DLM and Fibre problem - little help please

[#1]

Okay, I know I'm someway short of the 2 week honeymoon period but, from much experience, I can tell I need Plusnet to make a few adjustments or investigate.

I just upgraded from Unlimited Fibre to Unlimited Fibre Extra.

Before the upgrade my router was syncing at circa 38-40Mbps. After the upgrade the sync is 71.52Mbps. Super.

I noted that actual throughput was below 1Mbps for the first few hours, but upload was correct at just under 18Mbps.

DLM got its teeth into it and the speed went up to 40+Mbps after a couple of days. I expected a bit more but would have been happy with this, however it's dropped considerably and remained low. (Apparently, according to BT during the last round of troubles, my physical line quality as a good as they come.)

DLM seems to have stepped down to a slower throughput than I had before the upgrade - which makes no sense since nothing has changed aside from the upgrade. Current throughput struggles to beat 20Mbps. Much less at peak times.

Some points to note -

Some time ago a Plusnet tech had to manually adjust my line's fault tolerance to get a better throughput. At the time this worked splendidly.

Some months ago I was given the runaround by both Plusnet and BTW - several pointless engineer visits - before anyone would believe I was on a hot VLAN. Once this was changed throughput at peak times improved beyond belief.

No engineer visits are required - nothing has changed at this end aside from the upgrade so I'd rather not entertain the usual round of 'check the sockets' etc. This has all be done - please take that as read.

In due course, can anyone at Plusnet look into this please?

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Thanks for getting in touch @DocDelete

I'm sorry to hear that you've had issues with your speeds since your upgrade to Fibre Extra.

It looks like for some reason the connection profile on our end has been set to 21mbps which will have been restricting your throughput speeds.

I've now corrected this for you and dropped your connection so you should be picking up faster speeds now.

If you're still having issues let us know

[#3]

Thank you @MatthewWheeler  - just checked at 36Mbps. I hope that DLM ups that a bit more over the next few days. I think the 'minimum guaranteed speed' reads at 50.9Mbps.

Likely?

[#4]

Just clocked at 60.2Mbps so I guess that's my answer!

Fingers crossed.

Thanks again for looking into this for me @MatthewWheeler 

[#5]

@DocDelete, That's great news. Keep an eye on it and let us know if you have any further issues. 

[#6]

Hmmm. @JOLO @MatthewWheeler - struggling today, just over 30Mbps, tested several times since this morning. Back to pre-upgrade speed after we witnessed 60+Mbps for a sustained period. Any clues?

[#7]

Thanks for getting back to us @DocDelete

I've retested your line and I can't see any cause for this on our end.

If you're still having issues please follow the steps below we can investigate further please connect your computer/laptop to the router with an ethernet cable and run the BT Speedtester service at http://speedtest.btwholesale.com

You must ensure that you have no other programs running at the same time such as streaming, general browsing and the most common one is antivirus programs downloading updates in the background. This must be done on a wired connection and not wireless Once the initial result is completed please click Further Diagnostics.

Please type in your phone number and click run diagnostic test. This will run a test and send the results to the server for investigation

[#8]

Thanks @MatthewWheeler - so is BTW's speedtest working again now? From more than a year ago it had issues with not performing parts of the test correctly. That's not just me, but I believe a widespread comment.

I have an automated programme on my laptop, wired into the router via RJ45, that runs a download test every so often and charts the result. I'll set that going too.

[#9]

Yes it should be working now.

Let us know if you're still having issues.

[#10]

Hi again @MatthewWheeler @JOLO - 

Um, it seems I've been throttled down to <21Mbps again. A few hiccups over the weekend while multiple streaming showed up a lot of buffering. I've checked with a few random speed tests and it's not improving. I've run a regularly check for an hour or so with a wired connection, and the trend is enough evidence for me to contact you again. Pic attached.

Can someone have a look again please?

Thanks, Ken.

[#11]

Hi @DocDelete,

I'm sorry to hear that you are experiencing problems with your connection speed again. I've tested your line but the test hasn't picked up the cause of this problem from here and indicates that your line is currently syncing at 72.5mbps:

GEA Test Detail
Circuit ID	NA	Service ID	BBEUXXXXXXXX

Test Outcome	Pass
Test Outcome Code	GTC_FTTC_SERVICE_0000
Description	GEA service test completed and no fault found .
Main Fault Location	OK
Sync Status	In Sync
Downstream Speed	72.5 Mbps
Upstream Speed	20.0 Mbps
Appointment Required	N
Fault Report Advised	N
NTE Power Status	PowerOn
Voice Line Test Result	Pass
Bridge Tap	Not Detected
Radio Frequency Ingress	Not Detected
Repetitive Electrical Impulse Noise	Not Detected
Cross Talk	Not Detected
Estimated Line Length In Metres	353.4
Upstream Rate Assessment	Very Good
Downstream Rate Assessment	Reasonable
Interference Pattern	Regular Interference Observed Daily
Service Impact	No Impact Observed
Interference Duration Longest Occurrence	;00:00to23:45
Interference Location	Customer Premise
Interference Observed In Days	14
Home Wiring Problem	Not Detected
Downstream Policing Discard Rate	0.0
Customer Traffic Level	Upstream and Downstream Traffic Detected
Technology	VDSL
DP Type	External
Profile Name	0.128M-80M Downstream, Interleaving Low - 0.128M-20M Upstream, Error Protection Off
Time Stamp	2019-11-12T20:00:00

Parameters	MIN	MAX	AVG
Down Stream Line Rate	72.4 Mbps	73.0 Mbps	72.7 Mbps
Up Stream Line Rate	20.0 Mbps	20.0 Mbps	20.0 Mbps
Up Time	710.0 Sec	900.0 Sec	899.7 Sec
Retrains	0.0	2.0	0.0

Current and Last 15 Minute Bin Performance
Parameters	Last Traffic Count(Upto 15 mins)	Current Traffic Count(Upto 15 mins)
Start Time Stamp	2019-11-25T19:34:15.673+00:00	2019-11-25T19:49:15.673+00:00
Ingress Code Violation	0	0
Egress Code Violation	0	0
Errored Seconds	0	0
Severely Errored Seconds	0	0
Unavailable Seconds	0	0

As testing your line isn't picking up this problem from here, we'll need to do some troubleshooting to try and narrow down the cause. I'd recommend starting with basic checks here. If these checks don't resolve the problem, the next step would be to connect your router directly to the test socket, which is under the faceplate of your master socket and seeing if the connection stabilises. This rules out internal wiring, face plates and extension sockets as being the cause. Please see the guide here for instructions on how to connect to the test socket.

[#12]

Hi @EmilyD 

Sorry, done all that. This isn't my first rodeo.

It's wasn't a line fault issue last time and it probably isn't now. Further, I have no other sockets, faceplates or extensions. The master socket is purely used for the broadband.

The sync speed isn't and has never been a problem. It's the throughput speed. Look further up the thread for the bit where PlusNet had throttled me down previously despite sync speed being 72.5.

Also - nothing physical has changed here. Last week the speed was fine.(Last year it took a stupidly long time to convince both Plusnet and BT Wholesale that I was on a busy VLAN, so rest assured all hoops have already been stepped through).

[#13]

Additionally - I have a master socket 5c which isn't covered by your master socket tutorial.

Importantly - I have also swapped routers to check. No change. So, it's not a router fault.

The throughput speed at <21Mbps is highly suspicious and massively consistent. If this were a line or congestion fault I'm not sure we'd see this.

[#14]

Thanks for getting back to us @DocDelete I'm sorry to see you're experiencing speed problems. From what I can see this looks to be due to a stuck profile on your account. I've fixed this for you now, could you reboot your router letting us know how your speeds look afterwards?

[#15]

Thank you again @Gandalf - I restarted and we've leapt from 20Mbps to just over 70Mbps. Line quality here seems to be very good so it's always a clue that something else is going on!

The stuck profile has happened before. Is there anything that would cause this from my end?

If not, it's a shame I have to keep monitoring my throughput speed to catch this problem.

Regards

Ken.