New customer connection speed all over the place!

[#1]

Hi folks,

New Plusnet customer here. I wonder if anyone can comment on this.

Connected yesterday on the day that they said they would: good. Connection speed for bog standard broadband seemed to be fine: hovering around 10-12 Mb/s.

Today, however, all over the place! Connection unusable - occasionally fine for email/web browsing, but not suitable for e.g. watching a video. A speed checker reporting weird results e.g. 0.5 Mb/s download, 348 Mb/s upload!!!! Then you measure it again and it shows 34 Mb/s download, 1 Mb/s upload. Currently says 8 Mb/s download and a big upload figure again.

I know they say that it can take 10 days for the line to settle down, but is this sort of fluctuation and an unusable connection in the interim normal?

Thank you!

[#2]

@Rhod Welcome to the forums. In answer to your final question - no it shouldn't really fluctuate like that.

It sounds as though something somewhere has gone awry - your 34Mb/s d/l is obviously impossible on an ADSL circuit, and the low figure you also quote is also way out if you have been quoted an 8/12 range, that suggests you are a reasonable, but not too log a distance away from the exchange.

My initial suggestion is to have a look at This Thread and supply as much information requested on it back here - you will get a faster response than trying to contact PN.

I would also add to the the 'to do' list a telephone 'Quiet Line Test' - dial 17070 from a preferably corded phone it should be silent except for the automated 'QLT' message every 1015 seconds.

[#3]

Thanks, jab1, for your welcome and your helpful guidance. I'll have a look at that thread and report back. The speeds quoted, btw, were from a web based speed checker over wifi so should probably be taken with a pinch of salt, but the user experience alone would suggest that all is not well!

[#4]

OK, well, as first suggested in the thread that @jab1 linked to, I connected via network cable. This improved matters but note the second run on the basic test below which indicated that there was still some fluctuation. I seemed to able to play the videos OK though.

Router: Sagecom 2704n

Noise margin: 4.9/6.4

Speed: ? Not sure what this refers to (Data rate is 960/14579, Maximum data rate: 1192/14924)

Line attenuation: 18.4/34.5

BT Basic Speed Test

First run:

Ping: 26ms

Download: 10.04 Mb/s

Upload: 0.82 Mb/s

Second run:

Ping: 24ms

Download: 1.14 Mb/s !!

Upload: 0.82 Mb/s

However, running the additional diagnostics with the phone number indicated that all seemed to be well:

Basic Performance Test - Time Stamp   Friday 21 August 2020 | 17:54:55

Latency: 25 Ms  Download: 12.25 Mbps Upload: 0.82 Mbps Advanced Performance Test -

Download Test Download speed achieved during the test was 12.25 Mbps For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 4-21 Mbps Your DSL Connection Rate: 0 Mbps(DOWN-STREAM),0 Mbps(UP-STREAM) For your connection, the maximum achievable download speed is 21 Mbps IP Profile for your line is 12.86 Mbps

Upload Test Upload speed achieved during the test was 0.82 Mbps For your connection, the maximum achievable upload speed is 0.83 Mbps IP Profile for your line is 0.83 Mbps

This seems to indicate that the connection is alright. Maybe the second run at the basic test was an anomaly (or someone in the house was still connected - I did ask them!!!).

Does this suggest an issue with the router? Maybe I should turn it off and on again!

Thank you!

http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/master-socket-guide.shtml is a dead link btw

[#5]

@Rhod Thanks for that. Your Data rate/noise margins/attenuation all look OK.

Have you done the QLT - that is a basic step, although it isn't referred to in the thread?

I'm guessing (but could be totally wrong, of course 😊) that you may be in Wales, and I think you may have had a lot of rain? - in that case, you may have a phone problem, which will impact your broadband speed, and needs fixing first.

I know it is more testing (sorry), but I would also have a look at This Help Article. 

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

I don't think it is a router problem, so until we have eliminated all other options, please don't disturb it - one step at a time, methodically, is the best way to solve this type of problem.

[#6]

Ha! nice bit of detective work, @jab1 , but on this occasion not correct!! Although I sometimes yearn for the West coast where I was born and brought up, I've been an ex-pat for some years now, and currently reside in the very English home counties..... So we haven't had much rain today. On the other hand, it has been exceptionally windy (blew my tomato canes over 😞 )

Forgot about the QLT, thanks. I don't know - there's a high pitched hum/buzz which I would have put down as normal, but I'm not sure what I should expect if I'm honest. No obvious interference/crackling and the like, though.

Can't see anything in that phone troubleshooting article that's amiss. All the phones are connected with microfilters (and in fact I've disconnected the cordless and just left the corded connected) and seem to be working as they should - receiving and making calls OK. 

The speed tests that I've done this evening have been reasonably consistent, though, and the connection seems OK at the moment. Maybe it was the high winds after all! I will monitor....

[#7]

OK @Rhod but keep your eyes on it for the next week or so - those initial tests were decidedly dodgy.

There actually should be NO noise, especially if you are using a corded phone.

Check in My Account>Manage Account>Help Assistant and see if the test raised an automatic fault report.

[#8]

No, @jab1 , nothing under Help Assistant.

Yes, I was using a corded phone plugged into the master socket.

Is it worth reporting the noise on the line through Help Assistant do you reckon?

We've also noticed download speeds significantly affected by large uploads - I know this is a common problem with ADSL but is this router (2704n) particularly susceptible? 

Appreciate your help, John, thank you.

[#9]

In that case @Rhod , ignore the 'noise' on the phone for the moment, it may be nothing, but if the problem persists or gets worse, run the test again.

The effects of large uploads on download speed are, as you say, a characteristic of ADSL and IIRC the 2704N does suffer from 'bufferbloat' - if you would like to partially eliminate it, the router experts on here reccomend replacing the 2704N with a BT HomeHub 6 -available on your favourite auction site, with clear setup instructions on the 'Router' board on here.

[#10]

Thanks, @jab1. I feel a bit of eBay lurking coming on...

[#11]

OK, update!  New Smarthub on its way via ebay. Can't argue with under a tenner (if it works, that is!).

Connection speed today seems to have settled down, with on average better download speed and par for the course upload speed. My son said there was a drop out earlier in the day when I was out, but that aside I have to say if I get reliable speeds like this I will be a happy customer, especially if the other router allows people still to download stuff when uploading large files!

I'll post router news here when I install it...

Thanks!

[#12]

Ok, feedback on the connection first - we’ll get on to the Smarthub in a moment.
Connection speed seems on average to be better than my old connection (good) but does seem to fluctuate significantly (not so good) and sometimes the connection and/or upload speed reduces to zero (really not so very good at all). Usually this is short-lived but not optimal. My wife says she hasn’t got through a whole exercise video without the buffering symbol interrupting since the new connection. Given that we’re pretty much at the 10 days settling down point I’d appreciate the views of this group (or John 😉) about how to address this. A quiet line test gives a faint high pitched noise but this is there even before you dial so not sure if this is relevant.

On to the router. Set it up with the excellent instructions from @Baldrick1 - all works fine and we now have a connection and choice of bands on all devices except for an old laptop (HP Pavilion g running Windows 10) which took a network card reset to connect to the internet and which does not show the 5Ghz connection. Is that normal for aged devices?

I was hoping that the new router would help with the issue that uploading anything moderately big significantly affects download speed : if some-one is uploading a pictures or video no-one can stream anything. The new router may have improved this slightly but YouTube still takes an age to load and runs at low res if a video is uploading...anything I can do to improve this - will e.g. uploading on 2.4Ghz and downloading on 5 make a difference? Thanks!

[#13]

Thanks for the update @Rhod .

Do you mind waiting a day or so for my response - I am expecting visitors in the next 10-20 minutes, and have no idea how long they'll be here?

A quick scan of your latest post suggests we may not have bottomed the problem yet.😕

[#14]

Crumbs, you're very kind to respond at all! Please do have a good time with your visitors and only reply when time allows! Thank you.

[#15]

@Rhod 

Scanning through this thread a few thoughts:

When you are doing a speed test are you aware that you must be connected to the router via an Ethernet cable?

When you are doing a speed check you must make sure that no other devices are active at the same time.  You can only use your available bandwidth once.

If you are downloading the packets need to handshake with a small upload at regular intervals (and vice versa). If you are uploading at the same time then the handshakes have to wait and this can screw up download speed. This is called buffer bloat.

Have you considered upgrading to fibre?