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crosstalk or just too many customers ?

St3
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Registered: ‎13-07-2012

crosstalk or just too many customers ?

I started on 74 down then it dropped to 66 after a couple of months and plusnet said that wad due to crosstalk and nothing could be done ... so i accepted that, but now i see the past 2 days the speeds have dropped again to 61. Altho its only a small drop, it seams to be happening each month.
Is this because of more customers in my area now getting fibre ?
12 REPLIES 12
chrcoluk
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Re: crosstalk or just too many customers ?

most likely yes, there is no limit on how much crosstalk any line can get sadly, its luck of the draw.
However its probably a reasonable expectation to get within 10% of your estimated speed, and in addition if you get enough of a drop in a short period of time (I think 2 weeks) then it may trigger a fault on the GEA test.
Terranova667
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Re: crosstalk or just too many customers ?

I was told that the majority of  my Speed loss was due to crosstalk but upon a 2nd tier Openreach Engineer investigation my Speed loss was due to my line being made of Aluminium and not crosstalk so whilst yes cross talk could be a factor it's not always the only reason just one that Plusnet / BTw can give when they don't really know the answers for the loss.
you wont really know the actual cause until a proper investigation is done and you wont get one of those unless your speeds drop far enough  74Mb down to 61Mb may still not be far enough depending on what your line estimates are.   
chrcoluk
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Re: crosstalk or just too many customers ?

you mean ali corrosion?
Just been ali wouldnt cause a speed loss on its own, sync speed would still be the same but just at a lower point.  So if you got told its ali joint corrosion they could and should have fixed it.
Terranova667
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Re: crosstalk or just too many customers ?

The engineer found no corrosion that was impacting the line he stated that it was simply down to it being Ali and that it's not fit for purpose for ADSL never mind fibre and should be ripped out and replaced but it would never happen unless the line completely dies or i'm willing to pay the cost myself, his test at the cab found the max attainable was 105Mb, 80Mb was leaving the cab but once it hit the ali it dropped even before it got any where near my home, he stated if it were copper i would more or less still be getting the 65Mb i had when i joined plusnet 19 months ago. 
Despite all that he still changed everything that could be changed, he put me on a totally spare clean pair and different port at the cab also did a bunch of error checks along the way nothing was impacting the line apart form it being Ali and the speeds didn't improve at all so i dunno i'm only going by what he told me.
chrcoluk
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Re: crosstalk or just too many customers ?

ali wouldnt be the cause of your speed dropping between install and current (unless it deteriorated), so he was wrong I am afraid.
apollo1
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Re: crosstalk or just too many customers ?

Hi
I'm in a similar position with speed drops, starting off in 2012 with 51mb, now it runs at 30mb.
Problem is that the DSL checker keeps changing the range of speeds, so according to BT when they have sent engineers, I',m in the range expected for my line therefore there is no fault.
Terranova667
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Re: crosstalk or just too many customers ?

Quote from: chrcoluk
ali wouldnt be the cause of your speed dropping between install and current (unless it deteriorated), so he was wrong I am afraid.

think what you want i guess you know more than a 2nd tier engineer  
chrcoluk
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Re: crosstalk or just too many customers ?

I know enough that engineers will say what they need to say to get out of the door.
ali doesnt cause signals to go down over time unless it deteriorates.
So either he is correct and its due to corroded ali but then he was too lazy to fix.
Or he was wrong.
My line is part ali also, and is currently syncing 5mbit above my estimate.
jafreer
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Re: crosstalk or just too many customers ?

Quote from: Terranova667
think what you want i guess you know more than a 2nd tier engineer  

If the engineer is saying that the deterioration in speed is due to the aluminium line, the question becomes what is the mechanism by which it deteriorates. If it is not corrosion, what is it.
Andrue
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Re: crosstalk or just too many customers ?

I still say it's crosstalk. From his other thread the drops aren't all that cataclysmic as to rule CT out.
https://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,143315.0.html
Sounds to me like the modem reduced downstream because it wasn't viable but the CT wasn't impacted upstream as much so it was free to use some of the newly vacated frequencies.
Peterxrm
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Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: crosstalk or just too many customers ?

I have just done a speed test with the one used by the original contributor to this thread. Then immediately done a test using the one PN uses-BT wholesale - they gave me  speeds of 73/12 & the other one 67.59/18. So which one is the one?  -reminds of how what is the official emission reading of my VW diesel to what is being pumped out!
Peter
Andrue
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Re: crosstalk or just too many customers ?

Quote from: Peterxrm
So which one is the one?
Either. Both. Neither Smiley
The internet can often be best thought of as the computing equivalent of a road network. All a speed test does is the equivalent of timing a journey from <some place> back to your home then dividing by time to get the average speed. So the analogy here is that of a motorist noticing that the average speed from London to their house was 55mph but from Birmingham to their house was 65mph.
Either, both or neither of those is the average speed of their vehicle. Furthermore if the motorist repeated the test several times a week over the next month they'd be unlikely to get the same figures every time and sometimes the average speed might be higher coming back from London. So a single speed test result is hardly ever useful. In combination with a history of results it becomes more so as you can see typical variations and know what's 'normal'. Multiple tests from multiple test servers over time produces the most useful information.
Ironically the one server you never download anything useful from (and so which arguably matters the least) is a speed test server. It's akin to me knowing how fast I can get from London to my house when in fact I do everything I can to stay outside the M25 and would never dream of driving a car into London Smiley