Very Disappointed.

[#1]

Sorry this is long winded, but trying to explain everything.
I had my fibre upgrade installed on Monday afternoon, the install was straight foward & the engineer was surprised that I was using a HH5. He connected the line straight to the HH5 & left the Openreach modem with me in case I might need it later.
Initially I was very impressed wiyh the results, the HH5 synced at 78+ Meg down & at 19+ Meg up. My actual speeds worked out at 66Meg dowmload & 17 Meg upload. All tested with an ethernet cable.
However it wasn't to last, during the evening the download speeds got lower & lower. Sometimes lower than my previous ADSL speeds of around 4/5 Meg, the upload speeds remained roughly where they were though.
As a test I plugged in the Openreach modem & connected directly to the PC using Windows, the results were even slightly worse than the HH5 which eliminated that.
I reconnected the HH5 & as it got later in the evening the download speed started to creep back up again.
During the day on Tuesday the speeds remained at the initial level of 66 Meg, but during Tuesday evening they started to drop again.
And up again from around 10.30pm.
Back to normal again today, no doubt it will go bad again tonight.
All my profiles tally up to the initial readings, so the question is that why are my download speeds dropping dramatically during the evening? It is not much use to me especially as I am paying an extra £10 a month for the privilege.
Attached are some screenshots of the various tests made on Monday/Tuesday evenings.
Take note of the 2nd stage BTW test! It advises me to contact my isp, even the upload speed is low on that.
Looks like my connection is being throttled.
Finally a couple of questions.
1. Is there a 10 day testing period on fibre like ADSL?
2. What the default SNR on fibre, is it 6.0 like ADSL again? I am showing around 15.0 down & 8.0 up.
EDIT, Upload speeds looked fairly impacted last night as well.

Firstly MY PLUSNET PROFILE
Phone exchange:
READING TILEHURST
Estimated line speed:
63Mb (Download speed could vary depending on line conditions. Estimates are the maximum speeds that your phone line can support. These speeds are dependent on the package you choose.) - Checked on 2014-02-24 12:54:16
Current line speed:
78 Mb
Speedtest result last night.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/3331896945.png

[#2]

Hi buseng12,
I'm really sorry to hear of the issues you're experiencing here. Firstly, have you raised a fault with us? Without raising a fault, our Faults Team aren't going to beable to investigate and resolve this issue for you - this can be done at http://faults.plus.net
In answer to your questions;
1. Is there a 10 day testing period on fibre like ADSL?
Answer: There's not a strict 10 day rule, generally you'll see any increase in performance within the first 3-4 days, but it can take a little longer. I would still say 10 days just to give the line time to settle down.
2. What the default SNR on fibre, is it 6.0 like ADSL again? I am showing around 15.0 down & 8.0 up.
Answer: We don't have any control over lien resets at the moment so I can't really answer that question. When our suppliers make this available, we'll be able to share what changes we can make and in what circumstances we would make such changes. SNR in itself, I believe works in a very similar way to ADSL, the key difference between Fibre and ADSL is the frequency that's used to transmit the data.

[#3]

Nothing is easy, trying to fill a fault report but when I press submit it fails & comes back with this.
Error
Sorry, An error occurred whilst processing your request.
The error has been recorded and our website team will investigate. Please try again later.

Tried several times re-typing everything.

[#4]

Sorry you got an error.
It's logged a fault ticket on our side (Ticket: 81892611) - our Faults Team will be in touch.

[#5]

OK, cheers.
I see its reported 3 times on my account, must of gone through each time I tried.

[#6]

Yeah, I think something has generated the error and it'll always spit a ticket out as a safety net.
We'll get your line looked at.

[#7]

Quote from: buseng12

1. Is there a 10 day testing period on fibre like ADSL?

In FTTC, the line is allowed to run at its fastest possible speed from day 1. Provided you stay connected for more than 15 minutes on day 1, you will trigger DLM to start monitoring the line. It will not intervene yet, unless you are having major stability issues.
On day 2, DLM monitors the line, but still does not intervene, unless you have major stability issues.
Overnight, between day 2 and day 3, DLM chooses whether to intervene, based on the day 2 results. If it chooses to intervene, you will see a resync that night - usually between 2am and 7am - and the modem working with the new settings specified by DLM. The first intervention usually adds 8ms latency for interleaving, and uses 15-20% of the bandwidth for error correction.
For most people, that is where the line is effectively set up. For some people, that first level of intervention isn't enough, and DLM will adjust the settings on subsequent nights. The new intervention might alter FEC & interleaving settings, or it might put a speed banding restriction (eg setting a min speed of 30 and a max speed of 60).
Note: in the reverse direction, DLM tends to need 2-3 weeks of improved behaviour before it reduces intervention.

Quote

2. What the default SNR on fibre, is it 6.0 like ADSL again? I am showing around 15.0 down & 8.0 up.

Yes, the target SNRM is 6db for both upstream and downstream. However, in FTTC, the SNRM is not changed by DLM: it always uses a target of 6dB.
If you have an actual SNRM value above 6dB, then it might be that
- you are synchronised at 80Mbps and have plenty of SNR in hand
- or you have been banded by DLM, and have plenty of SNR in hand for the banded speed limit
- or you synchronised in a noisy period, and the noise has now vanished
Your line looks to be synced at 80Mbps (as it has a profile of 77.4), suggesting you are close to the cabinet and have plenty of SNR in hand. I'd guess you were within 300 metres of the cabinet.

[#8]

Yes, I'm pretty close to the cabinet. Can't give an actual figure though.
Some stats here, BT HH5.

Connection Information
Line state: Connected
Connection time: 1 days, 18:35:30
Downstream: 78.12 Mbps
Upstream: 19.53 Mbps


6. Data rate: 20000 / 79995
7. Maximum data rate: 28808 / 86223
8. Noise margin: 15.0 / 7.6
9. Line attenuation: 0.0 / 15.0
10. Signal attenuation: 0.0 / 15.0

[#9]

Is the sync figure changing when you get the slow speeds or is it just the data rate that's getting sluggish?

[#10]

WWWombat.
Thanks for your excellent, detailed information as to the workings of DLM. I found it most interesting & understood nearly all of it.

[#11]

Quote from: tijara33

WWWombat. Thanks for your excellent, detailed information as to the workings of DLM. I found it most interesting & understood nearly all of it.

Same here.
knowdice, it's the actual data rate (throughput?) as read by speedtest etc. The sync speed stays the same.

[#12]

May be a bit [lot] of congestion on the Tilehurst exchange rather than a line fault.

[#13]

I have to agree - it doesn't look to be your individual line that's a problem. It could be backhaul from the cabinet to the exchange, or backhaul from the exchange to the core, or the "gateway" connection you're passing through from BT's network into Plusnet's.
Plusnet have graphs of the amount of traffic being carried over their connections into BT's core network. You can see them here. If your slowdowns tend to match the peaks in these graphs, then you probably are running on a congested part of the network, aggregated with many others - but it'd be hard for us to work out where. Hopefully PN support guys can help you.
To rule a couple of things out for you:
- You don't seem to be suffering from running on a congested gateway. This doesn't happen often, but can occur now & again.
To check, the normal procedure would be to re-connect the PPP session in the router (or power cycle the router, but not the modem). Use this tool to see what gateway you are connected through
As you've already tried re-connecting the router, which will usually connect you on a different gateway each time, this isn't likely to be your problem.
- Plusnet as a whole don't seem to be having problems.
You can see some status graphs of other users here, as mentioned on this thread.

[#14]

Thank you.
This is my gateway.
Which gateway
You are currently connected to gateway pcl-ag05.
This is located in City Lifeline House.

[#15]

Absolute joke tonight!
<a href="http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3334410828"><img src="http://www.speedtest.net/result/3334410828.png" /></a>
Still connected at 78Meg believe it or not.
Even failed the BBC iPlayer HD download test which my old ADSL connection never did.
Is this what I have to put up with every night?