JoJo Help!

[#1]

HI Zap,
Just had a look and it seems that it has changed over. It's showing as you're not connected at the moment, so I can't tell you how it's doing.
Jojo

[#2]

Quote from: Joanne

It's showing as you're not connected at the moment,

Zap: That's not good, for best speeds it's better to leave the router on permanently. 21CN is far more susceptible to line problems and disconnecting/powering down the router can look like line problems.

[#3]

I don't think the router is being turned off necessarily. Looks like the connection was lost last night.

[#4]

That does look pretty good. I wonder if this is one of those lines that is so stable that it doesn't generate a changed rate to trigger the profile reset?

[#5]

I am so fed up right now.
The saga is not over and nothing tangible seems to be being done.
So I posted on the 10th chasing an ADSL2 upgrade requested at the end of may as I heard it came to my exchange.
That night at 10pm it went dark, very dark. 
I had no connection for 3 days, despite the fact that it was OBVIOUS to me that the regrade had gone wrong they still INSISTED on doing things according to PROCEDURE, so they monitored for 24 hours, confirmed what they knew (it was not working).  They passed it to BT who after a further day sent it back to Plusnet saying all was well at their end.
Getting through to people at Plusnet is an interesting experience, you ALWAYS get put through to the WRONG team, you have to go through all the confirming of details only to be put on 20 minutes more hold.
I did get somewhere when I was able to have a chat with J, he was the first to actually pick up the problem and run with it, he identified that it was coming in in Plusdsl2 and we changed it to Plusdsl (we had tried this before, but he ran with it and figured out it was a "component" at their end.  He rebooted a port and I got my first connection for 3 days. It lasted all of 3 minutes, since then it makes about 20 attempts, then finally connects and usually lasts for 2 or 3 minutes until at some point it connects and I might get an hour from it.
I work from home and I lose all my work if this happens, I tend to spend 13+ hours a day on line and it was a surreal experience having no internet.
Well next day I could not get through to anyone who would take responsibility for this and test things with me, they decided BT had to come to my house and an appointment for Monday 18th between 8am and 1pm was booked, nobody turned up, no calls NOTHING.
The problem remains, all I can do is keep waiting and hoping for a stable line.
I have videos of the connections attempts and some of those visual things but right now the problem is one of OWNERSHIP.  Nobody at Plusnet is owning this problem, I have been a customer for 10 years and they simply do not take it seriously.
I tried to call again today only to be told, "ah you need to talk to existing problems team" after 26 minutes on hold I gave up.
Talk Talk are offering a 12 month contract for £3.25 a month, line rental of 9.90 if I prepay it.  I hate Talk Talk but I need to have a connection.  It seems BLEEDING OBVIOUS to me that you have to look at what changed, it was not my wiring, I have done the master socket thing and besides it was BT who put in the wiring for this line.  I tried different routers, even thought NOTHING has changed at my end, it is either at the exchange or at Plusnet.
I asked if they could put me back, I used to be on a 7mb line, lately it dropped to 6.5, this upgrade connects between 9 & 11 but the profile is still at 5 with all the reboots.
On the short sessions there are a lot of uncorrected blocks which makes using the connection slow and horrid.
So I will now update the ticket to try and get an engineer (not a telephone operative) to do something.

[#6]

Does anyone have any idea what the problem might be here?

[#7]

WHY can't plusnet have someone manage this problem, they can't even give me a time when an engineer will come, I have been told they SHOUDLD tell me in the next 72 hours, another 3 days.
Does anyone have the number for the sales director of Plusnet.
I am now going to use the few random connections I get to blast every other Broadband forum about this poor level of service.
It seems I am being forced to go register with Talk Talk and they really don't seem to care.

[#8]

Quote

Does anyone have any idea what the problem might be here?

Hi Zap
your router maybe the issue here. The router I had when I switched to 21CN was a year old and said it was ADSL2+ but when I moved over it started to randomly disconnect and reconnect. In fact it did this 20 times in a 72 hour period. It appears it was not that compatible with new equipment put into the exchange. So, maybe you should ask PN if they would send you a router it quite possibly be the cure.
I would also add the download jumped by just over 3mb when I plugged in the new router.
From this:    To this:
Edit: additional info and graphics

[#9]

Mine is disconnecting 100 times an hour, but the router is brand new, I bought it in hope of an upgrade and it finally happened.  It is a Draytek 2800 series, not a cheap router.
Also if it was my router it would not ever manage to get a sustained connection,  yesterday I managed several hours but when the connection was dropped it failed to get a sustained connection again till about an hour ago.
I have been speaking to one of the engineers, he said my SNR was a high (12.0) for the Loop Att. that I had (16.5).  He said that with ADSL2 they can change the SNR and he wanted to change it to 6, BUT BT had put the line into a stabilisation period that ends at 17:30 tomorrow so he was not able to make the change.  When they do change the SNR it will take 4 hours to change and then 24 hours for the line to stabilise.
This word "stabilisation" is an oxymoron, there is nothing stable about it and the problem here seems to be that once BT kicks off these periods of stabilisation they can't be stopped even if the Plusnet Engineers can see that there is no point because the line is not stable at all.
What I have noticed is that when it attempts to connect, the number of uncorrected blocks is really high at around 69% of the corrected blocks, so I immediately know the line will not last. 
I have also noticed that on the few occasions when a line has held, the uncorrected blocks is around is around 2% of the corrected blocks and so far that the sustained connections have been under 10mb, that does not mean that all connections under 10mb have lasted just that those that have lasted have been at around 9.8mb
BT did not turn up, did not call and did not enter anything into their system for Plusnet to see.  This is ridiculous considering that Plusnet is a BT subsidiary; you would think that they would be more helpful.  Also these forced delays of monitoring are a waste of time.  It was obvious to me that the fault was with the regrade, yet it seems that Plusnet have no way to get BT to move on anything, how a business can function like this I do not know.
When you get through to a Plusnet Engineer in the FAULTS team who will actually work with you, then you can get a step closer, but the calls overflow to the support team and they seem to have their hands tied behind their back. They are powerless and just want to get you off the phone; some have even hung up on me.  All of this and it takes 30 minutes of holding to actually get through.  It is best to just ask to be transferred to the faults team because you are wasting your breath talking to support, you might as well report your ADSL worries to a priest or social worker.
I have no idea whether changing the SNR to 6 will solve anything, after the 24 hour testing following this change the next option is to limit the speed at the exchange (not the bras profile which is currently 5mb) but the ADSL speed the router connects at, this will be set to 10mb.
Considering that before the regrade the ADSL speed was 7.5mb and I got at least 6.8mb, this is disappointing.  The ADSL spec is 19mb but if all I can get is 10mb it is not a huge improvement.
I am definitely getting Talk Talk on my second line, I can't have this downtime again, I just need to confirm that TT do not use BT equipment or else I am wasting my time.  That will cost me £3.25 a month for their "essentials" package and £9.50 a month for the line if I prepay 12 months, so as that line is with BT and on Anytime at £21.10 (253.20 per annum).  I could move to the Plus service with Talk Talk with 6 months £7.25, then £14.50 a month thereafter, for the 12 months it is cheaper but it makes sense to change every 12 months.  After 12 months it is £288 per annum (if rental is prepaid) so broadband is costing difference of  £34.80 per annum and is £244.50 in first year so broadband is effectively free.  If I cancel with both lines once a year and swap providers every 12 months I will get the best deal and always be able to have the discounted rate.
If anyone has any ideas about the tech issues,  I am all ears!
If nothing else I hope this is of use to others who experience similar issues.
I have attached some visual reports of the connections

[#10]

Hi Zap,
I realise this is a frustrating process, sorry about that and how it's going.
I've been talking to one of our faults engineers who is now in the process of updating your ticket. We're sending you out a 582n just to make sure it's not the router you're using, given that that is where things are pointing towards. In the mean time we've pushed the fault back for more investigations and hope to be able to get you an update soon.

[#11]

Zap at first I didn't believe it was my router as it was a year old and worked perfectly with ADSL running at 6.72mb constantly, it was only when I moved to ADSL2+ its' deficiencies became apparent. That was when the dropouts started to occur. At first PN were going to send an engineer as the drops were very random but after talking to them they felt that the 582n (the one you're getting) would be better due to compatibility issues. I advise you to follow them on this one.

Quote

I am definitely getting Talk Talk on my second line, I can't have this downtime again

Well now are you sure you want to do that? Speaking from bitter experience all you will get is scripted CS who are in no way as knowledgeable as the PN, Added to the fact that all you will get is "Barry" from India as your first point of call. A good thing to do before you jump into the fire is check out review sites on their CS, you will get a real eye opener. It took them 9 months yes that's what I said, NINE months to come to a conclusion that they did not know what was causing my problems I was having at the time. They are atrocious and I cannot advise any more strongly not to go to them.
Harps1h

[#12]

Quote from: Matt

Hi Zap, I realise this is a frustrating process, sorry about that and how it's going. I've been talking to one of our faults engineers who is now in the process of updating your ticket. We're sending you out a 582n just to make sure it's not the router you're using, given that that is where things are pointing towards. In the mean time we've pushed the fault back for more investigations and hope to be able to get you an update soon.

Hi Matt
I really appreciate that gesture, all I have wanted for the last 10 days was to feel that someone was working on my problem, yet after waiting sometimes 30 minutes on hold to be fobbed off and not told the truth, it just makes Plusnet look bad. 
I have spoken to two Plusnet Engineers I this saga who were brilliant, the problem is getting to these guys, if your phone system had a further option of existing faults or new faults it would at least direct the calls better.  If the guy in support had told me that BT had put my line into a stabilisation period I would understand that it was not Plusnet, if he had told me that BT allocated the wrong Engineer on Monday and that they cancelled it without telling me or updating your system, my frustration might be aimed at BT not Plusnet.
In any business when the procedures dominate the customer experience it is time to tear up the procedures.  The engineers at Plusnet could have got to where I am now in one or two days, all it took was a little discussion, J figured out a need to change the domain on the login (which has been in use for years) he found a fault on a component and did a port reset, that took me to a position of actually getting attempted connections after three days of nothing.  I think that the obligatory tests that BT force you to do before they will touch a problem have become a crutch to keep customers at bay while you put out fires.  Of course they bounced everything back and then it was J who happened to pick it up because I called and called and called again.
The second pickup was by N who explained some of the technical aspects of SNR and that it could be lowered at the exchange, after the current BT imposed stabilisation period and how nuts is it that BT have imposed this stabilisation period on a line they have not done anything to, that Plusnet can't abandon that stabilisation period because of updated information is nuts.  It was only by speaking to an engineer who can actually do something that these things can be figured out.
I got a random connection 6 hours back and it is holding , just 3 uncorrected blocks out of 1.1 million, the speed is 7.45mb and it feels nippy even thought I am restricted to 5mb with all the reboots. Currently SNR Margin is 15.5 and Loop Att. Is 17.0.  It is not much faster than I had with ADSL but it is a connection
I am going to wait until 17:30 and get the SNR changed with N then wait and see what that does.
Thanks for your help

[#13]

Quote from: harps1h

Zap at first I didn't believe it was my router as it was a year old and worked perfectly with ADSL running at 6.72mb constantly, it was only when I moved to ADSL2+ its' deficiencies became apparent. That was when the dropouts started to occur. At first PN were going to send an engineer as the drops were very random but after talking to them they felt that the 582n (the one you're getting) would be better due to compatibility issues. I advise you to follow them on this one. Quote I am definitely getting Talk Talk on my second line, I can't have this downtime again Well now are you sure you want to do that? Speaking from bitter experience all you will get is scripted CS who are in no way as knowledgeable as the PN, Added to the fact that all you will get is "Barry" from India as your first point of call. A good thing to do before you jump into the fire is check out review sites on their CS, you will get a real eye opener. It took them 9 months yes that's what I said, NINE months to come to a conclusion that they did not know what was causing my problems I was having at the time. They are atrocious and I cannot advise any more strongly not to go to them. Harps1h

It is possible that it is my router but unlikely considering it is brand new albeit an older model, it is ADSL2 and an industrial strength router, in a business project I had over a hundred of these for people working from home, they had VPN's and Voip, only one every failed and it was obvious. 
My dropouts are not random, my connections are random, I get one or two connections that hold per day.
I know that Talk Talk are dire, a good friend has them and I was able to complain and get a reply from the Chief Exec, I know their first line support is in India and their second level is in South Africa.
My thinking is not to move to them but to have them as a backup, this experience has cost me so much, not just in money.

[#14]

Hi Zap,
In all honesty lowering the SNR will make the disconnections worse, I would strongly suggest in not pushing for this and would test the new router when it arrives. A higher SNR means a lower speed but a more stable line (the SNR is basically the difference between background noise and the ADSL signal on the line, the greater it is the more resilient it is against noise or interference spikes which are usually the cause of the disconnections).

[#15]

I don't know if this simplified explanation helps in any way -
Sometimes understanding Noise & Margins is a difficult thing to grasp, the exact figures can be different for different lines with different conditions, but the principal is the same. Let me try and explain this way using a simplified explanation - the Noise Margin is the amount of gap between the Noise and the Signal, when the margin is higher, there is less noise present, when it drops there is more noise there. If it were to goto to 0 the signal would be severely corrupted by the noise usually to the point of causing a loss of connection and a resync.
When noise is present, it isn't necessarily something that is equally distributed across all the frequencies used by the broadband signal. It could be more severe at some frequencies which will cause corruption of some bits of data, this is seen as errors. Error correction causes the corrupted data to be retransmitted and it's such retransmission that can cause some lag and lower throughput speed.
As Matt has mentioned a higher Noise Margin can (not always if there is some sort of fault or if external interference is severe) give you a more stable and usable connection.
If it's external interference it can affect any line/connection you may have, but that could also depend on the actual routing from the exchange. That doesn't change, whoever the ISP is.