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Intermittent fibre connection. BT say REIN, we dont beleive them.

gwyneryl
Dabbler
Posts: 13
Registered: ‎31-01-2015

Intermittent fibre connection. BT say REIN, we dont beleive them.

Posting on behalf of a friend who's also with PlusNet.
Friends upgraded their line to fibre last year, and to start with things where going well, but for the last 2 months he's been getting PPP session timeouts and has basically been unable to use his internet connection during the daytime see the attachment for an idea of when the connection has been dying.  He never looses SYNC to the cabinet only the PPP session back to PlusNet because the link grinds to a halt and gets 100% packet loss.
We've been through the rigmarole of changing routers twice, the job being closed as fixed when it wasn't, Openreach engineers not turning up etc. etc. etc.
The current situation is that Openreach are now blaming REIN and have pointed their finger at the CCTV system installed on a building site at the end of my road and are saying that the site aren't cooperating with their investigations...  Were now stuck in a weekly cycle of PlusNet having a chat with Openreach on a Friday and then telling me no news on a Monday, I am getting concerned that this is going to drag on for months whilst my friend is paying for a service he for the most part cant use.
If this was a REIN issue affecting the copper loop between the cabinet and my friends home (the only part that can be affected by REIN) then surely if the REIN is bad enough to cause 100% packet loss the Openreach modem would loose SYNC because the RF carrier (broadband signal) on the phone line is being interfered with.
If it was the CCTV system causing the problem the interference would be present 24 hours a day and not just in the middle of the day. The building site is some distance from the cabinet and the route the phone line takes to get to my friends house is underground apart from the final span from a pole to his house. 
Importantly the cabling around the site they are blaming is underground and my understanding as a RF engineer is that the 450mm to 600mm of earth on top of the cables that is effectively earthed will provide almost 100% screening from interference.  I spoke to somebody on the site yesterday and was told that whilst they've seen BT engineers working in the area they haven't been approached.
There has been mention of VLAN utilisation issues by both PlusNet and Openreach (now this is something could cause packet loss with no loss of SYNC), but any enquiries made about this are simply ignored, I suspect that Openreach are using a fictitious REIN issue to kick the can down the road until they manage to resolve a network capacity issue.
I've borrowing a handheld RF spectrum analyser from work at the weekend and will be taking a wander around the area to see what I can find.....  Anybody got any ideas of what else we might be able to do to prove Openreach are being less than transparent.
3 REPLIES 3
gwyneryl
Dabbler
Posts: 13
Registered: ‎31-01-2015

Re: Intermittent fibre connection. BT say REIN, we dont beleive them.

Attachment forgotten on previous post
brueton
Grafter
Posts: 313
Thanks: 7
Registered: ‎03-07-2009

Re: Intermittent fibre connection. BT say REIN, we dont beleive them.

I know this is quite a bit different.
When I was on ADSL I started to suffer from 10%+ packet loss in the evenings although the PPP session remained up.
I spoke to my two closest neighbours, one is on Sky LLU and the other, like me, is with Plusnet. Our cables all go to the same pole, cabinet and exchange.
They both allowed me to set up TBB ping monitors for their connections.
This allowed me to show that the packet loss occurred on Plusnet but not on Sky and therefore indicated a problem at the exchange.
After a few days (or weeks) some work was carried out at the exchange which resolved the issue.

adamwalker
Plusnet Help Team
Plusnet Help Team
Posts: 16,871
Thanks: 882
Fixes: 221
Registered: ‎27-04-2007

Re: Intermittent fibre connection. BT say REIN, we dont beleive them.

Hi gwyneryl,
I agree with what you're saying as you would normally see a drop in synch if there's a REIN issue.
If things are already heading in that direction with your friends fault it might be an idea to see it through. If a REIN engineer is assigned to the case they're usually one of the more knowledgeable and experienced engineers and should be able to help identify the true cause of the fault.
If this post resolved your issue please click the 'This fixed my problem' button
 Adam Walker
 Plusnet Help Team