Recent issue with BT broadband

blastman

Hi all, hope this is in the right forum, just wondering if anyone has had a similar issue/experience.

I've always had BT BB from the time it was available in my area (probably about three years now). I was always on their top plan, so I had gradually moved up to the 3MB package. I changed the modem from the one they supplied to a wireless router/modem as they were only giving a modem with the connection when I joined. This was all fine and any time I checked the connection speed, it was connected at 3MB (usually showed as 3072kb/s).

Recently, I decided to change my phone to BT as well, as they were offering a good deal on phone and BB packages. However, I noticed when the phone was switched over that my speed appeared to have dropped. I have taken to checking it more regularly than I have done in the past and sure enough, the connection rarely seems to be faster than 1MB.

I rang BT to enquire about this as I thought they may have inadvertently moved me to a different BB package when I changed the phone. They did a check on my phone line (apparently) and told me that it is only rated for 2MB. This is despite the fact that it has definitely been capable of 3MB consistently in the past. Needless to say, I'm not too happy about this.

So, can anyone tell me if eircom can do this i.e. choke my phone line at a maximum of 2MB, possibly as some sort of retaliation for moving my phone account? What sort of redress would I have as I'm not really a customer of theirs any more? Also, I'm now paying BT for a service I'm not receiving, and apparently can't receive reliably because of eircom's whims, so what should I expect BT to do about it?

BT did send me a new microfilter as I mentioned that I can hear the modem on the phone, and incoming phone calls tend to break the BB connection. This did seem to improve the connection speed briefly, but it's still hovering around the 1MB consistently again. I think it was more of a fob-off than anything, to be honest.

Sorry for the long post, but any advice welcome.

Sponge Bob

Either something happened to the line outside your house (eircom) or you overloaded inside the house or added a sky boy or two to the line or phonewatch ..or there are faults inside and out.

Try to pull all this data off your router

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/linestats.htm

1. with everything plugged in as now
2. with ONLY the filter and modem plugged in

is there a difference????

if no real difference the fault is outside the house. best report a fault on your line to BT who pass it to eircom (BT bundle persons cannot contact eircom direct) , and say the sound quality has degraded for voice calls and you swapped phone and filter out so its not them it must be the line.

BT are not at fault here, they rely on line statistical data from eircom to guage what your line will take and are telling you what the current position is, either its in your house or between your house and the exchange.

Post the before and after unplugging line stats here.

dub45

Just a couple of points:

First I think that Eircom have probably more to be doing with their time than choking individual's phones but who knows?

Secondly you will see from various threads here that lots of people have been having problems with various aspects of BT's service recently so it could be that you have become a victim of some of those problems.

You say that in the past you have checked your connection speed but how often did you check the speeds you were actually getting as opposed to the speed you were syncing at?

Upgrading speed puts serious pressure on a line each time the speed goes up and can easily result in a worsening of performance. In addition to the link SB gave you have a look at this one for instance:

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/lowSNR.htm

Even over the course of an evening a line can deteriorate as I sadly find to my annoyance:(

And remember too you are not paying BT for a guaranteed 3Mb product you are paying for a product which may go to 3Mb and even with the best line in the world you have to deal with contention, distance from the exchange etc etc.

Sponge Bob

BT are guilty of many transgressions Dub45 but they do not control SNR and DB levels on his line, either he does coz he plugged something in or eircom does because they control that layer 100% , not BT

If I suspected BT themselves at ALL I would say so, when did I ever not .....eh ?????

every bb product for the home user is GUARANTEED to run at 256k, no more.

the degredation over the evening is possibly because many neighbours have BB which brings in crosstalk

Bugger all chance eircom will ever fix the cable for crosstalk unless you live in one of the 5 big cities where they will deploy vdsl in 2009 or so ..and even then expect it to worsen until they actually deploy and even then it may not fix it.

dub45

Sponge Bob wrote:

BT are guilty of many transgressions Dub45 but they do not control SNR and DB levels on his line, either he does coz he plugged something in or eircom does because they control that layer 100% , not BT

If I suspected BT themselves at ALL I would say so, when did I ever not .....eh ?????

every bb product for the home user is GUARANTEED to run at 256k, no more.

the degredation over the evening is possibly because many neighbours have BB which brings in crosstalk

Bugger all chance eircom will ever fix the cable for crosstalk unless you live in one of the 5 big cities where they will deploy vdsl in 2009 or so ..and even then expect it to worsen until they actually deploy and even then it may not fix it.

I wasn't accusing BT of being responsible for the quality of his line and in fact we do know if it is a line issue at all until he posts his stats.

blastman

Thanks for the replies lads, I'll do the line stats this evening (gotta be more interesting than the football!). Just wanted to say that I've changed nothing myself in terms of what's connected to the line in the house. That's why I'm puzzled as to why there's been such a dramatic drop in speed, or at least the connection speed reported by the router.

blastman

Right, here's the data from the router taken just now with everything connected (up and down speeds match what the router configuration is showing)

BusyBox v1.00 (2005.12.07-10:11+0000) Built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

# adslctl info --stats
adslctl: ADSL driver and PHY status
Status: Showtime Channel: INTR, Upstream rate = 384 Kbps, Downstream rate = 704
Kbps
Link Power State: L0
Mode: G.DMT
Channel: Interleave
Trellis: ON
Line Status: No Defect
Training Status: Showtime
Down Up
SNR (dB): 5.9 10.0
Attn(dB): 52.0 31.5
Pwr(dBm): 15.7 11.9
Max(Kbps): 736 612
Rate (Kbps): 704 384

Extra info below this, but I presume this is the important bit.

I'll disconnect the phones and run the test again.

blastman

Here's the results with only the router and the filter connected to the phone loop:

BusyBox v1.00 (2005.12.07-10:11+0000) Built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

# adslctl info --stats
adslctl: ADSL driver and PHY status
Status: Showtime Channel: INTR, Upstream rate = 384 Kbps, Downstream rate = 704
Kbps
Link Power State: L0
Mode: G.DMT
Channel: Interleave
Trellis: ON
Line Status: No Defect
Training Status: Showtime
Down Up
SNR (dB): 6.4 10.0
Attn(dB): 51.5 31.5
Pwr(dBm): 15.8 11.9
Max(Kbps): 736 612
Rate (Kbps): 704 384

Pretty similar. Looking at how the results pan out, my line is only suitable for about a 1MB connection. So something has gone wrong because my connection speeds were definitely better than this not too long ago. :mad:

dub45

If you check the links that SB and I gave you above you will see that your line stats are pretty bad and having 3Mb on a line with such bad stats is going to give you problems.

You SNR is 6.4

From http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/linestats.htm

Downstream SNR Margin

Should be at least 10 dB to get adsl - ideally above 12dB to get traditional fixed adsl.
Anything less than this will see frequent disconnections and other problems.

From http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/lowSNR.htm

Traditional Fixed 512/1Mb/2Mb
For each upgrade between the speeds you can expect to lose on average 6dB. Therefore if you upgraded from 512kbps to 2Mbps then your SNR Margin is likely to have dropped in the region of 12dB.
Once your SNR Margin starts to drop below 10dB on a traditional fixed rate line then you are likely to have problems.

Your line att is 51.5

From http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/linestats.htm

Downstream Attenuation

0-42 dB - 2Mbps (strictly adhered to wef Aug 2005)
43-60 dB - 1Mbps
> 60 dB - 512kbps

blastman

Saw that, dub45, question is can I do anything about it. Like I said, the speed definitely fell recently, which makes me think there's a fault somewhere.

dub45

There appears to be very little you can do sadly (I have a dodgy line myself!)

Are you sure that nothing has been done internally to your wiring lately at all?

What speed are you actually syncing at?

You could ask BT to lower your speed and you will probably find that might actually improve your performance.

Have you any idea how far you are from the exchange roughly?

Some equipment is better than others at dealing with poor lines - what router are you using at the moment? Do you have the latest firmware for it?

Are you by any chance in an area covered by Smart - adsl2 is more sympathetic to dodgy lines and the Smart support have a remedial profile for weakish lines like mine.

Sponge Bob

I agree with dub45, if borrowing another modem and filter and cable to see if its any of them still does not fix it or improve it dramatically then you will need to downgrade to 1mbit or (pushing it TBH) 2 mbiit

unplugging everything made a tiny difference, I would strongly suspect its outside and that you have lost the higher frequencies on your line. the uplink and voice use lower frequencies and the downlink uses the upper frequencies

see the graphic here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADSL


eircom only guarantee 256k for a 1 OR a 3mbit line

blastman

The modem/router is a Linksys WAG54GS, as far as I know it has the latest firmware (I've updated it once since I got it, but they don't seem to update it very often). I still have the Zysel 630 modem I got from BT when I took out the package, so I could try that, I suppose. I'm not far from the exchange, there's one in the town, so I'm pretty sure I'm within the 3.5km limit. Nothing that I'm aware of has been done to the internal wiring in a long time.

dub45, when you say what speed am I actually syncing at, what do you mean? How do I verify that?

Sponge Bob, can the high frequencies be checked, or (sorry if this sounds naiive) repaired/restored?

dub45

blastman wrote:

The modem/router is a Linksys WAG54GS, as far as I know it has the latest firmware (I've updated it once since I got it, but they don't seem to update it very often). I still have the Zysel 630 modem I got from BT when I took out the package, so I could try that, I suppose. I'm not far from the exchange, there's one in the town, so I'm pretty sure I'm within the 3.5km limit. Nothing that I'm aware of has been done to the internal wiring in a long time.

dub45, when you say what speed am I actually syncing at, what do you mean? How do I verify that?

Sponge Bob, can the high frequencies be checked, or (sorry if this sounds naiive) repaired/restored?

I have used the wag54gs and there are lots of issues with it and I found I got a better performance from a netgear model.

The sync speed is the speed that you actually connect to your isp at and that should be on the main page of the linksys.

The download speed is the speed you are actually getting as you surf the net.

I would certainly connect the Zysel back in and see if you can get a better performance from that. Although allowing for your line stats I would not expect a major improvement.

A speed downgrade is worth serious consideration.

blastman

Sorry, yeah, the connection speed I have been quoting is the sync speed shown by the router. I wasn't too worried by the download speed as this speed was so slow to begin with. I presume, based on the line stats, that contention ratio wouldn't have such a dramatic effect?

Looks like I'm going to be requesting a downgrade, all right.

dub45

When did you actualy go up to the 3Mb speed?

blastman

A good while ago, at least a year, I'd say. Whenever they introduced it, I was automatically upgraded as I was on their top package.

Sponge Bob

lets collect the facts first , the loss of higher frequencies seems to be the problem ..its a good ole line fault somewhere I still suspect ....but getting eircom to fix these is a nightmare coz their linesmen are not trained for these subtleties .

blastman

Just to update, sync speed tonight according to the router has fallen to 672kbps. It seems to be gradually declining on a daily basis. Not going to do the line check again as I'm knackered, but I'll check the speed tomorrow evening and probably do one then.

dub45

Can you keep an eye on your line stats as well and see how they are behaving?

BT did send me a new microfilter as I mentioned that I can hear the modem on the phone, and incoming phone calls tend to break the BB connection.

I only just noticed this bit in your original post - that would suggest that all has not been right with your line - how long has that been going on?

blastman

This has been going on a while, but even after those problems started, I was still connnecting at 3MB most of the time.

blastman

Here's today's stats, a slight improvement (everything connected as normal):

BusyBox v1.00 (2005.12.07-10:11+0000) Built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

# adslctl info --stats
adslctl: ADSL driver and PHY status
Status: Showtime Channel: INTR, Upstream rate = 384 Kbps, Downstream rate = 121
6 Kbps
Link Power State: L0
Mode: G.DMT
Channel: Interleave
Trellis: ON
Line Status: No Defect
Training Status: Showtime
Down Up
SNR (dB): 5.4 9.0
Attn(dB): 52.5 31.5
Pwr(dBm): 18.0 11.9
Max(Kbps): 1248 576
Rate (Kbps): 1216 384

zAbbo

I'm on BT for now (until they pull out of the market)

Their DNS servers aren't great, change to something like http://www.opendns.com/

I always had problems of sites timing out, or not being accessible.

blastman

And with nothing connected only the modem and filter (and a reconnect):

BusyBox v1.00 (2005.12.07-10:11+0000) Built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

# adslctl info --stats
adslctl: ADSL driver and PHY status
Status: Showtime Channel: INTR, Upstream rate = 384 Kbps, Downstream rate = 134
4 Kbps
Link Power State: L0
Mode: G.DMT
Channel: Interleave
Trellis: ON
Line Status: No Defect
Training Status: Showtime
Down Up
SNR (dB): 6.1 9.0
Attn(dB): 52.0 31.5
Pwr(dBm): 18.3 11.9
Max(Kbps): 1376 580
Rate (Kbps): 1344 384

Sponge Bob

still around 52db, have you tried another modem and filter ( or even just a filter) like I said earlier ???????

dub45

Also your SNR is pretty dire - while its under 10 you are going to have problems.

blastman

Haven't gone back to the Zysel modem yet, I'll hopefully try it tomorrow and keep you posted.