No Broadband after Fibre switchover - worst decision of my life (ish)

[#1]

PMed Adam at 5pm got no reply.

Deceided not to call CS as I did not have the usual 45 mins to wait till I got through to the correct team. 

[#2]

BTW = BTWholesale?

BT Engineer done a Pontius Pilate on me. Told me not an Openreach problem, as connection house-cab-exchange works. Told to get router changed.

[#3]

@mtdean to be honest im 99.999999% sure its not a modem problem from what you have said above.

To help explain this is how your line should be connected.

The copper form your house to the green cab is owned and run by Openreach.

The VDSL kit your modem talks to is in that cab.

The cab to the exchange is (for broaddband) over fibre. That is also run and operated by Openreach.

BT Wholesale take a handover of the traffic at the exchange (as do Sky other semi-llu fttc operators!) and they route that over the BT WHolesale network to Plusnet.

So if you have sync that means your line is working to the cab as you are talking to the right equipment in Openreach.As all the traffic from there to the excahnge will be onthe same links we can assume the cab to exchange is working or all your neighbours would be offline too (major fault would be detected and fixed quickly)

What looks like is broken is the port you are mapped to in the exchange and how that is handed over to BT WHolesale.

The BTW test we did above will take your logon requests and log you onto BTW as if they were your ISP. It is designed to totally bypass Plusnet as it means BTW can run tests that prove the line is 100% and that the problem must be with the ISP, but it also works the other way around, run tests against BTW and if they fail it proves its not something PN can fix - but you bought from them so they own the escalations and raising faults etc.

Sounds like when the ADSL was cut off some internal BTW system has gone bonkers and screwed things up, that will need probably more intensive investigation by BTW to correct the data and get it pushed to the network, but thats what they are there for, just needs someone in plusnet to validate the test above and raise the right fault into BTW showing there is no connectivity into BTW.

Appreciate its frustrating though with no broadband...

[#4]

@MrSilver  thank you for your insight.
Never got involved with the nuts and bolts of DSL before, just used it.  Give me BGP any day.
I will mention what you have said to Tech Support on Monday, see what they can do with it.
Surprised BT engineer did not know/try the speedtest login, it might have helped him diagnose a bit further.
He was on the phone to someone who apparently moved the port mapping of my connection.
Engineer then said it takes 20 mins for this to take place, so he [-Censored-]ed off home, saying if it does not work in 30 mins it is the hub.
I felt he could maybe have done more a lot more, particular know that you have pointed out the DSL mechanics.
I mentioned to him several times that I felt it was in the exchange, but he said that not in his remit.
But I would have thought the Open Reach could talk to Wholesale a lot easier than any ISP, including PlusNet even if they are owned by BT.

[#5]

@mtdean yeah frustrating i know! 

Openreach is under lots of pressure from Ofcom on hitting SLAs and metrics to improve performance for customers.

Fixing the end to end customer problem is not one of them afaik however seeing the job, proving OR are not at fault as sync is there will show a positive stat that it was dealt with quickly and shows Openreach's problems are actually ISPs mis-diagnosing faults, but the reality is you still have no service.

If he was on the phone moving ports around and it should be up after 20 mins but isnt would make me things the systems screwed up and som data is not misaligned. When this happens BTW will think the port you are on is not for Plusnet so wont pass traffic on to them and give you your problem, but it SHOULD still log into the speedtest username.

Have you managed to try logging into that test account to see if you can get to the speedtest site? That will help plusnet put the fault in the right place quicker hopefully.

[#6]

None of the following working: speedtest@speedtest_domain / testing or bt_test@startup_domain / test work, or another I found via google bt_test_user@startup_domain / 'none'.

In Troubleshooting > Helpdesk I get DSL uptime, data rates, SNR, Attenuation,  line & signal, but zilch for data tx/rx - but that is no surprise.  So it looks like the exchange can see my hub, or can it???
Event log currently not giving me anything useful. With the WAN filter on, I can see the termination of copper DSL:
05:51:07, 12 Jan.(231541.560000) WAN operating mode is ADSL
05:51:07, 12 Jan.(231541.560000) Last WAN operating mode was ADSL
05:51:05, 12 Jan.(231540.370000) PPP IPCP Receive Configuration ACK
05:51:05, 12 Jan.(231540.370000) PPP IPCP Send Configuration Request

Then later:
09:30:34, 12 Jan.(244709.240000) ATM over DSL is down after 219 minutes uptime
09:30:34, 12 Jan.(244709.240000) ETHoA is down after 219 minutes uptime
09:30:34, 12 Jan.(244709.240000) PPPoA is down after 219 minutes uptime [Waiting for Underlying Connection (WAN ATM over DSL -​ Down)]
09:30:32, 12 Jan.(244706.750000) PPP LCP Send Termination Request [User request]

Now all I get is this cycling:
00:00:20, 22 Mar.( 35.150000) WAN Auto-​sensing running.
10:09:52, 12 Jan.(247066.430000) PTM over DSL is up
00:01:08, 22 Mar.( 83.740000) PTM over DSL is up
00:00:20, 22 Mar.( 36.160000) WAN Auto-​sensing running.

Not sure if any of this helps.
Do not see PPP LCP and therefore no PPPoA getting a VPI/VCI, and no PP IPCP for the IP address.
To me that means no sync, or ATM cells not getting through, or PPP not enabled / working.

Have got another BT OpenReach engineer booked for Tuesday, but trying to get an escalation for a Monday visit, 
Hopefully someone with a hub and someone in the exchange checking the line card / DSLAM. Unless I have FTTC cab. For interest sake, will talk a walk and see what cab I have at the eor.

[#7]

Thanks for the PM,

As mentioned in my reply I'm glad to see the fault is being handled by one of our most experienced agents. I can see the engineer reported back a few recommendations but the new owner on our side is set to review your fault shortly and will be updating you soon.

[#8]

UPDATE - IT IS NOW WORKING.  

Had BTOR out on Saturday - less said the better.  Had to get ano OR engineer. Paul came first thing in the morning (8.30) - lives close by so did not want to disappear asap.  Worked hard on the phone, escalated up several levels and final determined where the fault was - in the cab.  
Apparently the last 30 ports on a line card do not work, all other jobs that had failed with the same problems I had got moved to a port that worked. But now all those ports had been used.  
I was not the first to report this in local area served by said cab, 3 other EUs had already had tickets raised.  OR had been aware of the card issue for a few months but as long as there were ports that worked, they were golden.  Of course the inevitable happened, all good ones used up, now the should have been at DefCon 3.  But this being OR, it was more a laid back hippy level (and I do remember those halcyon days).
PlusNet get hold of BTW who talked to OR who said possible fix Friday 27/1.

Not been a happy bunny, thought BT HQ should know. So on advice from BT and exBT close relatives, I sent an email to Gavin (which magically appeared in my ticket correspondence). Did not get an answer, so no idea where the email landed. BUT less than 24 hrs later my broadband is up.  Coincidence, to all my fellow conspirators I don't think so.

Now starts the possibly very long struggle to get compensation for my misfortune.  
TalkTalk were quite generous with additional services when they lost my broadband connection for 1 day.  This loss of service lasted a tad under 2 weeks.
Any thoughts / help?

Cheers
Martin

[#9]

Cheers for the update and really glad to see that's sorted!

Now starts the possibly very long struggle to get compensation for my misfortune.  

Possible but not probable, Tony who is looking after your fault will arrange a refund for the downtime but I'll leave that for him to discuss with you directly.