What's the deal with routers?

[#1]

I don't use the PN firewall and I do have a static IP.

[#2]

Clearly there was a line fault.

If Plusnet want to send an engineer, they must believe that there is still a line fault.

Just because the engineer did not find (or look hard enough?) does not mean that there is no fault to be found - especially if it is an intermittent fault.

In past experience I have had over a dozen engineer visits each saying there was no fault yet still the service was poor ... until one lady engineer turned up and did a proper job of checking through the whole circuit.

Broadband is not going to work well if the "phone" line is not working properly.

Please perform a quiet line test - dial 17070 select option 2 using a corded phone plugged into the test socket behind the face plate of the master socket. It should be silent. A noisy phone line (or no dial tone) will have a marked adverse impact on the performance of broadband.

If the line is noisy or there is no dial tone, then a PHONE LINE fault needs to be raised with your phone provider. If this is PlusNet, you can report a fault on line using the button below.  From the Q&A list, choose the one which matches the problem, 'open' the 'section' and click the trouble-shooter link.  NB: If you receive a failure message (rather than a log-in prompt) then log-in to the user portal in a different browser tab and attempt to use the trouble-shooter again.

• Phone Faults

[#3]

Thanks. Have done the quiet line test myself and the engineer also did. Line sounded quiet.

[#4]

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@khaled35 wrote:

I don't use the PN firewall and I do have a static IP.

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The data IP on your line has not yet caught up with your current (new) sync speed ... which is absolutely nothing to do with needing a shiny new router to fix the "issue".

When you were getting 60+ data speed, do you know what the sync speed was?

@Gandalf  - if this line was previous in difficulty, does it still have interleaving on?

[#5]

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When you were getting 60+ data speed, do you know what the sync speed was?

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Between 70 and 73, pretty much like it is now.

[#6]

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@khaled35 wrote:

Thanks. Have done the quiet line test myself and the engineer also did. Line sounded quiet.

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Keep an eye (or should I say ear) on that.  Intermittent faults can be a real pain to eliminate.

What is your current router - Plusnet Hub One?  If yes, it would be worth running routerstats 24x7 to see how the line is behaving.  Hub One is a rebadged BTHH5a for which there is a special version of routerstats.  Variable electrical noise on a line can slug data throughput - it is call REIN and routerstats will show if that is present.

Edit: If the sync speed was the same, the low IP profile and / or the presence of REIN could make a difference of 10% data throughput.

Edit 2: I have attached a plot of a line I have under constant monitoring at the moment - repeated engineer visits - no fault found - repeated DLM resets sync speed variable between 23mbps and 33mbps - somewhere there is intermittent REIN - but no correlation yet.

[#7]

Before fibre, I had an ADSL connection with PN that had REIN issues. That wasn't fun.  The last engineer actually mentioned REIN to me because that little box of tricks they carry around measures it. He said it was too low to be an issue.

My current router is indeed a Hub One.

[#8]

That 404s for me.

[#9]

I clicked on the wrong file for the attachment - it has been changed!

[#10]

@khaled35  Have you checked the "Current Line Speed " profile on the broadband tab in your member centre account as suggested by @RichardB . That could be causing your reduced speed.

[#11]

They have - the IP is around 5% below the current sync speed.

[#12]

@RealAleMadrid yes, I posted an image. See link to post

[#13]

Hi @khaled35,

I'm sorry to hear that you've experienced these issues with our service lately. I've had a read through the thread and had a look over the account today and the first thing to catch my eye is that, though the engineer has stated that there maybe an issue with the router pertaining to Wi-Fi performance, actual work was carried out on the line and since the visit concluded the regular drops we had been seeing have stopped. Based on previous experience, I can understand why the agent you had spoken to was hesitant to send out a new router to you, though their explanation was admittedly lacking. I'll pass some feedback along regarding this so that it can be better understood and explained in the future.

To go back to the engineer's notes, I'll include them here in the thread and give a bit of a breakdown as to my thoughts on them. I've included the quote below as it comes across to us. A lot of it is in "engineer-speak" so if you have any questions about it, please don't hesitate to ask for clarity's sake

"Engineer has resolved the fault located at the D-side including aerial cables / lead-in / block terminal.The fault was located outside the end customer's curtilage and shown by damp / corrosion to wire / cable.The fault was fixed by clearing in joint."

Essentially, what's happened here is that the physical line itself was found to be damaged and this is almost certainly the main contributing factor of any problems you've had with the connection in recent times. In addition to this, I can see that the engineer also went onto upgrade the Master Socket faceplate within the property, which whilst wasn't necessary, helps us to rule out other potential fault factors if the fault does persist.

"Maintenance work: NTE not faulty but changed NTE to latest version of NTE to enable isolation of internal wiring."

Thankfully, the connection does seem to have stabilized as mentioned above and you can see evidence of this here. As this is the case, I think the best course of action right now would be to monitor and observe how the connection fares over the coming days. If the connection does drop out, or any other problems present themselves, please post an update in this thread and we'll be more than happy to pick the case back up for further review.

[#14]

Hi @TheMightyAJ , thank you for the explanation of the engineers notes. It is very appreciated.  I dislike when they do that - he told me that what he cleaned was unlikely to be the cause of the issue. Oh well, no biggie.

So should I see my speeds improve (basically go back to normal) soon?

[#15]

"Maintenance work: NTE not faulty but changed NTE to latest version of NTE to enable isolation of internal wiring."

Might be read as...

Whilst no fault was found with the NTE, it was not of the current version which provides BT Openreach a clear demarcation of service (and maintenance) responsibility (a test socket).

@TheMightyAJ would you know if the DLM was reset?