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Phone Line issue. Not sure what's causing the issue that appeared a few days ago.

Anotherone
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Re: Phone Line issue. Not sure what's causing the issue that appeared a few days ago.

@ExtremeZero Can you post the current stats from the Asus please?

ExtremeZero
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Re: Phone Line issue. Not sure what's causing the issue that appeared a few days ago.

Modulation : G.Dmt
Annex Mode : Annex A/L
Line State : up
Lan Tx : 414824
Lan Rx : 228847
ADSL Tx : 216948
ADSL Rx : 38472903
CRC Down : 8
CRC Up : 3471
FEC Down : 10
FEC Up : 194
HEC Down : 12681
HEC Up : 62
SNR Up : 22.0
SNR Down : 3.0
Line Attenuation Up : 16.5
Line Attenuation Down : 37.5
Data Rate Up : 448
Data Rate Down : 7520

Anotherone
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Re: Phone Line issue. Not sure what's causing the issue that appeared a few days ago.

 

Interesting. Which Modem/router were you using when you first joined Plusnet?

I notice with the last set of stats from the 585 you'd had 3 drops since the previous stats (at least one will have been line testing), and not surprisingly connected at a lower speed whilst the line problem was probably at one of it's worse moments and then improved with the  rise in SNRM again.

The Asus seems either to misreport the SNRM (or is demanding a 3dB Target) - and possibly misreporting attenuation - the latter not fitting as well with your supposed distance from the exchange, or indeed the MSR for your line. There's also a lot more US errors - but that could easily be the line fault.

Let's hope the line fault is fixed soon and doesn't leave your with a degraded line.

ExtremeZero
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Re: Phone Line issue. Not sure what's causing the issue that appeared a few days ago.

BT openreach are here and checking the line, going back and forth.

No info except that it has nothing to do with the FTTC as it hasn't been connected up yet. So it's still exchange only atm.

And it was the Thompson I was using the first time.

 

EDIT: Well the BT openreach enginner had been a help. The line is completely fine so thank god that's not an issue. the FTTC is planned around June/July and there is nothing here in my house that can cause such an issue. Preety much did his thing and then mentioned to keep an eye and ear out after he checked the Line outside too.

So I will keep monitoring till it's clearly the issue has been resolved but I'll will have to wait till it's clear for a few days. I've plugged the filter to the test socket for now as recommended by him.

Townman
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Re: Phone Line issue. Not sure what's causing the issue that appeared a few days ago.

For clarity, is that "The line is 'fine', the engineer found no fault" or "The line is now fine, after the engineer fixed something"?

The line tests performed by @Chris clearly showed a line fault.  There is every possibility that the engineer could not locate that fault and therefore believes the line is fine, when actually it is not ... it could of course be a pesky intermittent fault, which can be very difficult to pin down.

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.

ExtremeZero
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Re: Phone Line issue. Not sure what's causing the issue that appeared a few days ago.

As in the Engineer found no fault but he did do something at the Telephone pole that goes to my house. I did mention how intermittent the fault was too him and he was in for over 1-2 hours during the morning which is the time that it mostly occures from the timeline of the charts and stats.

If it isn't the line then it must be the Exchange. Those are the only two possible answers I can think of.

Anotherone
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Re: Phone Line issue. Not sure what's causing the issue that appeared a few days ago.

Following on from that, whilst you reported it being Intermittent to BT

BT: is it an intermittent issue?
Me: I think so. Though it appears to happen during the day a lot more often then at night

I'm glad you made the Openreach engineer aware of that fact. The information that a provider is given unfortunately doesn't always get to the engineer (and in some cases the engineer doesn't try to get the information that's available to them on the system!). As for the current work not been the cause of the problem - strange that you didn't have an issue before the work started, and secondly I don't believe for one minute that what they've been doing either externally or in the exchange hasn't disturbed some cables and/or equipment!

Obviously keep monitoring. I'd be inclined to do a few random Quiet Line Tests during the day and especially if you notice anything happening to the broadband - loss of sync, big shift in SNRM etc.

Another aspect that I had intended to ask about, but at the outset as this seemed like something in some way related to the work going on, I didn't ask at the time.
The engineer has suggest you plug into the test socket .... so, do you have any extension phone sockets - hard wired or plug in, and what is normally plugged in where? Do you use any extension leads between the phone socket and filter or filter and modem/router?

ExtremeZero
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Re: Phone Line issue. Not sure what's causing the issue that appeared a few days ago.

No extension phone sockets, no extension leads. There is only the Master Socket.

 

Anotherone
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Re: Phone Line issue. Not sure what's causing the issue that appeared a few days ago.

Strange the engineer making the comment he did then - leads me to wonder how good a job he may have/have not done ..... except, what sort of face plate do you have? Now without reading back I assume it's a standard one with just a single socket, as you plug a "rat's-tail" type filter into it?

ExtremeZero
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Re: Phone Line issue. Not sure what's causing the issue that appeared a few days ago.

What comment do you mean exactly?

Also this is almost the same face plate as the one I have. 

testsocketa

Townman
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Re: Phone Line issue. Not sure what's causing the issue that appeared a few days ago.

If there are no extensions (nothing wired to the faceplate) it is odd that you were advised to plug direct into the test socket, as all that does is to eliminate the face plate which is nothing more than a connection point for extensions.

I am a little surprised the engineer did not fit a Mk3 face plate ... but may be that needs a broadband engineer? Crazy2

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.

Anotherone
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Re: Phone Line issue. Not sure what's causing the issue that appeared a few days ago.

The comment - to plug into the Test Socket - which is what the picture is of. The Faceplate is the part that's been removed to see the Test Socket Wink

ExtremeZero
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Re: Phone Line issue. Not sure what's causing the issue that appeared a few days ago.

Ahhh it got worse! Not only is there a lot of noise on the line. It also appears the neighbours are also having the same thing too.

What appears to have happened is that when I was away from the house. One of the neighbours contacted BT openreach saying that they were experincing a lot of crackling on the line and as a result the enginner (Not sure if same one or not) examined the neighbours line and the telephone poles.

I'm not sure if the neighbour is still experiecing the crackling as of right now as I haven't heard a message back yet but whatever the enginner did it preety much made the line just screwed up way more.

 

Timeline:

  • 15:04: BT Openreach enginner appeared after having been contacted by the neighbour.
  • 15:04 - 15:54: The noise has started dropping and abrutly rising during this time period. When it was 15:54 the line started to become a bit more stable and remained at the 2.5-4dB till 17:47.
  • 17:47: The noise margin has started dropping and rose immediately.
  • 17:57-18:22: is a massive drop into the negatives where it was at -2.5dB for a few minutes and then went back up to 1dB and then shot up to 9.5dB to 4.5dB at 18:09. It then went to 6dB -7.5dB and started dropping back to 0dB and then stayed at 1.5dB while jumping up to 4.5dB at times for a couple of minutes till 18:22 where it stayed at 4.5-5dB. http://i.imgur.com/uaWECp8.jpg
  • 21:17: I came back into the house and I received a call and when I picked up the phone. There was a lot of crackling to the point where I had a hard time hearing the caller. As a result the noise margin went towards 1.5dB, rose to 4dB and then droped to 3dB. After that I rebooted the router and it started dropping and abrutly rising again on router stats. http://i.imgur.com/37dTJ4B.jpg
  • 21:28: the noise margin stayed at 4-5dB till 21:43 where it rose up to 5-6dB and stayed that way.
Anotherone
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Re: Phone Line issue. Not sure what's causing the issue that appeared a few days ago.

It's easier to read if you can embed graphs within a post rather than link to an external server but don't worry as far the graphs you've linked in your last post - because I don't think there is anything further to learn from similar graphs which are typical of graphs you get on a noisy line with obvious faults. At least if neighbours are suffering the same issues something is likely to get done quite quickly as long as they all report the problem straight away. I hope you've already been back to BT and reported that the problem has got considerably worse especially with a nice noisy line whilst doing so. 

If you haven't had an opportunity to do that yet then use the on-line automated test that BT provide. 

ExtremeZero
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Re: Phone Line issue. Not sure what's causing the issue that appeared a few days ago.

Maybe I would if the BT server wasn't dying at the moment. Having trouble logging in and reopening the fault.