PSTN Engineer's Visit, Monday 22/08/2011The PSTN Engineer arrived without calling in advance.
This was not a problem as I had gathered my "before" stats earlier on & I was just glad that it wasn't another missed appointment.
We discussed a brief summary of the issues (brief, me? YES IT WAS brief
)
The engineer was very friendly, helpful & talkative, explaining everything he was doing as he went along (despite the lack of chocolate biscuits & bacon butties).
He did explain that as he was a CSE regarding PSTN only, he would not be able to check any broadband matters as he just did not have the equipment.
He did say though that if he managed to track down & repair a line fault, the broadband speed issues would probably be resolved aswell.
He did the usual "Quiet Line" stuff, & checked my internal wiring etc.
Then he whipped out his HAWK tester to do the all important TDR test.
He mentioned he could see "something strange" near the cabinet, but unfortunately I missed the chance to take a photo.
Before going down to the cabinet he disconnected my equipment & attached as Oscillator 87J to my master test socket (photo attached) & also hovered a small "gadget" near the master socket, power adaptors, & my shielded "extension" cable.
This "gadget" hummed/buzzed a little, but the engineer said averything seemed O.K. at my house.
Anyway, he came back from the cabinet & using words like "absolute stupidity", he explained that he had found that "someone" had "double jumpered" another D-side cable onto the fibre connection that my D-side was connected to, & that was probably the explanation for the broadband disconnections, crackly phone line etc.
He confirmed that he had disconnected the "extra/redundant" cable.
Has someone been stealing my broadband & will the next call to BT be that another end user has suddenly & completely lost their telephone and/or broadband services?
While we were chatting about this, the engineer brought up BT's Network Records on his laptop.
He showed me the actual route & confirmed the ACTUAL line length from the cabinet is only 820m & allowing a bit of slack for pole drops/connections etc. we should consider 850m as the absolute maximum line length.
I have a photo of the line route for my own reference, but the engineer asked me not to post it anywhere public.
As the engineer was so helpful. I will fully respect his request.
We ran a couple of speed tests along with the BT Performance test just before the engineer left.
The results were a slight improvement from earlier this morning, the BT Performance test showing an IP Profile of 21680 K, download speed of 20022 K & the acceptable range of speeds as 15175 K to 21680 K.
The engineer mentioned that for those on Infinity, following a line "repair", previously high speeds are usually restored almost instantly.
He advised me to request (via Plusnet) a Broadband Engineer to investigate if the speeds did not automatically increase within the next few hours.
He also confirmed that a 35 Mb IP Profile & 32-33 Mb download speeds looked "about right" for my ACTUAL line length & quality.
As he didn't have a JDSU & wasn't a broadband engineer, unfortunately the engineer was unable to confirm my line stats such as attenuation, Max Rate etc.
He was also unable to request BT to reset my profile for the same reason.
I did show the engineer a couple of comments from this forum (thanks razpag et al) & he also commented it was a "pleasure" to be speaking with an end user that had obviously researched & actually knew a bit about matters.
I'm not sure if he was just being polite though.
Personally I really hate it when "know all" clients start telling me all the technical detail they know about my job
So, I have updated my Plusnet ticket & the engineer will update BT's records too, & time will tell whether or not I get my high speeds back again.
Watch this space
Paul.
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