Line far worse than my neighbour - same cable on same pole

[#1]

I no how you feel,  about two years ago I had exactly the same problem you are getting,  like you I tried every thing I could to fix the problem.  Well  to cut a very very long story short, it turned out to be the pc monitor giving off RF noise. I only found the problem by luck.  I got a new monitor and the problem has gone. My point is that dont get tunnel vision when looking for problems. Check for every thing, and don't focus on what you think it is 🙂

[#2]

Thats a fair comment Mike and I  accept your point but I think the noise increase on the line is due to outside forces. It is stable during the day but gets noisy at night. Worse in the early hours of the morning when most peoples stuff is turned off - although I know next door has economy 7 heating so maybe there is a correlation there.
I have tried powering on and off every one of my devices around the house with the router status screen displayed (including both laptop and pc) and nothing affects it so its not coming from inside my house.
The line is probably succeptable to AM radio noise as its a rural line, only around 5 miles from the South coast of Cornwall and a fair amount of it is run overhead.
However, none of the above accounts for a 10dB difference in attenuation between my line and next doors which is my biggest issue.

[#3]

Now I'm happy 
The BT Business Hub arrived today complete with SingTel firmware already flashed for me. I plugged it in and once all the lights settled down I logged in to see a sync of 3008kbps with a SNR of 9dB. Attenuation showing at 58.2dB.
That was at around 3pm or so when it was still light.
Its now dark so I've checked my stats. Still 3008kbps with a SNR now down at 6db.
It looks like I'm going to be getting a 2500 profile soon 
I will update once I've seen how stable it is overnight and how many errors but at the moment all looks good.
Jules

[#4]

Well the business hub maintained sync all night at 3008kbps  I left router stats running all night on the laptop and in the early hours of the morning the SNR ranged between 3 and 4db. By 5am it was back up to 5db and then by 7:30am it was back up to 9db again.
There were a fair few errors recorded during the low SNR periods but it held onto sync OK which means I should soon be getting a 2500 profile after another couple of days.
I rebooted it today just to check that yesterdays sync was not a fluke and it actually found another 64Kbps from somewhere - now synced  3072kbps at 9db 
I would definitely recommend getting one if you have a long noisy line (which I guess is what 2-wire designed them for).
Its a shame that I have had to go to all these lengths to get a service that is close to that which my neighbour gets with basic kit straight from their ISP but at least its working now and router was probably cheaper than the bribe to a BT engineer.
I would be very interested to try the business hub on nextdoor's  line, I bet it would get close to 5meg.

[#5]

That's brilliant, I hope it stays that way. Fingers crossed for you here

[#6]

Yay  I've now got my BT IP Profile up to 2500. Router now been synced for 1day and 9hrs at 3072kbps. Thanks 2-Wire. Prior to that it was at 3008 for a couple of days so all is good. The only reason for the change was that I rebooted it. I just now have to pray that I dont get a power cut overnight causing a night time re-sync at poor SNR (its currently 4db - saw 2db last night but still hang on in there).
Unfortunately I'm not seeing the benefit of it as my Plusnet profile is still stuck at 2000 - bugger.
If any Plusnet staff are reading this, could you please put my Plusnet profile up so I can reap the rewards of my hard work.

[#7]

Todays tale is not so good 
Yesterday the router lost sync and retrained for some reason. Unfortunately it appears that BT have upped the target SNR to 12dB now which has dropped my sync speeds. Even a reboot this morning at around 08:30hrs (clear sunny morning) it has connected with an SNR of 12dB giving me a sync of only 2592 - unfortuanately too low to keep my 2500 IP profile.
Is it possible for any of the CSC guys on here to get it put back down for me. It was 9db for a long time  6dB would be nice to try but I think the overnight noise would be too much and cause re-syncs but 9 was stable for a very long time.
Many thanks in advance.
Jules

[#8]

You still have an underlying problem by the looks of it, let me re-read this thread and come back

[#9]

Thanks for that.
Just had a major annoyance, power went off for a couple of mins. Came back on again before we needed to reach for the torches but it has meant a re-sync at a far noisier time of day - and with the target SNR at 12db that has put me way down at 2112kbps - bugger.
I will retrain the router tomorrow morning when the line is much quieter to get some speed back again but even so it will be three days now before I even get back to a 2000 profile. These things are sent to try us as they say.

[#10]

Hi there, well I've had a good read of your thread and oh you have my sympathy, it's so frustrating when you have sufficient knowhow to manipulate things but can't quite get it to behave.
The key to this would seem to be this "apparent" almost 10db difference in attenuation. I'll come back to that.
First a few thoughts on trying to keep things stable.
OK rural area prone to power dips and cuts - had same problem. Only cure for that is a UPS or battery backup of some sort. The alternative is to switch off at night when you've finished and only switch on in the day, otherwise repetitive drops will make the exchange DLM think it's a line problem and raise the Target SNRM. I managed for a while by switching off when I was out or away or when powercuts were likely.
The nuisance is that I had to (and still do to maintain stability) use DMT to sync with. It might be better to use something like a Netgear with DGteam firmware, it depends on how much over night problems one gets. But the trick here is to go for the lowest sync in the band for the profile you know you can hang onto for most of the time.
Eg. you were chuffed to get your sync upto 3072 from 3008, but you'd be better off getting it at 2848 where you'll have a bit more noise margin. The trick is to discover what Target SNRM you need to achieve that & worse it will vary depending on what the background noise levels are like (it's still better to sync in the day by the way) - also bearing in mind the limitations of DMT Target setting - I don't know if a similar approach can be used with Netgears with their own firmware or with DGTeam.
The technique I use with DMT after a powerdown is to have the line unplugged, powerup the modem/router, set the Target, press the button then plug the line in - works a treat as long as you get the Target right! The other part of this trick is to err on the cautious side so the sync might end up low rather than high. Now that might sound a bit contrary to what one wants, but the reason is as long as the low sync is not maintained for more than  supposedly 75 minutes (but I never allow it to go more than a few minutes) or you get a low sync more than twice in that same interval it won't affect the profile. So if it syncs too low, adjust the target and reboot. If you have to do it a second time then you got to be sure to try and go high or risk losing the profile. If you unfortunately go too high, you risk leaving it when things get noisy and get a drop, or turn off and try again tomorrow so to speak. If you go too high in the first place and have to try and bring it down there is a danger the DLM will think you have a line problem. I either risk leaving it and try again the next day if it holds, or switch off before then and try again later.
The one rule I always say for all this and if you are testing and have to swap things about is ALWAYS powerdown the modem/router and wait several minutes before unplugging the line, filter or master - anything that disconnects it from the line. That way, DLM hopefully sees the powerdown and doesn''t think you have a line drop problem, and don't do it more than 5 times in an hour, then leave it for the rest of the day (gives a margin of safety - touch wood).
I have to say that although these techniques work nearly all the time I have had the odd fail, just have to live with it.
OK hope that made sense, come back with any queries.  I'll cover the attenuation aspect in the next post - must take a break.

[#11]

You are too kind, thanks for taking the time to be so detailed. It far beats the typical scripted telephone support scenario.
I did have a Netear DG834GT with DGTeam firmware (just sold it on eBay). It never gave as good a results as the 2-Wire. Even with the Target SNR set quite low its sync rates were not as good as the 2-wire got without any tweaking. Set at 100% on the SNR it was quite a bit lower than the 2-wire. It also showed a significantly higher attenuation.
I actually got better results with the cheapo Belkin F5D7632-4 but it only maintained 2500ish Kbps.
I appreciate your comments about aiming for the lowest possible figure to give the desired IP profile, that totally makes sense. No point aiming for 3392kbps when 2848kbps will give the same IP profile and is far more likely to hang on through the night. Unfortunately there is no way that I know of to tweak the 2-wire router. I bought it as the adsl side of the electronics is recommended for long rural lines and indeed it does seem to get better speed.  
The dear wife has a habbit of playing facebook games late at night to switching off the router is not really a goer. Also, I work shifts so sometimes get home at 3am or so, powering up the router at that time of night would be guaranteed to get a low sync, hence why I tend to leave it on all the time. Our power is rarely bad, it must be 6 months since the last major outage but recently we have had a couple in quick succession. Maybe thats an omen for the winter?
SNR has stayed at 12db since the resync earlier this evening due to the power cut, not dipped at all since. I will leave router stats running overnight to see how things go now the target is set to 12db. I will then go for a re-sync at around 9am and see what speed I get, fingers toes and everything else crossed that its at least 2272kbps.
Its a very interesting point you raised that the router should be powered down and left for a few minutes before removing any of the line components so the BT kit recognises the power down. I had never really considered that but now you mention it makes perfect sense. I will post back tomorrow evening once I see how tonight and tomorrow morning go. After doing some research on the web it seems that BT or SBC firmware may be a better alternative to my singtel firmware but one thing at a time me thinks. Once again thanks for your help and sympathy. Looking forward to your explanation on attenuation too. Jules

[#12]

Hi Jules,
Yes, one thing at a time is definitely the correct approach. As for the attenuation, what' s been suggested with the routing is one theory, but with your description of the locale I find it difficult to believe that it's the case, and I don't have an explanation, only more theories and a couple of things you can check.
So as far as the cable itself goes -
Is the drop cable that's coming from the pole to you identical to you neighbours? You should both have the modern type to spec.CW1411 i.e. similar to http://www.applegate.co.uk/pagesplus/staticpp/43680_1/page_4.htm#cw1411 If you have any older types ie black or grey twin flat wire, then that'll be a problem.
Another possibility is bad joints somewhere, but that's going to be difficult to do anything about until it displays itself as audible crackling on the line, or the possibility of a defective length of cable somewhere en route but unless you get severely bad BB performance or it shows as audible noise again difficult to do anything. Finally it could be substandard cable - maybe aluminium or 0.4mm copper instead of 0.5mm and there will be absolutely nothing you could do about that until BT decide to upgrade.
In the hope it may be bad joints somewhere that will show as audible noise, keep checking your phone line. One problem with noisy joints is they can be temporarily cleaned by the ringing current on the line, so can come and go. The trick is the moment you hear crackling or noise (apart from making sure it's nothing your side of the master (ie. use a corded phone plugged into the test socket), phone your suppliers faults, don't use any automated tests, speak to an adviser, get them to confirm they can hear the noise and log it. Report it as intermittent and insist the full information is passed to Openreach. Don't mention the Broadband, this is a phone fault.
The only other thing I can think of is some form of steady interference. Go back to what mike001 said and don't rule out anything. Mobile phone nearby, cordless phones, fluorescent lights, low voltage lighting - anything with a switched mode power supply - tv's, set-top boxes, VCR's & etc.
Switch the lot off and see what happens to your SNRM. With cordless phone switch off handsets and base stations. You'll have to have Routerstats running so you can switch of the monitor, obviously you can't look at the stats page when the monitor is off!
Well I'm sorry, I don't think I can suggest anything else at the moment, hope all this has helped, just bear with it and be persistent. Let us know how things are going.

[#13]

Are you shore this is not an exchange problem, ie the line card at the exchange,  my last ISP got BT to do a Lift and shift at the exchange, I think that involved swapping my line over to a diferent card or some thing like that.

[#14]

Mike, you are not wrong, it is a possibility, however at the moment there would not seem to be sufficient evidence that would persuade BTw that that is the cause and to get that done. As I'm sure you appreciate with the wide definition of "acceptable" service with intermittent or obscure faults it can be a real headache to find the cause and get it fixed.
Jules, just a comment on your overnight RouterStats, they look moderately typical for a fairly long line. Of course try and keep RouterStats running whenever you have your machine on so if any intermittent problem were to show itself, then Routerstats may catch it, but on what we've seen so far nothing to indicate that unfortunately. The only other thing you could do is whenever you post, add your current modem/router ADSL line stats, but could you also include the DS & US Power figures.

[#15]

The drop wire is the newer black 4 core stuff - so is the neighbours. Inside the NTE5 the orange and white covered copper cores are connected to the A&B terminals, the black and green are not connected.
I agree re the cable routing, there is only one junction cable coming out our way from the village where the exchange is so it makes sense that both my pair and that of the neighbour are inside the same cable.
I will keep running router stats to monitor things. I have tried the powering things off approach, nothing makes any difference to the figures. It could be from next door but I cant go round and switch off all of their kit unfortunately. They do turn their router off at night though (I can see its SSID when switched on so I know they turn it off - they're the kind who switch everything off at night) so it cant be crosstalk from them.
On the statistics for the 2-wire there are two very significant drops in the tone loadings, I think they are tones 46 and 64 (if I have counted properly). The tones each side are highly loaded but those two have hardly any loading.
As for stats - currently :-
Sync 2212Kbps Downstream) / 448Kbps (Upstream)
Noise 14.0 dB (Downstream) / 14.0 dB (Upstream)
Power 17.0dbm (Downstream)  / 11.9dbm (Upstream)

As I have now got some spare noise margin I will resync the router around 9am when its much lighter and see what sync I get.