Poor VOIP / Browsing etc.

[#1]

Hi,
I am experiencing poor performance with various aspects of my connection, particularily at peak times, but also during off peak times.
Of concern are VOIP, Streaming Music and Browsing.
I was under the impression that these areas should receive a high priority through the network - however I experiance broken speech, buffering music and slow browsing which I believe is a problem!
Could you please advise as to how to progress this issue.
My connection is stable, I have connected to various gateways and BT speedtest is fine.
Thanks in advance,
Jon.

[#2]

Hi Jon,
I've had a quick look and can't see anything that would be causing that kind of issue.
Your profiling looks fine at both our and BTs end and as you have stated, your speedtests are fine.
It might be an idea to run a Wireshark trace to see that we're prioritising your traffic correct but I really don't know what else to suggest.

[#3]

Well, I lied about the BT Speedtester it would seem...
My connection is almost unusable as I speak, poor everything.
Here are the results from my BT Speedtest...

"Test1 comprises of Best Effort Test:  -provides background information.
    IP profile for your line is - 6500 kbps
    DSL connection rate: 448 kbps(UP-STREAM)  8128 kbps(DOWN-STREAM)
    Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 608 kbps"
I'm sure you could say this is within the "limits" of up to 8mb....
but really, this is woeful.
Is there anything that can be done about this please!!?
Jon.

[#4]

Just had a look on usertools and the VP capacity on my exchange LCCHO Chorley is RED.
I presume this will not help the problem, however it was green on Oct 8th and for a good while previous to that... the problems i have at the moment seem to have been going on for some time now...
Jon.

[#5]

Hi Jon,
I suspect that your exhange status may well be related to the recent slwodowns that you have been seeing, it would also suggest why you are seeeing poor VoIP performance.
Could you possibly try using a different filter and connect directly to your master socket via a filter to see if this makes any difference?

[#6]

my exchange has been Red for months, the date for upgrade comes and goes. the connection seems fine

[#7]

Yes, I agree... inconclusive - my exchange had been green recently and I was still experiencing the issues, it has been red in the past too - and I didn’t have any issues.... go figure.
Not 100% sure it’s related in any way - but it could be I would also concede to that.
As it happens, minutes after posting last night the speed test suddenly went back to normal - I somehow think that has more to do with the Plusnet infrastructure, rather than my local BT exchange.
I suppose though there is nothing that can be done due to the fact it is red - but this will be more than a little annoying if the fault is still present when my exchange goes green again!
Cheers,
Jon.

[#8]

Hello again,
Ive just got a new router today, and it give a little more information on the line stats than my old one did.
My line is stable, I don't get any disconnects but as I have said, certain times of the day I do get very poor speeds.
Of particular concern from my stats are the ones highlighted below - is this normal or should I be concerned?
Further more, can somebody tell me what they mean too please, I know they are CRC errors of some description - but I wanted to know in a little more detail.
Cheers,
RX    TX
8128  448 
SNR Margin (dB) : 5.5  22.0 
Attenuation (dB) : 26.0  30.5 
Output Power (dBm) : 19.7  11.8 
K (number of bytes in DMT frame) : 255  15 
R (number of check bytes in RS code word) : 0  0 
S (RS code word size in DMT frame) : 1  1 
D (interleaver depth) : 0  0 
Delay (msec) : 0  0 
Super Frames : 313584  313582 
Super Frame Errors : 66994  12  
RS Words : 0  0 
RS Correctable Errors : 0  0 
RS Uncorrectable Errors : 0  N/A 
HEC Errors : 37744  2 
OCD Errors : 1  0 
LCD Errors : 0  0 
Total Cells : 102138367  0 
Data Cells : 3643040  0 
Bit Errors : 0  0 
Total ES : 2205  0 
Total SES : 1767  0 
Total UAS : 16  0 

[#9]

Just a little more information.
I was reading up or at least trying to about the high rate of HLC errors etc I was experiencing.
The article mentioned that this can happen if your SNR is too low, well my SNR is pretty much always around the 6db mark and most of the time trouble free.
However, it did mention that disconnecting the "ring wire" in your phone socket can sometimes help in increasing the SNR. Apparently it can act as an aerial, and is not required since any dsl filter you have has a capacitor in anyway.
So, I disconnected it and my SNR is nearer 9db now... its never been that high at 8128... so looks like a nice little tip there.
Also my HLC error count is greatly reduced atm.
Will keep an eye on things now for a while...
P.S. your opinions on the above are still appreciated.
Cheers,
Jon.

[#10]

Can anybody explain what Superframe / HEC errors are, or how many - if any - are acceptable please?
Any info on the rest of the highlighted areas would be nice too, thanks.
Cheers,
Jon.

[#11]

Jon,
Are you seeing any difference in throughput speeds now?

[#12]

Well, everything seems OK at the moment. But its too early to tell.. I shall be monitoring during the day.
Something else thats happened again too...
I was on 8128/448/6db previously.
I disconnected the ring wire from my line as I said and the line attenuation actually improved (went from around 6db to 9 or 10)
The HEC errors seemed to reduce which was good too..
Then I got disconnected and my line target was back at 12db
I was syncing then at about 7226/448/12db.
Great I thought, here we go again.
Any way, my line was showing about 12.4db at 7226, so I thought I'd resync to see if i would get a faster throughtput (target 12db)
I did, about 7826 - not bad, I thought I would just leave it be for a while.
Anyway, got disconnected again last night and my routers syncing at 8128/448/9.6db now (target 9db)
Don't know what the heck BT keep playing at... but I'm obviously happy that I'm Syncing at 8128 again... and more to the point with a much improved SNR.
All by disconnecting the ring wire....
I will let you know how things go today....
Cheers,
Jon.

[#13]

OK my exchange now shows Green status, and according to BT it has actually been in this state since the 22nd October!

Therefore my original complaint stands (and as suspected always has done)
Is there anything that can be done to investigate my issues further please?
Jon.

[#14]

Hi Jon,
Thanks for the update.
I certainly wouldn't expect to see you getting such poor speeds with your exchange status as it is, or your connection quality as it is.  Can I ask if you have tried tweaking your rWin or MTU settings?  I can't remember if we had discussed this in the past or not.
Failing this, I can get a fault raised to BT.  Are you constantly seeing poor speeds or are you seeing considerable fluctuations depending on the time of day when running your BT Speedtests?

[#15]

Im seeing fluctuations at different times of the day, in actual fact it has been much improved over the last several days - but I still see times where voip or streaming traffic seem to suffer.
I am running Vista, so I dont think you can manage the MTU or RWIN settings as you could in XP using DRTCP.
Im sure its more of a problem with Plusnets traffic management tbh.
Let me know what you think.
Jon.