Unresolved support ticket open for more than six months - is this a record?

[#1]

Quote

.............and now you have a perfectly steady sync of 0kbps

The only saving grace is that this would be below the fault threshold 
Hi Catweazle, Just catching up, (I've sent you a PM as well). Regards, the 'potential' cable fault, I wouldn't count the chickens We've already seen instances of a resync at about 6M and a subsequent resync getting much less. At least the BT engineer has now had this, making a fault at your end much less likely. I see you've tried a Netgear as well as the Draytek, it might be interesting to see the DMT plots from each (purely for academic interest!).
The engineer who has mentioned garden excavations may not have been local, he may have come from well outside your area, but maybe he's looked up all the info!
My money is still on the line-card, but as I said previously, strange cable faults could be the cause. If there are any good spare pairs in the cable they will usually do a swap (negating the need for a dig!).
I would still want the drop wire from the pole through to the RF3 filter in the loft replacing as a single run - getting rid of that non-CW1308-cable.
Let's hope for substantial progress soon.

[#2]

If BT have got any sense they will try a different line card connection (whatever that change is called - is it a lift and shift?) before they start digging, unless they have some very definite fault diagnosis (not just a poor ADSL sync) on that line segment.

[#3]

Sense? Since when did BT have any sense in recent times. That went out the window with OFTEL/OFCOM who have set many examples of 'No sense'
I don't think it'll matter, the sparky has blown up his electrics so he can't switch the router on to get that 0kps stable connection as a result of the neighbours garden being dug up an going through the BT cable 

[#4]

No, sparky's still alive and seems to have done a good job    Quite impressed with the way he methodically identified all the circuits and tidied up the various bodges that have sprouted over the years. One surprise (to me, anyway) was that there are a couple of radial circuits (in addition to the the ring circuit). All mains sockets and lighting fixtures are accounted for so I feel a lot more comfortable knowing how everything's connected. All earthing checks passed ok. But that's enough about the electrics - what about BT?
PN support have advised that BT will be sending a "specialist engineer" (one who knows how to operate a JCB, perhaps  ) this morning to follow up on the previous engineer's findings. Whether this will involve doing the long-awaited lift and shift I'll have to wait and see - I'll certainly mention this to him. I'll give another update later, but sync rate's currently 1600kbps, SNRM is 27.1Db, and download speed is 135kbps. I've attached the latest DMT graph as it will be useful to compare this with one I'll grab after BT have chomped through everyone's phone cables...

[#5]

Quote from: Catweazle

No, sparky's still alive and seems to have done a good job

Glad that's sorted then - so it wasn't that then we can presume. Or rather much less likely - as I have known electical faults to still be there after attention from even very good sparks. Electricty is a funny thing.

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PN support have advised that BT will be sending a "specialist engineer" (one who knows how to operate a JCB, perhaps  )

One would like to think that nearly all of BT's techies  attending domestic properties were well versed in ADSL these days, it's in a high proportion of homes in many areas.
fingers crossed

[#6]

The "specialist" was actually one of the engineers who visited earlier this month, so maybe he's been on a training course since then 
Anyway, he did at least follow up the previous engineer's findings and decided the best way forward was to swap the D-side line in my road i.e. running up to the pillar at the end of the road (he found a "spare" line i.e. one that didn't have ADSL enabled). Sync rate jumped to over 6000kbps and he then asked BT Wholesale to tweak the IP profile up to 5500kbps. A BT speed test confirmed the new settings and I've managed to get a download speed of about 1900kbps. This is still low, so I checked the IP profile shown on the PN page ( https://portal.plus.net/my.html?action=data_transfer_speed ; ) and found this is set to 2000kbps, so that probably explains the download speed. I've since asked PN to reset the IP profile and I'm currently waiting for the change to be made.
The engineer also commented that I had interleaving set on the line (PN requested this soon after I reported the fault), but he also said that interleaving could reduce  the sync rate by up to 1000kbps. He advised monitoring the line for several days and if it stabilises at a high rate (he suggested 7000kbps should be attainable) then I could request that interleaving is switched off to further improve performance. Sounds reasonable to me, but I'll wait until download speeds get closer to the IP profile (and stay there!) before worrying about getting an extra 1000kbps of speed. But the current performance is a huge improvement from where it was this morning (100kbps download speed).
The DMT graph also looks a lot healthier (see attached file) - I'll keep monitoring the performance and will provide a further update later today or tomorrow.

[#7]

So, some other poor sod will inherit the bad line. 
If the target noise margin is reset (ask for that to be done) and interleaving is turned off then 8128kbps will be yours. 

[#8]

About time too, that's looking much more like it. So it's taken more than 6 months for BT Openretch to manage to get a competent  engineer just to do a D side pair swap and how many engineer visits, I've lost count. No wonder BT profits are down, they need some competent managers as well.
Although I did say that a cable problem 'could' be the cause, I'm intrigued to know exactly what was wrong with that pair and why it hadn't shown up on line tests, but there you go we''ll probably never find out.

[#9]

Moles? 

[#10]

Quote from: Catweazle

The DMT graph also looks a lot healthier (see attached file) - I'll keep monitoring the performance and will provide a further update later today or tomorrow.

It certainly looks a lot healthier than the line you just left - especially with still having the SNRM set to 15.
In comparison to my original (back at Reply 121), the SNR graph looks almost identical, except yours uses some additional frequencies at the lower end. If it stays like that, you're laughing 
When it's all settled, don't forget to get BT to reset their fault threshold too.
Hmmm. I should probably get interleaving turned off here too 
Mike

[#11]

Quote from: HPsauce

8128kbps will be yours.

And when ADSL2+ comes your way, more like 18mbps! 

[#12]

Alright, alright, I haven't got a green smiley I can use

[#13]

Quote from: Anotherone

I'm intrigued to know exactly what was wrong with that pair and why it hadn't shown up on line tests, but there you go we''ll probably never find out.

That's a good point and something I think BT should address with the way they train their engineers - too many have said they don't really understand the tests they're asked to do, and this may be because the role has been deskilled too much. Or maybe they need to be trained to take a more old-fashioned investigative approach (like the guy who found the fault on Tuesday)?
I'd be more than happy to get involved with a "lessons learned" exercise if PN and BT are interested in improving customer service - there's plenty of material we can refer to on the support ticket and this discussion thread.

Quote from: HPsauce

So, some other poor sod will inherit the bad line.

Yes, I feel a lttle bit guilty about that, but let's hope whoever has my old line won't try to get ADSL at a later date. Or, if they do, then they'd be better off signing up with PN as most of the investigation will have been done already 

[#14]

Quote from: Catweazle

That's a good point and something I think BT should address with the way they train their engineers - too many have said they don't really understand the tests they're asked to do, and this may be because the role has been deskilled too much.

I think they should sack the engineers and bring back the time served apprentice technicians they used to train and employ 
similar to me - but with a different big company 

[#15]

Completely agre with Mal, the last engineer that came to me asked me what I wanted him to do!!!, but at least he did what I wanted and no problem since.
Catweazle, I hope you have at last found the source of problems and your new line works for you, Jack.