Hi All! I guess I will do the welcome and query all in my first post! Hope that isn't rude!
I am currently a Plusnet customer and have been so for over 5 years now. Unfortunately, after moving to new premises over two years ago, it transpires that we are at the end of a long line (approx 7.3km line length) with an attentuation of 63.5dB downstream and 31.5dB up. Speeds here have always been slow (a max of 0.7mbps throughput) and varying anything between 0.5 - 0.7 normally.
Having become frustrated with this and trying to do something about it, I looked at replacing the Thompson 582n router which I had been using and eventually, based on reviews, settled on a Billion 7800 DXL. At this time I also replaced the wireless house phone with a wired model and replaced the router cable with a shielded one from Amazon. A BT engineer also upgraded the faceplate to a version 1 to a v3. During my research I found out about routerstats and started monitoring the noise margin in the line. Oddly enough, given the length of the line, it was reasonably stable and I was able to sync at a SNR of 5.5 and hold this at a sync rate of around 1700 kbps (ADSL 2+). Throughput was around 1.5 - 1.6mbps on a fastpath line. Suddenly the 'smart' TV was almost usable, I was living the dream! This was until last Thursday (21st January).
I logged on to the internet as per normal after having come home from work and noticed a very strange pattern on the routerstats graph. Normally, there was some variation in noise margin but this was something different. Increases in the noise margin (of around 2-3 dB) were appearing were occurring with almost perfect regularity (every 3 minutes or so). I have no idea what caused this, but I do know that the line began erroring at a considerable rate, to such an extent that DLM decided to kick in and turn on interleaving. Plusnet also changed the line to a 12dB interleaved which has now put my under the fault threshold rate (1140 kbps). I tested via the test socket and the noise margin pattern remained the same. I also turned off everything in the house except the router and nothing changed.
A BT engineer arrived yesterday and I was able to show him the routerstats graph whilst connected to the route while he was here. He said he'd never seen anything like it before! Apparently, the only graphs he was used to was one for connection speeds. He checked the line and confirmed that speeds were low, (his tester was syncing at 768 kpbs even lower than the Billion), but he carried out a number of tests using this and declared everything to look ok. He said the speeds would be poor given the line length (tell me something I don't know) but could not explain why I had lost 50% of my sync rate overnight. He did say though I had been put on a fastpath 6dB line which he felt was unsuitable and did not seem to understand that I told him I had been on this setting with surprisingly few errors for 3 weeks previous!
I'm still pressuring Plusnet to do something about this, but I was wondering if this is something any of you knowledgeable peeps have come across? I've attached a screen grab of the routerstats graph taken a few moments ago to illustrate what I've been trying to explain.
Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks
Ian
