Speed drop - broadband unusable

[#1]

Hi All.
Last week around Wednesday the 6th August, I noticed that my broadband was not loading web pages, it was connected but nothing was getting through. Thinking it could be the old Netgear DG834 ? router I purchased a new Netgear N300 box and a longer lead just in case.
During the evening of Wednesday I spent several hours trying the old box with a new microfilter connected as it was, then tried connecting directly to the mastersocket, the router showed a connection to the internet, but still nothing coming through. Go rather fed up at this point and plugged in new box and ran through setup, still no usable internet.
Thursday morning I raised a ticket #8965927, but as yet have had no response from Plus.net
Decided to leave the new router plugged in until I had more time to sort, thinking it might sort its self out.
Saturday morning, I reconnected the new box to the mastersocket around 07:30 and left it connected for 24hrs, still no joy with any internet, again box was saying that the connection was good. Tried to do a speedtest to no avail.
Router stats after 24hrs in mastersocket.
Connection speed d/s 2272kbps u/s 136kbps
Line attenuation d/s 57.0db u/s 37.5db
Noise margin d/s 7.0db u/s 9.5bd.
Steam client indicated a max speed of 6.6kB/s, at time this would drop to zero.
Sunday morning I removed the connection from the mastersocket and reused back to the internal wiring.
Router stats after 24hrs in mastersocket.
Connection speed d/s 2181kbps u/s 666kbps
Line attenuation d/s 57.0db u/s 37.5db
Noise margin d/s 6.8db u/s 6.4bd.
Steam client indicated a max speed of 7.0kB/s, at time this would drop to zero.
This is not just on my main PC, but also on 3 laptops (win 7) one of which I formatted and only installed the wifi and ethernet drivers and also 3 smart phone (1 windows 2 android).
I think I have done all I can do, new router, new filters and longer connection lead from mastersocket. Even swore loudly and threatened the routers with violence, but no luck. Even purchased access through a BT wifi hotpsot to get emails and get work from office server.
Has anyone got any ideas, as this is causing me to pull my hair out (not got much left anyway), as before this is was getting a stable 2MB line, was thinking of going FFTC, but not sure now.

[#2]

Hi Pedro21,
Firstly welcome to our Community forums, I hope we can get this sorted for you.
I've checked over your line and the main worry is the disconnections your line is having;
<img src="http://community.plus.net/visualradius/generated/image14078312648751.png"/>
It seems you have done many of the internal checks required, does your phone line have any interference when you lift the handset?
Also, when your speed drops/broadband is unusable, are you able to ping any websites from a command line?

[#3]

Chris
Thanks for the quick reply, had a look at the chart you attached, I have broken down the elements that I know off.
05/08 to 06/08 router plugged in and left alone.
06/08 - changed router over to mastersocket and installed new router, that would account for the drops between 19:00 and 20:00.
09/08 - connected router to mastersocket around 08:00, left in place until 09:00 on the 10/08, again this accounts for those two disconnects.
11/08 - disconnect caused by blown kettle fuse tripping the trip switch on the electric box.
There was no noticeable noise on the phone line when I tested it using an old analogue phone in both the mastersocket and the internal socket.
Could you explain how to ping websites from the command line, I can understand certain bits, but soon get out of my depth, would not be able to do this until tonight as I am at work at the moment.

[#4]

Go to Start, Run/Search bar and type in: cmd
When the black box comes up, type in: ping bbc.co.uk
It will send off 4 pings and give you the average values for the 4. A ping is the time taken to send data from you to someone else, and to get a response back.
An example is below:

[#5]

Chris
Thanks for that, just spent a stressful five minutes explaining to the parents to change the phone out for an old wired phone, called them and there was no crackling on the line, although my Father may have unplugged the router as well, although the light was red when I phoned them on the mobile.

[#6]

It does look like there has been a disconnection, it may be that the call disconnected it.
Have you noticed that when making or receiving a call on the landline that your broadband disconnects?

[#7]

I think it was operator error at home, my Father unplugged the microfilter splitter to plug in the wired phone, I am not aware of any phone calls disconnecting the broadband, to be honest we do not use the land line much, mostly mobile numbers and text.

[#8]

Chris
Ping Test Results

Traceroute

Router Stats

And finally Steam Client download graph

[#9]

Something not right there, are you able to create a ping graph? I'd be interested to see what's going on with your line.

[#10]

Chris
If  it helps trace the problem I will do the ping graph, could you let me know what it entails, my current router is setup to a dynamic IP.
I need to get this resolved as my parents are driving me bonkers.

[#11]

Hi Pedro21,
As Chris suggests, something is very much not right here.
The router stats are where you need to be focusing at the moment, data speed tests are not overly helpful until the synch speed is sorted.  For your line's attenuation, you should see synch speeds of circa 3Mbps.  Your US speed is highly variable - the 666kbps (at an extension socket) implies that you are on an uncapped 21CN service, hence the 137kbps rate (at the master socket) does seem strange and rather points to a potential line issue.
However the fact that you can resolve the domain names to do the pings means that you are talking to PN's DNS servers with out issue, but for some strange reason cannot get ping responses and that tracert fails.
One off the wall thought (Chris hope you don't mind here...) can you please check the user login details on the router.  The user name should be username@plusdsl.net - not so long ago, there were instances of people having put in username@plus.net and though things seem to largely work, they experienced a number of "something not right" issues.  Could be a complete red herring (PlusNet might have closed that loophole!).

As for setting up the Think Broadband BQM graph, just follow the directions in the link provided by Chris.  Ideally you do need a static IP address, however if this is of a short duration need, you can quickly set one up again after each reconnection.  I used to do that whilst mucking around with the IP v6 slipped-out addresses! 
Note you need to configure the router to respond to pings from the WAN interface.
HTH,
Kevin

[#12]

Townman
Thanks for the reply, will I be able to do the ping graph even though I am struggling to load web pages at all, sorry for the question I am a bit out of my depth once it gets past basics.

[#13]

Quote from: Townman

One off the wall thought (Chris hope you don't mind here...) can you please check the user login details on the router.  The user name should be username@plusdsl.net - not so long ago, there were instances of people having put in username@plus.net and though things seem to largely work, they experienced a number of "something not right" issues.  Could be a complete red herring (PlusNet might have closed that loophole!).

That all checks out ok.

Quote from: Pedro21

will I be able to do the ping graph even though I am struggling to load web pages at all

You will only need to access it once and then we'll be able to see what's going on a bit better.

[#14]

Quote from: Pedro21

sorry for the question I am a bit out of my depth once it gets past basics.

Pedro21,
Do not be afraid of asking questions when you are not sure, that is the whole point of the forum.
Just thought of another issue I've seen before - when you are able, can you please try "ping plus.net" in the same way you tried bbc.co.uk?  And if you get "request timed out" again, try ping "192.168.0.1"
There is every chance that someone will be around here from the community (not PlusNet) this evening if you need help.

Kevin

[#15]

Townman / Chris
Just spen the best part of two hours trying to get the ping graph to work, hopefully here it ishttp://<a title="Broadband Ping" href="http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/2f3b7070df84e7478e23....
Tried the ping test as asked, will upload from work tomorrow.
Thanks for the help guys.