Gosh there seems to have been quite a bit going on the past 3 days whilst I didn't have a connection.
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I can confirm that the ISPs definitely were advised by BT. The information given to me was practically the same info that was given out to the ISPs. I'm seeing quite a bit of it these days where certain ISPs are denying knowledge of certain information when the truth is that its not being filtered down to those at the ISP who interface with the EU's.
Didn't I also see a moan from a certain 'LLU ISP' fairly recently moaning about BTretail using the 55Mbps product and implying that it was BT favouritism?
We are being misled by certain sectors, because we damn well know that BT very openly made info available from last year that a new 55/10 product was being made available. I can guarantee you that those same ISPs will have had the same info I had and probably even a bit more.
It is the ISP's who are not filtering this info on to the EU's and this is something that I had a fairly long convo with Ian Lawrence about last year and possible ways it could be filtered out to the EU by other means. I said last year that the G.INP info filtered via this forum was being monitored by BT for reactions, but all that happened was a pile of negative comments about BT and the thread was filled with one line comments about how crap BT were. If you look there is a post by me made several months ago saying that they were monitoring how info passed to '3rd parties' was received. To be quite frank if all it does is generate moans, then can you blame them if they shut the stable door. I know for a fact there are/were 3 sites they were considering sharing more info with. However, that opportunity has now passed and the person involved has moved on.
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As regards to the ECI issues, I can see both sides of this. Openreach have and always will use at least 2 different suppliers for hardware. Its only these days because we can physically see the cabs that we are perhaps more aware of it. But situations like this have happened many times in the past. Right back to pre Openreach.. I can recall Cisco kit in exchanges having a problems way back in 2003 when the Junipers where fine. Theres the Marconi MSANs that had problems with the increased upstream for maxdsl and lots more no doubt that I cant think of right now.
I can understand the customer frustrations and I do believe that g.inp wasn't tested as well as it should have been. I myself have offered services of forum members last year for testing purposes. The problem Openreach have with that is that we are not their customers - its the SPs. For example the 3dB trial, that was down to the ISPs who trialled it. Think again we have proof that Openreach have tried in the past to directly communicate with the EU's, but it was certain 'LLU ISPs' who put the block on that.
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Re 'hacked' routers.
Nothing to do with it.. there are plenty of MCT and Openreach approved modems that do give info. I myself use an Openreach MCT modem router and would have become aware of what was going on with G.INP etc on my line. Once upon a time all modem/routers provided this sort of info.
One of the first ISPs to start the lock-downs was Sky, soon after followed by BTr with the HH. I know for a fact BT didnt like certain modems because some users were tweaking SNR without really understanding what they were doing and putting their line into a worse state. Even today on these forums I see people panic because their SNRm moves by 'x' amount or become fixated on attenuation.
Line stats are a fantastic diagnostic and with line stats monitoring many times in the past we've been able to point people with genuine line faults in the right direction.
What happens though is some people get hold of info and demand something fixed which is within normal range.. I'm not talking about Openreach here, I'm talking about DSL is genuinely expected to perform within standards across the board and that certain variations are to be expected. Years ago, fluctuations of up to 6dB was considered as not unusual. ADSL was designed to cope with these sorts of fluctuations and its why such things as Interleaving, FEC and G.INP were invented. Myself I would be a bit concerned about 6dB.. but 3dB is considered within the realms of normal... but you have to look at the bigger picture - not all lines behave the same... and longer lines are always going to be more susceptible.
So line stats are good, as long as used sensibly.
