Sorry.....But I am sick to death with the problems on my line.

[#1]

Sorry forgot to pull these up this time.
Question: shoud I stay in the test socket with the rats tail or put the BT Filtered Faceplate back on?
Alex

[#2]

I get a similar thing on my line where the SNRM drops for a short period and then recovers. I suspect that it is attributed to RFI (radio frequency interference) between you and the exchange. It is very hard to track down.

[#3]

I have/had a very similar problem.
In my case it helped that I had a little transistor radio that worked on medium wave. I was able to tune it to about 600kHz and then during my equivalent of your noisy periods, I could fine tune it and listen to the interference. The intereference came and went with the routerstats plot and I was able to follow the BT cable (which is under the pavement in my case) around the close by following the noise.  Eventually I had a Openreach engineer here and was able to turn on the radio and he heard it too. That was lucky because it got me a real REIN engineer on site.
That did not magically solve the problem. The REIN engineer was good. He replaced my master socket and added an RF3 filter and changed the wires through the wall and that did lessen the peakiness of the spikes. He then spent many hours sat outside waiting for the interference to occur so that he could identify the source. Like you, the noise was very intermittent and did not last for very long when it happened so he had his work cut out for him.
He did find a problem a couple of streets away and a major part of my problem went away but nobody is very convinced that that was cause and effect.
I still have a problem and am working to solve it. That mostly involves using Routerstats to try to understand the problem. It is quite clear that as my SNR margin drops as it does by 3 or 4 db, the CRC errors increase to maybe thousands and the FEC errors increase to tens or even hundreds of thousands in just 15 minutes. My line does not drop sync but is useless for communication while that happens. The relationships must prove something and it is just crass of the Plusnet "engineer" to fail to consider the data. In my view it is a lazy, lets take the easy way out and try to fool the customer approach. No competent engineer would ignore the data that Routerstats can provide.  That said it can be very hard to solve the problem if it is outside your house even with BT's help.
Can I suggest you try the radio suggestion if possible and I wish you the best of luck.

[#4]

Well EM, I had hoped you problems had been cured as I hadn't noticed you posting lately, however I'm glad that things are improved at any rate.
Yes if it's RFI/REIN it can be an extremely difficult thing to track down as anyone that has had it knows too well.
Alex, leave the rat's tail in place, don't want any changes clouding the issue. I also see that your "it doesn't happen at weekends" theory is out the window
This "coincidence", if that's what it was, of an event when the intrusive testing was done, certainly needs looking at further (I'll PM on that).
Apart from that, it's a long walk to your exchange with your radio Alex 
[coat]

[#5]

On my line, the SNRM drops 4dB+ at night. I don't really know why, but there isn't a really a solution, you just have to get used to it.

[#6]

Hmmmmmm....it is a long way to the exchange over some very very muddy fields My housing estate ends and then it is open fields to the next village, where the exchange is)
Really, someone needs to devise a 'Super Modem/Router'....designed for lines with RFI/REIN problems.....that can still hear the Broadband signal through all the noise?
Is this a categoric 'No' to there being any sort of problem whatsoever  with my line where is literally plugs into the card on the stack in the exchange? Could there not be a intermittant breaking down of physical equipment here?
It is unusual to have an event at the weekend but not unheard of. I think I said that I don't 'normally' get them at a weekend.
I keep trying to analyse these events. Usualy one a day, lasting for about 30 to 40 minutes at random times of day. It perhaps would be easier (ha ha ha ha) to track the cause down if there was a regular pattern, length of time and time of day........
What about the period of 23/08/12 to 05/09/12. I held a constant sync of 1.984Mbps for 13 days at an SNRM of 6dB....with no events at all during this 13 day period. Almost corresponds to someone somewhere having a a two week holiday?
I have got a pocket tranny....but how will this help. OK if I am fortunate enough to observe an event 'live' on my RSL graph...I can tune my tranny in and hear the noise for myself.....but how will it help me find the source? Especially in the 20-40 minute window that these events are over
Lastly.....why does the PN profile not update very quickly. I have heard about these Delta report thingys and that they don't always work. Recently I got in touch with the board to ask one of the DCT to nudge up my profile to match my BT one to be told they couldn't as my service had been 'banded'? (whatever this means). I was told that it was becaise of all the resyncs that my line had recently had that caused the 'banding'. So my events cause resyncs which then cause my line to be banded which then means woeful dl speeds....something not quite right here!
Anyway.....my thoughts for the night concluded. Tomorrow is another day for which I thank the Lord for each n every time I wake up!
Alex

[#7]

Quote from: alex7127

Could there not be a intermittant breaking down of physical equipment here?

About once a day at random times for 30 to 40 minutes?  There is far too much of a pattern to this for it to be due to a random event and for intermittent breaking down of any physical equipment one would expect to see the occurrences much more randomly distributed.  And, as you observed, your event went on holiday for two weeks at the end of August.  Did any of your neighbours go away at the same time? 
 

[#8]

The cable goes via the fields does it? Well you can be thankful for that then as there is unlikely to be any RFI/REIN sources there 
Now you mentioned intermittent breaking down (of something at the exchange), there is the highly possible issue related to Tie-pairs!
(Hence the talk about a TPM!)
Or of course a device associated with the port on the Line-card. However I would have thought the latter less likely as it will be a new line card for 21CN compared to 20CN.
Also note there is nothing specific suggesting either of these, just this one recent "coincidence".
With regard to Banded profiles, this is nothing more than an upper limit on your sync speed. What was your sync speed when you were told about a banded profile? Your sync speed still has an IP profile, banded or not, and the Plusnet Current Line Speed should match. There is/was nothing special about your situation w.r.t. Delta Reports. You are in the same boat as thousands of others. I suspect you misunderstood what you were told as much as the person telling you had misunderstood what you were asking at the time!
Random events / patterns? Neighbours? I think that's an area to revisit.

[#9]

This mornings event.........The actual SNRM plotting on RSL grah  is giving near identical results now.....
Held Sync.......
Would/can a specialist BT engineer (REIN I think you called them) interpret anything from RSL graphs like this....ie they have seen this sort of plotting/shape before and it was xyz?
I would really like PN to work with me over this. I am quite happy to do my bit on this end! You never know they may learn somthing.....if they are prepared perhaps to be a bit more open minded over RSL data
If only I could find the source of this.........It is like my mission in life now!
Alex .

[#10]

As I believe I said in a PM, at this instant, there is nothing that falls within BTw's criteria as a fault, so as REIN engineers are difficult to get assigned at the best of times, you are between a rock and a hard place at the moment, but yes a REIN engineer would interpret things from a RSL graph, just as he/she would from DLM graphs and data. I have replied to your PM.

[#11]

If you can hear the interference on the transistor radio then it increases the chance that it is local REIN rather than a problem at the exchange. (Before anyone else says it, it is possible that the REIN is so powerful that it starts many miles away and travels down the sources telephone line and then hops across to yours but this is way down the probability scales. The exchange can also generate REIN itself I suppose but again this is very rare.)
If you can hear it, then as you move the transistor radio around, the interference normally comes and goes as you point it at a source of the interference or away from it. If you are really lucky you might be able to follow the interference to its source. In my case, as I walked up the road the noise increased and then diminished as I passed the point where the main electrical cables entered each house and at the third house, it became really loud. (The interference was carried by the electrical supply cables as well as the phone lines - one probably infected the other and it was probably the electrical cables infecting the phone lines rather than the other way around.)
In honesty, I never quite convinced myself which house it was as it was loud in front of this third house and also the one opposite across the street  - and I do not know either house owner well enough to approach them without being very very certain.  If I widened my walks, the noise disappeared, it was literally only there within our group of 10 or 12 houses.
On this sort of localness, it is very easy to make progress within 30 minutes, albeit, that it might take several 30 minute sessions. Getting closer to the cause is reasonably easy this way, completing the cure can be very difficult.
In fairness to PlusNet, I had two sources of REIN interference, the one I am talking about above which has now gone away, possibly as the result of the REIN engineer's work and a second which is continuing but PlusNet do seem to be doing everything they can to keep the pressure on BT to resolve it. It has taken 6 months but once they were persuaded that there is a real problem they have pursued it very thoroughly. I am actually impressed.

[#12]

The only thing to bear in mind when listening on a radio is that there is a lot of extraneous noise there all the time and you need to be sure that you are "tuned" to the right noise, by hearing it start at the same time as you see it appear on a SNRM graph (or the converse of course).

[#13]

Does fibre suffer with the same problems with noise?

[#14]

I don't see why it shouldn't, but of course it's only the wires between you and the cabinet that could possibly be affected, from the cabinet to the exchange is light down a fibre-optic cable which cannot be affected by RFI.
But, if you are lucky enough to be on FTTH there's no chance of interference!

[#15]

The answer is yes it does. One FM I know has a neighbour who has a TV/Sky box that chucks out so much noise when they switch it on, it interferes with his fibre, but not in the same way as it did with his ADSL2+.