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New customer fibre problems

blademan1975
Dabbler
Posts: 10
Registered: ‎15-08-2014

New customer fibre problems

Hi i got switch back to plusnet from bt fibre on the 7th aug my speed est was 56meg which seemed a bit low as i was getting 73 meg with bt untill they kept lowering my ip profile at 1 point as low as 4mb i had multiple engineers out who reset the line from my socket did aload of test's and all said my line was prefect plus it was only installed in nov 2013.
In the end before i was taken out of my contact i was getting 65 meg 24/7. i know i have been going though the 10 day test phase but the speed is slower now than it was with bt, i looked in my plusnet portal/connection settings/ high speed broadband and it said est speed 56 meg the under that it had current line speed 78 meg to which i should be getting a couple of meg under that so around 73-75 meg.
i used the question part on the site and plusnet said we will run some tests for 24 hours and update me, i went back on the the portal/connection settings/ high speed broadband and they have now changed my current line speed to 56.7 meg yet it was still 78 this morning. The only thing that got changed on my last enigneer visit back in april was they changed my pair in the cabinet and every since then i have had speed drops dissconnect's ect.
Any help on this would be great as i know the line before the pair change could take over 112meg as the openreach engineer told me by the device he plugs into my phone socket to reset the line and do the 15mins on tests after.
20 REPLIES 20
Anotherone
Champion
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Registered: ‎31-08-2007

Re: New customer fibre problems

Your Current Line speed (Login required) is automatically updated (usually) from the BT IP Profile.
If you run the BTw Performance test (ignore the red preamble except make sure no other programs are using the Internet) and at the end of the first run, click the Further Diagnostics button, enter just your Phone number and Run the Further Diagnostics Test. Hope it works because it's been playing up. The Diagnostic output gives the Profiles.
Do a Copy and Paste of the results and post here (no need to grab an image).
Edit: Why did they change the pair on the last engineer visit if previously you'd been getting a steady 65Mbps?
blademan1975
Dabbler
Posts: 10
Registered: ‎15-08-2014

Re: New customer fibre problems

Download speedachieved during the test was - 53.69 Mbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speedsis 47.63 Mbps-59.54 Mbps .
Additional Information:
IP Profile for your line is - 59.54 Mbps
Upload speed achieved during the test was - 10.37Mbps
Additional Information:
Upstream Rate IP profile on your line is - 20 Mbps
As to why they changed my pair that was the engineers idea as speed had droped by around 40meg. then i 1st went with bt september 2013 i was getting 73-74 meg 24/7 and low pings in game around 12-15ms. then in jan 2014 there was a power outage in this area for about half the day once i had reconnected it droped by 15-20meg so they did there test's and said it was fine, so i kept on at them and they said there was a fault on the line and openreach would be sent out.
engineer didnt find any faults on the line and reset it and ip profile back to 80/20 and i was getting 73meg again that lasted about 4 days then the homehub5 rebooted again and it droped my ip profile to 44meg. 2-3 enigneers later they all said bt were doing it and there was nothing wrong with the line ect as it could take over 100 meg so there little gizmo told them.
so the last engineer came out and said he would change the pair in the cab and reset my line again and all should be fine, well at first all seemed good 73 meg again for about 2 weeks then it started dropping by around 2-5mb a day till it hit 24meg. bt said they would reset somthing from there end so my speed will go back up, it went upto 65 meg as of april 2014 which it stayed at untill i moved to plusnet in august 7th. now i am being told my line wont take more than 61 meg and getting just under 54 meg.
Anotherone
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Re: New customer fibre problems

First, your Current Line speed is now lower than the BT IP Profile (but it's always rounded down to the nearest 0.1) which tells me there has been another change in sync speed for some reason. The Current Line speed should catch up later if it hasn't already.
Second it strikes me you should have been left on the previous pair. The cause of the speed drops might be difficult to pin down as there are so many factors involved. So best perhaps to check on a few basics and things that are directly under your control.
Undoubtedly, you have a vDSL plate fitted to your master socket. Is the modem connected into the top socket by it's original short lead and mounted next to the master socket?
Is the modem left on 24/7 or do you turn it off at certain times? Have you rebooted it recently? Do you reboot it very often?
You mentioned a power cut, that sounded like an unusual incident, but do you suffer from power dips or outages for brief periods normally?
blademan1975
Dabbler
Posts: 10
Registered: ‎15-08-2014

Re: New customer fibre problems

i have a mk2 socket and my openreach modem is just above it, the connection seem's to just stop responing sometimes ie i'll go to load up a web page and all i see in the bottom conner is trying to reslove host then after about 30 seconds i get web page can not be displayed. normaly it will start working within 1-3 mins again. but i have had to reboot the modem once to get connection back which was a couple of days ago.
i installed some hi quaility modem and network cable's when i had all the problems with bt which seemed to help abit, i got a high grade belkin 4 twisted pair modem lead which after pluging in and left overnight my connection had gone up by 20 meg with bt, but i was getting low line attenation around the 3 were as it used to sit at around 6-12db, modem is left on 24/7 and the power cut was hopefully a 1 off a car crash into the sub station at the bottom of my road.
Anotherone
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Posts: 19,107
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Registered: ‎31-08-2007

Re: New customer fibre problems

Which modem have you got? You also mentioned the attenuation as 3 and commented it used to sit around 6-12dB - this is on your vDSL FTTC setup? Where/what are you using to view/find the figures.?
The not being able to display a web page issue may have been a DNS related problem, but what sort of time of day was it, and what time of day was it when your rebooted last?
Obviously related to the first question, is it a separate Router and what is it?
blademan1975
Dabbler
Posts: 10
Registered: ‎15-08-2014

Re: New customer fibre problems

at the moment i am useing a openreach eci  b-focus v-2fub/r rev b and a netgear n600 dual band router i also have a unlocked huawei hg612 3b which i used when with bt to get line info ect, and also have a homehub5 which used to tell me line info. i had to reboot it once which was yesterday at around 4-5pm.
but it had rebooted it self about 3 times in the day and has done that about 4-5 time's in the last week.
Yes the line attenuation was on my fttc with bt which was mainly shown via the bt homehub5 till they stoped it in the lastest firmware upadate. download was around 3db after they switch the pair in cab. upload always stayed at around 6db. Before the pairing change download was higher attenuation and was getting the 73meg speed.
Really seems like it started going downhill since they changed the pair i really wish they hadnt as it was due to bt capping my ip profile lower before they changed them so there wasnt a problem with the pair then at all so the openreach engineer said.
Anotherone
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Re: New customer fibre problems

I'm fairly certain that it will be because of all the reboots, drops, disconnects etc that's caused DLM to reduce your speed. Now what's causing unprovoked reboots or drops is something that may need to be looked at more closely. Do you have a preference for which Modem you use?
You really need to choose one of them and stick with it for a while.
But it's worth saying at this point if you want to do something that involves taking the Modem off-line or as a last resort reboot it, you must do so gracefully, otherwise DLM will treat it as a dropped connection. Secondly, it's the Router that's the thing you can "get away with" playing around, not the Modem.
To gracefully disconnect, you will need to log into the Router Interface and find the page that shows your PPP(oE) Internet connection. You will hopefully find buttons marked Connect & Disconnect. So click on the Disconnect.
This drops the PPP session to Plusnet. Wait ½minute or so and then power down the Router. Wait about a minute and then power down the Modem should you wish to change it or reboot it etc. I would power off rather than do a straight reboot.
Personally I would recommend that you stay off-line for at least an hour. Better still overnight.
You stand the best chance of getting the best sync by switching on in daylight hours when noise levels are generally at their lowest.
That said, DLM will be controlling your upper sync speed so you may not gain anything immediately except possibly the restoration of any tones that had previously been dropped. That would improve your noise margin, hopefully lower the error rate and assuming they didn't get dropped later for some reason, help DLM consider upping your speed in due course.
If you've turned the Modem off (as stated avoid it if you can) then when you switch on, wait for it to sync up and all the lights stabilise before turning on the Router. When you've powered up the Router, login and go and click on Connect to restore a PPP session.
To address the issue of not being able to display web pages, I think it highly unlikely that it's got anything to do with the Modem., but the first check to do is make sure that it's not resyncing. If it is, you may have lost your PPP network session and have to wait for the stale one to timeout, but try logging into the Router and click Disconnect and then after about 30 seconds click Connect. You may still have to wait. Otherwise if it wasn't that, there are a few checks you can do.
Goto http://usertools.plus.net/@gateway/ you could usefully bookmark that. It may fail if you have a DNS issue.
If that fails type the IP address 84.92.0.74/@gateway
If both fail you may no longer be connected to a gateway.
Open a command window and type  ping ntp.plus.net      that should ping one of Plusnet's DNS servers.
then try typing tracert ntp.plus.net
If you are getting no joy from any of those try nslookup ntp.plus.net  ?.?.?.? where ?.?.?.? is the network address of your Router
Finally if that fails try nslookup ntp.plus.net  8.8.8.8 which will use google dns
I don't know which DNS you have set in your Router - Plusnet's DNS are 212.159.6.9 & 212.159.6.10 & 212.159.13.49 & 212.159.13.50 and I suggest using any of those rather than BT's for example. There are others you can choose if you want (OpenDNS, Google, Level3 etc)
There have been DNS issues with some Netgear N600s, go to Netgear's site and search for info on their forums, but check you have the latest firmware. There's also a bit of info on DNS issues in http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,104242.html and another thread mentioned there.
You may find this a useful read as well http://community.plus.net/library/browsing/fttc-dlm-what-it-is-how-it-works/
and this for more detail on testing network faults http://community.plus.net/library/networking/testing-network-faults/
blademan1975
Dabbler
Posts: 10
Registered: ‎15-08-2014

Re: New customer fibre problems

Thank's for the reply's i have only rebooted the the modem once my self the other times it does it on it own like just now the dsl light on the openreach modem go's off then blinks for 30 seconds and reconnects. i havent been switch modems since i got connected with plusnet i have been using the eci one, i had the others with bt i was on a hh4 and the hg612 then upgraded to the hh5 so no need for the modem but the modem on the hh5 is terrible and sends requests to the router to reboot all the time so it droped me around 6 times a day.
so i started using the hh5 as just the router side which worked fine and the hg612 as the modem and the drops stoped. I know it's nothing on my pc slowing it down as i am a pc engineer by trade for 14 years now, as to the n600 it has the latest firmware and is running fine.
I have used the plusnet router to and still the same, i noticed that the modem reboot i just had a around 8:05pm has lowered my speed and ip profile again.
Anotherone
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Re: New customer fibre problems

It's sounding like you've got some sort of Interference or REIN issue. When these resyncs occur try and spot whether anything electrical/electronic is happening either in the house or nearby (eg. street light coming on, or faulty - flashing away). In the house anything from low voltage lighting using SMPSUs, compact fluorescents, any discharge lighting really, microwave ovens, boilers coming on, washing machine, fridge or freezer starting up etc., the list goes on.
There's some monitoring software for unlocked modems, I forget which one, I'll see if I can find a link for it, unless you already have it.
Anotherone
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Posts: 19,107
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Registered: ‎31-08-2007

Re: New customer fibre problems

Sorry was preparing this post when I had to interrupt it to watch a live performance of the wurzels Wink
Well there's plenty on the hg612, this is a good place to start. If you wade through this lot that'll keep you busy for a while, but you'll find plenty of good tips. I thought there was something for the eci modem, I'll look a bit more.
blademan1975
Dabbler
Posts: 10
Registered: ‎15-08-2014

Re: New customer fibre problems

I have checked all that stuff and there nothing interfearing with it at all. weather is fine no rain today at all, had heavy down poor the other day and there was no change in the connection all was fine.
This is really doing my head in now wracked my brain for faults ect interfearence and nothing, like i said before this all started after my pair was changed could they have messed that up somehow which is causing all the problems?
Anotherone
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Posts: 19,107
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Registered: ‎31-08-2007

Re: New customer fibre problems

Can you hear any crackling or other noises on the phone at all? Try the quiet line test 17070 option 2.
I take it your post above is in response to my reply #9. Unfortunately your are very unlikely to see any direct change in the situation from turning off a potentially suspect device/piece of equipment, it's usually the turning on that has the effect and may also need other background interference to be at a higher level to have a direct effect. Unfortunately one needs to be bit OCD to spot such things if they occur, without detailed monitoring and graphing such as that detailed in reply #10.
With your background, this ought to be within your capabilities.
A word of caution though to other readers of this thread, you are ill advised to go unlocking your own main BT supplied modem, as if you brick it your are more than likely to get a very large bill from BT. You do so at your own risk. There are usually a few, both unlocked and locked for sale on well known auction sites that you'd be advised to get and can then experiment to your heart's content (noting previous advice about disconnecting).
One other point worth making that I forgot to comment on mentioned in your OP - the initial speeds that an engineer may see a line supposedly capable of - you mentioned 112Mbps in your case, are before DLM has had the opportunity to assess the levels of interference and crosstalk over the initial 24-48 hour period, and of course on-going. Those initial test high speeds an never likely to be achieved, but it at least demonstrates that a pair back to the Cab is in pretty good condition at time of test.  As the number of subscribers on a Cabinet increases, the speeds one can get are likely to be lower than if you were the first or only customer on the Cab. That's in the main why there is two ranges of estimated speeds quoted using the dslchecker.
Townman
Superuser
Superuser
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Registered: ‎22-08-2007

Re: New customer fibre problems

As an aside, do I correctly recall that there is (or was) an issue with hh5 doing spontaneous reboots?

Superusers are not staff, but they do have a direct line of communication into the business in order to raise issues, concerns and feedback from the community.

blademan1975
Dabbler
Posts: 10
Registered: ‎15-08-2014

Re: New customer fibre problems

ok so at around 2:40pm today my dsl light on openreach modem went out again but it stayed off till about 3:10pm ran speedtest on btwholesale site download 54.84meg upload 15meg ip profile 58.95meg seem's to be getting lower again there must be something wrong here.
And yes hh5 was prone to reboots that's why i ended up just using the router side of it and not the modem then it was ok.