Guaranteed speed

[#1]

So, I'm a little confused about speeds and what PNET tell me. According to my member centre my speed is below my guaranteed minimum. However in discussion with PNET support they say it is just above.

Can anyone confirm what this guaranteed speed is? As to me it's looking like sync speed which is what the support team were saying they saw, but obviously my actual speed is lower and more in line with my IP profile which is less than this guaranteed speed.

I only bring this to light as I have recently had a decrease in speed and line stability, BT engineer visit confirmed that the line was ok and PNET have now shipped a replacement router. however, I'm still about 5mb down on speed and now lower than "guaranteed speed" (but just 0.05) over "guaranteed connection".

I'll throw into the mix that PNRET support have requested my line to be tagged as "super stable" to help with the dropouts which carries a speed overhead but my line had been solidly performing for the last 3 years (except a minor BT wiring incident last year) so where's the speed gone?

Open to comments/suggestions on any of the topics raised

[#2]

@Ajj81 Welcome to the forums. For Community members to comment, screen shots of your 'Member Centre' page, BT Broadband (obscuring your phone number), the 'Additional Diagnostics from BTW Performance Tester , and your Hubs Help Desk would be a great help.

[#3]

Just reran the speed test and speed is even worse this morning according to BT.

As requested here is the output of member centre, BT diagnostics and hub diagnostic.

[#4]

Can anyone confirm what this guaranteed speed is? As to me it's looking like sync speed

@Ajj81 minimum guaranteed speed is sync speed. If you're synching above that then Plusnet are not going to be able to get Openreach to accept a speed fault

[#5]

@Ajj81 Thanks for those screenshots. We appear to be missing BT Broadband .I assume the short uptime is due to a reboot caused by the Hub firmware upgrade

Is it possible to run these tests over an ethernet connection via a laptop/desktop - wireless results are deceptive?

[#6]

@MisterW thanks for clearing this up.
As you can see the information on the member portal shows that current speed is lower than the minimum. So something is clearly a miss here.

I would ask PNET to make it clearer that this is minimum sync speed. And to look into why the information they are seeing is different to what the end customer sees as itln moments like this it causes confusion.

I still would like to understand why I'm syncing lower having been stable for many years.

[#7]

@Ajj81 'current line speed' is not sync speed. Its the IP profile and is usually 96.8% of sync speed.  On most accounts it is not used anyway. Only accounts with static IP will use it

Lower sync could be caused by a number of things, line deteriation and increased crosstalk being two.

[#8]

@Ajj81 

Regardless of what the Plusnet portal says, we don't know how out of date that is, your Hub is reporting that it is in sync with a maximum data rate of 51331 Mbps and a data rate of 48400Mbps.

Consequently I think that what needs addressing is why your speed test is only achieving 34.36Mbps.

How are you testing this, wireless or over an Ethernet connected link to a computer?

If wireless then what do you get if connected via Ethernet?

Have you tried a different speed tester?

Have you tried connecting your hub to the BT Test socket, that's the one that you access after you take the front off the BT Master socket?

I know, questions, questions, questions, but I'm trying to avoid going off track through a lack of basic informatiom.

[#9]

@Baldrick1 All screenshots were taken this morning when posting.
I have tried a different device and speed tested and achieved 46Mbps.
I should say that when BT visited due to the continued disconnects, they confirmed all wiring was ok and replaced the master socket as a precaution.

[#10]

here is the output from BT Broadband

[#11]

@Ajj81 My observations, for what they are worth: unless your FTTC cab is very full and having lots of cross-talk problems, I would have thought you should be getting better than you are, based on what the BT Broadband Checker is reporting and your attenuation figures. That checker reported 50.51 Mb/s on the 15th, and yet you are only seeing 36 ish.

Something doesn't seem quite right, but an ethernet connected test would make it a little clearer where the issue may be.

[#12]

Thanks for your post @Ajj81 and welcome to our Community Forums.

I'm really sorry to see you're having issues with your speeds and apologies for the confusion here.

I can confirm your minimum guaranteed speed is 47.5mbps and this doesn't/shouldn't change for the length of your contract.

Testing your line is showing your sync speed at 48mbps as you can see, which with overheads of the connection (IP profile etc) this realistically would provide you with a real world throughput of below your minimum guaranteed. 

For clarity, the minimum guaranteed speed refers to throughput not sync speed. Long ago it did used to be a minimum guaranteed access line speed, which was based off the sync speed, but this changed on the 1st March 2019.

Line tests aren't showing any causes for your slow speeds or cross-talk at the cabinet either, and I can see you're well below the estimated speed range for your line as shown Here of between 59.2mbps to 78.9mbps.

Also from what I can see you're on DLM's (dynamic line management at the cabinet) 'Stable/Standard' stability configuration, so I could drop this down to 'Standard/Speed' though this may induce further disconnections. 

Based on your speeds below the estimates and your minimum guaranteed, we can investigate further unless we reach a stage where we've sent out too many engineers and raised escalations, or an engineer says your line's too long/the infrastructure's degraded to a point where they can't get your speed back up to where it was. 

Having reviewed this, I don't think we're there yet though. Would you want us to drop the stability profile down or arrange another engineer visit? I'm a bit conscious that drops may be more of an annoyance than a little loss of speed.

I've added below a copy of the test results including a graph which shows your connection:

Test Outcome	Pass
Test Outcome Code	GTC_FTTC_SERVICE_0000
Description	GEA service test completed and no fault found .
Main Fault Location	OK
Sync Status	In Sync
Downstream Speed	48.4 Mbps
Upstream Speed	13.8 Mbps
Appointment Required	N
Fault Report Advised	N
NTE Power Status	PowerOn
Voice Line Test Result	Pass
Radio Frequency Ingress	Not Detected
Repetitive Electrical Impulse Noise	Not Detected
Cross Talk	Not Detected
Estimated Line Length In Metres	554.0
Upstream Rate Assessment	Reasonable
Downstream Rate Assessment	Reasonable
Interference Pattern	Not Detected
Service Impact	No Impact Observed
Home Wiring Problem	Not Detected
Downstream Policing Discard Rate	0.0
Customer Traffic Level	Upstream and Downstream traffic detected
Technology	VDSL
Current 15Min Bin Retrains	0
Last 15Min Bin Retrains	0
DP Type	External
Profile Name	0.128M-80M Downstream 4dB, Retransmission High - 0.128M-20M Upstream, Retransmission Low
Time Stamp	2021-12-04T13:30:00

Parameters	MIN	MAX	AVG
Down Stream Line Rate	50.3 Mbps	53.9 Mbps	50.9 Mbps
Up Stream Line Rate	14.0 Mbps	14.5 Mbps	14.3 Mbps
Up Time	710.0 Sec	900.0 Sec	899.2 Sec
Retrains	0.0	1.0	0.0

Current and Last 15 Minute Bin Performance
Parameters	Last Traffic Count(Upto 15 mins)	Current Traffic Count(Upto 15 mins)
Start Time Stamp	2021-12-17T12:54:31Z	2021-12-17T13:09:31Z
Ingress Code Violation	0	0
Egress Code Violation	0	0
Errored Seconds	0	0
Severely Errored Seconds	0	0
Unavailable Seconds	0	0

[#13]

@Gandalf thanks for taking a look over this and further clearing up the confusion.

I spoke to a very good support agent earlier today (as I had been incorrectly charged for the replacement router ~ which has now been credited)  and they offered to take a look at it again too.  In discussion we agreed to raise the order to drop the stability configuration down (the order has gone through and may take up to 48 hours to take effect is what I was told).  I'm hoping that I'll see the speed pick back up on Monday or Tuesday and will continue to monitor from there.  As mentioned the line was performing well previously with very few drops and I'll be quite content if I can return to that status. so I'll update on this next week.

I did raise my "complaint" about the guaranteed speed, as you can hopefully see on the account as I felt that the information being displayed in the member portal was misleading.  With this now coming to light and my assumptions being correct it does mean that there might be a training need or awareness piece about how this "guaranteed speed" is interpreted with some of the support team agents as the original agent told me it was sync speed and it was acceptable.

[#14]

Thanks for getting back to us @Ajj81 and I'm glad to see tat the order to reduce the stability profile on the line has now been placed. Let's see how this affects your line speeds once it's completed.

You're right, in terms of investigating a potential speed fault, we do so when speeds drop below the estimated range, even when you're still syncing above your MGS.

Let us know how you get on over the next few days and we'll be happy to follow up.

[#15]

So after 3 days (nearly 4 days) of solid connection I took the decision to reboot the router. It's connected slightly faster now (50Mbps) so I'll run it for a bit longer and see how I go from there.