Thanks for your response, Weaver
I like the expression 'dripping blood'. I think it also encapsulates the way I feel about the quality of our connection.
In a nutshell: we've had a connection problem since Jan this year. Plusnet Fibre Extra + 80/20, which was capped at 50/10 only 3 months ago. Speeds are 45Mbps downstream and 8Mbps upstream. SNR 7 and 10, respectively, Line length 500-700m (different routers provide different values). Attenuation 20db and 27db, respectively. Huawei cabinet. Fast path. Frequent disconnections. We can have days of stability and then a disconnection. GEA reports from Plusnet highlight 'regular interference observed at weekends, sometimes daily'. Disconnections usually at specific times, for example 12:57am was the most frequent one (I have no idea why 12:57am exactly). Since changing from Draytek/Plusnet to Fritz!box, things have been a bit more stable for the past 6 days, but this could be a coincidence. Plusnet have sent us a brand new Zyxel and even though I've read very good reports about it on here, I can't bring myself to use it.
The issue of our connection has been taken to CEO of Openreach (who responded it was Plusnet's issue), 2nd level support at Plusnet, who say it's Openreach etc. etc. Openreach are aware of a crimping issue (probably water getting into a crimp or something similar), but because it's in a place that is difficult to access, they'll not fix it; neither they'll officially admit it in reports from visits here, but stated it was WiFi or router that was causing disconnections. We've had at least 15 Openreach visits here. I'll spare the details of these visits because I nearly got myself banned on this forum for making derogatory comments about Openreach. (I apologise for that.)
If it's nothing to do with crimping, alternatively there are capacity/interference issues here; it's difficult to tell. We thought it was the neighbour's boiler that introduces noise on the line, but we don't know. I've tried walking up and down the street with the radio and there was some noise coming from one flat (it's upper and lower villas here), but I don't think this radio method is very reliable. You'd probably need a spectrum analyser, though Openreach say they don't think it's a REIN issue.
We don't know who to believe anymore. Unofficially, Openreach mentioned a high resistant fault 'somewhere' (probably that crimp?), even though their machines tell them where it is. They also said there was interference but didn't know what was causing it. Non-local Openreach engineers were surprised that we were even able to continue with the connection, but the local ones insist it's all fine. They changed the cable from the pole to the flat, master socket from MK3 to MK4 etc. Router is connected via a 2m cable to an extension socket (properly wired, no possibility to move the router near the master socket), which is an ADSLNation filter. If connected to the master socket, we have more errors and disconnections, so clearly ADSLNation filter does a slightly better job.
This issue has been here for years, but we never had to rely so much on the Internet connection. We were previously on ADSL2+ (17Mbps down) and in the summer, the SNR would drop to 3db, whereas in the winter it would reset itself to 9, sometimes 12db. Our Draytek routers (2820n, 2830n, 2762ac) handled the connection to the exchange (Infineon chipset) well, as we would sometimes go 30 days without a disconnection. Since changing to VDSL back in Jan (Broadcom), it's been a different story with the last router (2762ac). Big time. We actually regret getting VDSL, but heyho, you take the service with the hope that it'll make things better.
Plusnet will let us go penalty free, as presumably, they're fed up listening to our complaints. I'm not surprised.
There's quite a lot of traffic going up and down as both of us are working from home. Due to the nature of our jobs (education, public services), we heavily rely on access to the Internet. To give you an estimate of how much we use (MS Teams mainly, an occasional film at weekends): between 10-15GB of data per day, 60-70GB per week, sometimes more. Neighbours have problems (or they say), too, but because nearly all are retired, they'll not bother complaining to their ISPs because they only rely on their Internet for things like browsing M&S (sounds stereotypical, but they told me this themselves when I tried to encourage them to report issues to their ISPs).
Do you mean Zen when you said that there are ISPs that would sort this out?
Thanks.
