as the Openreach modem's GUI is locked down.