Interleaving

[#1]

Two days ago my broadband went down and I had support look into it. It would sometimes come back on in that time and then today, when it came on (for how long I don't know) I got this email:
"We have asked our wholesale broadband suppliers to turn interleaving on on your phone line to try and fix your current broadband problem.
Interleaving is a form of error correction that helps to improve the stability of high-speed broadband. One drawback of interleaving is that it can increase ping times, which may cause problems for online gamers."
I recently (Feb) started a thread mentioning that my speeds were slow and received some help to get them up to: "upstream is syncing at around 1093kbps and the downstream line rate is at 7173kbps which is what we'd expect for your line."
Just now I felt things were slow and did a test where the results were:  5347 kbps (668kB/s) Download and 368 kbps (46kB/s) Upload.
Could anyone explain this at all?
Thanks.

[#2]

Can you paste your router stats please?
I believe the steps for a Plusnet router are the following:
Log in to the router from http://192.168.1.254
Default UserName = admin
Default Password = Serial Number from under the router
From the left hand menu:
Broadband Connection >
DSL Connection >
Then select "Details" from the top right.

[#3]

Hi there,
Looks like the connection is dropping quite a lot - I can see you've raised a fault, but the DLM (dynamic line management) system on the exchange equipment will have reduced the line speed in an attempt to stabilise the connection and stop it dropping. That'll be why you've noticed the slow down.
Our faults team will be back to you soon with an update on the ticket, we'll get things sorted for you.

[#4]

Thanks for checking that out for me Matt, makes sense.
That's ok Kirk, I reckon I should probably just leave it for the Plusnet guys to sort out.
It's a shame it takes this long to check/fix though. I work from home so it's particularly bad.

[#5]

I'm just picking this up for you now.
Our suppliers are having a few issues with the systems that we use to test and raise faults on your behalf to our suppliers.
Whilst that's ongoing, I can see about 8 drops today and a loss of connection overnight. Any ideas where the loss of connection has come from and why there has been 8 drops? Are these all just how the line has been performing?

[#6]

Yes I think so. I have sort of forced it/jump-started it to come back online by restarting the router but it has sometimes just dropped.
I can't fully confirm that number of drops because it may well happen without me knowing. Sometimes however, I will be in the middle of streaming something and I can hear it stop suddenly which makes me more conscious of the line activity going down.
I wonder why it would have been so stable for 2 months prior to this happening.

[#7]

I've just updated your fault ticket. I'll keep on eye on things for you.

[#8]

This is similar to the issue I have at the moment and support wouldn't raise a fault, has to be at least 72 hours before they can raise a fault to investigate why I can no longer sync at the full line speed I normally do.

[#9]

@stayinwonderland
Could you just pop a response on the ticket as to when you'd be available for an engineers visit?

[#10]

Hi Chris,
I just got your voicemail. Thanks for that.
Not sure if replying here is sufficient, but Monday after 1pm slot is best.
Worth noting though, that I have, as far as I can tell, had steady internet for the last 20 hours or so. Is that normal? Maybe you have a way of checking whether it's gone down recently.
Thanks again.

[#11]

That's fine, I'll see what I can get booked in for you.
Here's your connection graph:
<img src="http://ccgi.psmith12.plus.com/visradius/generated/image13662822114943.png"/>
It's looking a bit more stable but I'd quite like everything checking out to prevent any issues in the future.

[#12]

That's booked for you on Monday between 1pm-6pm.
Let me know how everything goes

[#13]

Thanks Chris, you've been a great help. We'll see what happens on Monday and I'll get back to you.

[#14]

No problem at all
Yes, please do, I look forward to getting this sorted out for you.

[#15]

Hi Chris,
The BT guy just left and confirmed that the line test failed worse than just about any he'd seen. So he fixed the source problem which was further down the line somewhere.
Just one thing, my upload speed had its cap taken off recently but now it's back to 368 kbps (46kB/s). I work from home so need to send large files quite a bit, so could someone get that speed back up at all?
Many thanks
Andy