80/20 FTTC Trial Open

[#1]

Well, Logged a ticket this morning - Call Taker stated his opinion matched mine, and that it should be sorted by lunch....
I've just gotten in after a long day   
Ticket Ref: #54309856 applies <Which was opened and closed immediately at 7.44am>
The initial results were amazing quite frankly as I posted at the time:

Quote from: v70ben

BT Beta tester returns 77.84Mb/s [Moderator's note by Dick(Strat) Excessive emoticons removed as per forum rules.

I've just rerun the BT Speedtest and obtained the same results as this morning with a screwy set of Profile speeds <20mb up, 38 down>, yet with actual speeds of 1.6mb up, and 26mb down....
Just reran it using the beta speed tester and got 37mb down.
Before reporting it this am, and also before re-running the test this evening I've rebooted my router (Which is one of the PN Trial Zyxel ones) and im on Gig Ethernet.
Its actually considerably worse now than it was previously on the 40mb full product, I understand it's a trial - so expect teething problems, but won't be taking it up if this is common <And I don't pay for my broadband, my job do>..
On the phone to tech support now

[#2]

Quote from: KevinG

For those that haven't seen this on the TBB Fibre Broadband forum: http://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/updates/briefings/super-fastfibreaccessbriefings/super-fastfibr...

Thanks, Kevin, this is very interesting.  Two paragraphs in particular caught my attention:

Quote from: http

With our 80/20 product variant, you get a prioritisation rate that gives your end users double the network capacity during peak periods compared to end users on our 40/2 and 40/10 variants.

Quote from: http

Openreach has implemented a downstream Prioritisation Rate (PR) for each of our downstream product bandwidth variants.  In the event of network congestion, we will decrease line speeds momentarily to reduce the congestion as follows: Product bandwidth variant purchased Prioritisation rate Up to 40Mbit/s 15Mbit/s Up to 80Mbit/s 30Mbit/s

Could it be one or both of these things that's causing the problems those of us with poor throughput are seeing?

[#3]

See http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,103962.0.html which has responses from Plusnet.

[#4]

I am curently paying an extra £2/month for the  Fibre Up To 10Mbps Upload charge. Do I need to continue paying this change considering that I'm presently on the 80/20 trials and most likely will remain on this package when it goes live?

[#5]

Quote from: JimF

I applied to join the trial earlier today.  A fast response to my ticket (#54319789) included the following words: "Thank you for taking part in our 80/20 FTTC trial. In this instance, our suppliers will need an engineer to visit your property" I've been on fibre for a few months without any problems.  Any ideas on why I might need an engineer visit?

Anyone want to hazard a guess?

[#6]

Quote from: JimF

Anyone want to hazard a guess?

A few ideas:

• There's an error in BT's system


• Your line statistics look funny for some reason, and so they want to check whether or not your line will actually support the service


• You have one of the original OR modems that needs to be replaced

But, of course, these are just guesses.  You should speak to PN support and see if they have any further details.

[#7]

Update - still holding steady here at 75+Mbps.  Upload is averaging 15.8. 
Looking at the speedtest.net data, the site chose Manchester as the best server in the steady period I had before before the Faraday outage.    It said Manchester was ~ 50 miles (I live in Cambridgeshire, so it's actually 120+).
In this current fast stable period it is choosing Preston, stating  ~ 50 miles again.   (Preston is actually 140+.)
In the slow unstable period between the Faraday outage and the evening of 11th April,  speedtest.net  chose Coventry, London and Maidenhead,  stating all of them to be ~50 miles, which is correct.
It would be interesting to know how speedtest.net calculates the distances.   It could be that the routing of broadband signals between the exchange and the point where they emerge onto the internet is a significant factor in the speed variations. 

[#8]

Speedtest.net may take the distance based on where it thinks your IP address is located, this can often be wrong.
Sites like http://www.geobytes.com/iplocator.htm or http://www.iplocation.net/index.php can tell you where they think you're located though the first thinks I'm in London, the second thinks Sheffield.
The main datacentre(s) where the gateways are located are in London so choosing a London speedtest server should be ideal, it's a good idea to always try to use the same one unless you get an unusual result then try another.  Namesco is usually a fairly good choice.

[#9]

Yes, that will be it.  Putting my IPs through http://www.iplocation.net/index.php I was apparently in Sheffield when things were going well and London when it was slower.

[#10]

Hello all,
Just joined the 80/20 club direct from a flakey 2.5Mb ADSL line porting in from Orange to Plusnet.
Great experience with the BT engineer install.  300m from the cabinet, and syncing 79999/20000 at the data extension with no errors on the line.
However, the usual speedtests suggest something is holding me back to around 40Mbps.
I'm getting:
36.88Mbps from the BT beta speed tester
36.07Mbps down, 14.94 up, 17ms from Speedtest.net
33Mbps & 16.1 from thinkbroadband.
How can I check I'm setup correctly for 80Mbps at the Plusnet end (username: wt362)?
Kind regards,
Paul

[#11]

Ignore..I see a dedicated thread on the subject.

[#12]

Quote from: garywood84

Quote from: Spesh I might as well come off the trial and see if it improves again I'm not suggesting that I come off the trial altogether: just regrade to 40Mbps on Day 1, have another regrade order placed on Day 2, and then be back to 80/20 on Day 3.  I'm sure that this will be sufficient to get back to higher speeds at least for a while.  Whether or not it will drop off again depends on what the underlying problem is/was, but as I said in my previous post, this will allow us to test that.

No, I know what you meant, but do you really think this will be done on days 1, 2 and 3 ? considering it took mine about 6 days to regrade the first time ...
But I agree, it is a viable test. I'm wondering though if you'd see speeds of 15Mb/s instead of 30Mbps as per that post regarding Prioritisation rates !

[#13]

Quote from: garywood84

Quote from: JimF Anyone want to hazard a guess? A few ideas: There's an error in BT's system Your line statistics look funny for some reason, and so they want to check whether or not your line will actually support the service You have one of the original OR modems that needs to be replaced But, of course, these are just guesses.  You should speak to PN support and see if they have any further details.

Spot on, it seems to be the first of your ideas, because BT have recorded my line as being ADSL!!!!

[#14]

Quote from: paulpicks21

Quote from: BlastWave BT Speedtest @9.30pm  = 21.36mbps. My speed is currently the same as yours, it has been dropping to 8-20meg for the last few nights. Prior to that I had a good few weeks of full speed (74-76meg) at all times of day or night. I will monitor it for a few more nights and then raise another fault if needs be. Paul.

Looks like things are ok again for me, Friday night just after 9pm and speeds looking spot on.

[#15]

Quote from: oglord

Now on 80/20 trial. Only getting DS speeds of 50-53Mbit/s though. This is using a Draytek 2850n with wired ethernet connection and with the MacBook plugged into a HG612 and dialling PPPoE directly. Draytek states that the sync speed is 79985/20000 and BT Speedtester agrees that the profile is 77Mbit/s. PlusNet profile was 37Mbit/s before the regrade, now showing as the 20Mbit/s profile.

To quote myself, the beta tester at http://www.speedtester.bt.com/beta/speedtest-remote.jsp shows 74.24 yet the others show little more than 53ish. Is the beta tester to be trusted? Is this indicative of a backhaul problem rather than a problem at my end?