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Recent housemove speed slowed down

polystring
Hooked
Posts: 6
Registered: ‎18-07-2021

Recent housemove speed slowed down

Hi all,

 

I'll try my best to explain the situation clearly, I moved house recently the previous owner had an odd setup. At the front of the house the living room, has two master sockets. One of these "master" sockets appears to be unwired when I've taken off the face plate and when I initially connected to it when I moved in seemed dead - so I'll assume it is. Literally, right next to it is another master socket, when I moved in this had a splitter going into the front of the master socket, which travels round the house into a room in the back which also has a "master" socket.

 

When I first received my broadband equipment, I tried the three sockets, one seemed dead so left that alone pretty quickly, then I moved onto the one right next to it which has the splitter attached, I tried this through the splitter and without and got ~14Mb/s data rate, weirdly my max obtainable was much higher, I then moved the router to the back room which actually comes from the splitter and my data rate was ~21/22Mb/s - it stayed like this for a month or so. Just recently the speed dropped to around ~10Mb/s on the connecting in the back room, so I've tried the master socket in the front again and it's around ~14Mb/s still with a rather high SNR value. I've tried the master socket with the test socket and still get 14Mb/s. Anyone could know what the issue is and why the socket coming from a splitter would provide me a higher speed, it was very consistent swapping between the two would always give the exact same speeds when I was first trying to work out which socket I should use. 

 

Right now I'm on the test socket in the master socket and it still slow compared to what it was - Openwrt still shows me a similar max attainable rate to what I was getting previously, any help would be greatly appreciated!

18 REPLIES 18
jab1
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Re: Recent housemove speed slowed down

@polystring Welcome to the forums. That does sound a strange set-up. Not doubting your description of it, but a properly installed - i.e. by BT - installation will only have one master socket, and will be where the cable comes into the house, usually on the wall nearest to the DP, if overhead cabled, or just inside your property nearest to where the cable runs a little way up the outside wall if an underground installation.

Looking at the easier to read picture, it appears you have a couple of problems - your SNR figures are much too high given the reported Line and Signal Attenuation figures, and your ES and SES levels also look high.

First question - do you have a phone by which you can carry out a Quiet Line Test (dial 17070 and select option 2) - there should be total silence except for the regular 'Quiet Line Test' message. ANY noise at all other than that - report a PHONE fault first. Second question - can you post pictures of each of the 'Master' sockets please.

John
Baldrick1
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Re: Recent housemove speed slowed down

@polystring 

First I suspect that you can discount the @jab1  comment that the SNR is much too high. From these results my reading is that you are on ADSL and live close to the exchange? Your line is in sync at about the maximum that ADSL will go and have SNR to spare.

Next you talk about the master socket that has the test socket. Are you confusing master sockets with extension sockets? Only master sockets have test sockets in the back.

What I would do is find which is the real master socket. If you’re not sure then carefully take the front off and look in the back. The BT incoming cable should look totally different to extension wiring. Once you are sure that you have found it disconnect all the extension cables and try your speed from the test socket with a computer connected to the hub with an Ethernet cable. This is where your hub should be located. If that all gives satisfactory results then get a filtered faceplate, they are available from the likes of Amazon, and use this to connect the extension cables. Once you have fitted this faceplate and wired it correctly you will not be able to use your hub in the extensions but you will not need to use any dangly filters

 

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jab1
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Re: Recent housemove speed slowed down

OK, @Baldrick1 , I'll leave you to help on this issue. I agree the OP needs to establish which of the 'Master Sockets' is actually the Master Socket - which I thought I had given enough clues to find, but if I am wrong, I apologise.

As to the SNR issue, I agree you may be correct, but the error figures being as high as they are, and the variations observed do raise questions in my mind.

Until we have the result of a QLT and pictures of the sockets, I think we are speculating somewhat.

John
Baldrick1
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Re: Recent housemove speed slowed down

@jab1 

Sorry if I have ruffled your feathers here, I don't think that we are miles apart in our thinking. My intention was just to expand on your post, not diss it. I agree that the first check should always be a QLT but in this case it might not help. My thought process goes like this:

If there is too high a level of background noise on the line I would expect this to be reflected in a lower sync speed. This isn't the problem here as the sync speed is about maxed out. The problem is that this sync speed isn't being reflected in the download speed. The high error rate suggests to me that this is the cause of the low data rate due to the amount of traffic that has to be retransmitted.

Following this theory the first thing to do is to eliminate any internal sources of interference injection by stripping the internal wiring back to just the 'real' master test socket. Depending on whether this resolves the data speed issue determines whether ii is a network or internal wiring problem that needs assressing.

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adam945
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Re: Recent housemove speed slowed down

Hi @polystring

 

Welcome to our online community Forum. sorry to hear about the drop in speed lately. I'd echo other posts on this thread though, that in order to test accurately, we'd need to establish the one master socket in the property. This is the first socket that's connected to the distribution pole nearby.

 

I've not been able to gather any speeds today, as the line has come back to be out of sync at the moment, this is being caused by a disconnection in the MDF at the local exchange. this may be the cause of your decrease in speed lately, but we won't know for sure until the line is back up and running. We're hoping to have the MDF fault resolved by 21/07/2021, and a ticket has now been created with our Technical Support Team which you can view and comment on here.

 

feel free to reach out if your speeds have not improved once this fault has been resolved and we'll be happy to investigate.

 Adam
 Plusnet Help Team - Leeds
polystring
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Registered: ‎18-07-2021

Re: Recent housemove speed slowed down

Hi all,

 

I've attached pictures of the sockets, as I explained previously there are two "master" sockets next to each other, one I assume is unwired, am I allowed to take off past the face plate to confirm or is this Openreach property? The one that does work seems to have only two wires going to it from what I can make out.

 

In the other room it's connected via the output of the splitter that goes around the outside of the house.

 

My real query is this, how can that other socket be quicker when it was connected via a splitter, surely this would just add more cable length and noise? I've tried the MK4 face plate with inbuilt filter on the working master socket in the living room and it made no improvement to speeds. I understand there may be a problem now effecting my speeds but this socket in the living room has only ever produced around ~14Mb/s whereas the one in the other room connected via splitter produced more, how can this be?

 

Many thanks for your help so far!

jab1
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Re: Recent housemove speed slowed down

@polystring The scary thing is that all all DO  appear to be master sockets - the previous tenants must have had some strange ideas. 😉

What we ideally need now, to determine which is the one you should be connected to , is to find the one nearest to the entry point of the BT cable into your house. Are you fed from an overhead or underground cable, and where does it enter your home in relation to those sockets?

From your comment re: the working socket and MK.4 faceplate I am guessing there is also a BT network problem/issue involved here, which is not helping.

John
polystring
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Registered: ‎18-07-2021

Re: Recent housemove speed slowed down

Well it has to be either of the two in the living room as this is the front of the house, and the other is connect via a splitter from the right positioned master socket. The left one as I said provides no connection at all, and looking at them it seems as though it's just bypassed into the second one for what reason, I have no idea.
jab1
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Re: Recent housemove speed slowed down

OK - and the cable enters where, please?

John
polystring
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Re: Recent housemove speed slowed down

The cable enters from the ground outside the living room there is a conduit directly aligned with the two master sockets in the living room.
Baldrick1
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Re: Recent housemove speed slowed down

@polystring 

One explanation could be that the property has had two line connections to the outside world at some time. These both being located in the lounge. If the other socket is connected to the end of an extension lead then it has obviously been installed by a bodger. The master socket should have two cables coming to it, one from the outside world and one from the filtered output to the extension. You are obviously not wired this way so as I said earlier you need to get stripped back to the real master socket and start again.

Are you allowed to take the front off a master socket and check the wiring? As long as you are careful and don’t pull wires off who would know?

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jab1
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Re: Recent housemove speed slowed down

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John
polystring
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Re: Recent housemove speed slowed down

I've done the quiet line test both with the master socket and the Mk4 filtered face plate both have quite a fair amount of static hissing and tapping, where do I go from here?
Mustrum
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Re: Recent housemove speed slowed down

Report a phone fault with noise on the line - once that is fixed your broadband speeds will improve, although asking the engineer if they can do a DLM reset will get you there quicker.