I have fixed wiring issue in my house is it possible to get a DLM request without an engineer visit

[#1]

Hi so when I first got a VDSL connection I was getting 54Mbps /17 Mbps down. Over the years this has decreased significantly to 27/5. In an effort to improve things I have put in a new router but was still getting 27/5. The new router said there was a wiring fault on my line. I then investigated the phone wiring to my house and discovered an old unused extension wired in. On removing that my upload speed jumped from 5Mbps to nearly 9Mbps. In addition the router is now no longer reporting a wiring fault and the number of errors has dropped to almost zero. So this was obviously causing me some issues.

I have also done a quiet line test (17070) and its good no crackles or hums.

Given that things are looking much better does anyone know if my speeds might go up over time? Is it possible to to request a DLM reset without an engineer visit?

[#2]

@bert1e 

DLM resets do not need a property visit but can only be requested by Plusnet if your line has been banded. Otherwise patience is required for the DLM to do its automatic retune.

Ideally you need a friendly Plusnet staffer to do a GEA test, which will show if it’s banded.

[#3]

Hey @bert1e

Hope you're doing well. Thank you for reaching out via our community Forum regarding the speeds on your line.

I've run some tests on my end which indeed show that the line is banded. A fault has now been raised with our suppliers, and a reset request has been sent off. We should have this matter resolved for you within the next 3-4 working days.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention, and apologies for any inconvenience that this has caused.

[#4]

Thanks Adam thats great

[#5]

No problem at all

feel free to reach out if you have any further issues in the meantime

[#6]

So I have run my router for 4 days straight. Speed did not change and I noticed hardly any errors. I then rebooted and noticed carrier record changed from A43c to A43. On running a further 2 days I noticed no speed change and again hardly any errors so I assume that my line is still capped/banded.

[#7]

Good morning @bert1e

Thanks a lot for reaching out again and I'm sorry the banding issue has not yet been corrected.

The issue was raised to our suppliers last week and the standard lead time to have this corrected is three working days. I've been in touch with my colleague who actually raised this to our suppliers and will post back on this thread once I've had a further update. Thank you for your continued patience.

[#8]

Hi Adam, Thanks for chasing this up and I can see the Max DSLAM figure has now changed so looks like a reset has been done and the router is learning what sync can be achieved. So thank you again for doing this.

Unfortunately almost to the minute that a change was done my cleaner decided to pull my phone lead out of the socket and since then I have been unable to get my receive SNR back up to 11 its currently around 7 Dam cleaner. As the phone cable runs under some laminate flooring I will just leave it for now and see what figure I end up with. Was so hoping to get back up to 40Mbps.This cable is all my responsibility so nothing more for you to do.

Thanks again for your help.

[#9]

@bert1e  You shouldn't be concerned about the lower SNR figure it shouldn't be 11dB, when a line is banded the SNR value is higher than the normal level and will reduce to around 6db when the banding is removed. You don't want it to be higher, in fact if the line is stable DLM can reduce the target SNR value down to 3dB which will increase the sync speed which is what everyone wants.😁

My line runs at full sync speeds (80Mbps down 20Mbps up)  with no dropouts and the SNRM downstream is around 1.8dB which is lower than expected but is not causing any problems. There is a reason for this low value but it's a bit early in the morning to explain in detail.🙄

[#10]

@RealAleMadrid Thanks for this useful and reassuring reply much appreciated. I am obviously not clued up on this as I had thought a higher SNR meant I could sync faster.  I will just leave the router and DLM to do their things and see what I end up with.

[#11]

Good morning @bert1e

Hope you're doing well. So we've run some further tests on the line today which show that an issue has been detected. But when running a Broadband line test, nothing abnormal appears, other than the line speed. Before going down the path of raising a Broadband fault and arranging an engineer appointment, please could you contact your phone line provider and ask them to run a test on their end?

[#12]

So something appears to of happened overnight as my download speed has gone up to 38.5Mps which is great so 25% more than what I was getting. Is it still worth me getting in contact with BT to do a test?

[#13]

Good morning @bert1e 

Full disclosure, I missed something when running a test on your line yesterday which has now been brought to my attention. Our Broadband tests are showing what's known as a Bridge Tap. This is detected when there may be an issue with the internal wiring within the property between the master socket and the router.

If you can, please troubleshoot this by replacing the Ethernet cables, bypassing any extension sockets that you might have, and also by using the test test socket, this can be found by removing the face plate of your master socket, you'll need to use your ADSL filter when testing through the test socket.

Give these suggestions a go and let us know how you get on

[#14]

Hi @bert1e Thanks for getting back to us.

Upon further investigation, I can see a few potential issues, none of which actually look to be related to the phone service. 

Our tests are showing a bridge tap, cross-talk and potential packet loss at the exchange. The first two seem more likely than the third as the exchange problem wouldn't affect your sync speed.

I've raised a fault with our suppliers and it's likely to be passed onto our suppliers complex faults team to check out the packet loss we should have an update on within the next couple of days. This may be a red herring though the tests have picked up on and there might not actually be an issue there. 

In the meantime, as I can see your sync speed should be somewhere within the region of 57mbps to 77.5mbps, I'd recommend plugging your router into the test socket, explained Here just to rule out any remaining issues with your wiring, as a bridge tap can generally be a wiring issue.

Cross-talk we can't rule out, but that'd be an infrastructure problem, which is basically where there's interference caused by other lines at the cabinet or in the cables from the cabinet.

If you've tried the test socket and your speed hasn't increased, please could you reply to the ticket ref 215030195 logged on your account with when you'd be available for us to arrange an engineer visit to investigate further? 

We'll then book the engineer for you as soon as we can once the exchange problem has come back as fixed or otherwise. 

[edit]

We've just got a response on the supplier fault report now to say they've not found an issue at the exchange so it looks like that packet loss issue the tests saw may had been a red herring after all.

[#15]

I have for now run a new temp cable across my floor to the router and plugged into the test socket. So for broadband at least I am on entirely new cable between router and test socket.  Sync speed is currently at 38Mbps I will let it settle down and check sync speed tomorrow.