Hi Folks,
Update from this morning's Engineer's visit.
On arrival, the Engineer confirmed he had spoken with someone at his end so he had a rough idea of the issue(s).
That was a refreshingly good start.
He tested sync speed at the master socket with his JDSU & said it was 24Mb, attenuation about 22dB, & line length 1 km.
Earlier on this morning my modem had been reporting 25.3 Mb.
He wasn't too happy about my "high quality, high speed, twisted pairs shielded cable" that the original installation engineer had wired to the incoming pair (upstairs) to make the new downstairs master socket.
Neither was he happy that from the new master socket, it had been "back-wired" to create the upsairs extension (at what was the old master socket position).
He disconnected everything from the incoming pair upstairs, clipped on an adapter cable & tested sync speed there.
He said it was 30Mb, i.e. a 6 Mb increase from downstairs.
His deduction was that the shielded cable must have been the problem all along.
Hmmm........
When I reminded him that I been actually downloading att 33 Mb for the first month on the old 8c profile, he said that's how it works over D-side lengths similar to mine.
i.e. It starts off at high speeds & stabilises down after a while.
He also said it can take much longer than the 10 day trining period to find the right balance between stability & speed.
Hmmm...........That's not quite what Plusnet have told me, or what I have read in other forums.
Anyway, he went off to the cab to "check things" there.
On his return, he confirmed that 40 Mb was present at the cab.
He also confirmed that he had tested the speed after applying an attenuator, which resulted in 30Mb at the cab.
He did say that the attenuator had slightly more attenuation effect than my D-side cable's own attenuation.
He decided to rewire everything from the incoming supply.
Thinking he was going to route a cable through the house, I started clearing space for access.
The next thing was I heard him putting up a ladder & saw him fixing a new drop wire round the back of the other half of the semi-detached house.
He had already obtained approval from my neighbour to do this.
Not only did he provide new cable to the nearest pole, he got a cherry picker organised & took the cable right across the main road to the next pole (probably around 100m in total length).
He brought the new cable in through the back of my house (downstairs) & replaced the whole master socket.
He then reused my shielded cable to provide the connection back to my upstairs extension.
Sync speed was tested again.
I
THINK he said it had gone up to 28Mb or so & that it was a lot better than when he had arrived, which proved it must have been the shielded cable causing the issue(s) all along.
I asked if he needed to get the BT Fibre Centre to reset my profile just to finish off the "repair".
He said that wouldn't be necessary any more as his engineers' notes will deal with that sort of thing.
He also said that undoubtedly, the 4 day complete loss of service had had an effect & that now everything was right again, it might gradually build up speed again.
He reconnected the modem & we had a quick look at the stats & tested the effect of using the phone.
The modem reported:-
DS Attainable Rate 33136 K
US Attainable Rate 5560 K
DS Sync speed 27400 K
US Sync speed 4999 K
DS SNRM 6.3 dB
US SNRM 7.1 dB
DS Output Power 12.2 dBmV
US Output Power 6.3 dBvM
CRC Errors US & DS 0
FEC Errors DS & US 0
HEC Errors DS & US 0
Picking up the phone & making a call had only a tiny effect upon SNRM, & didn't cause any errors.
In other words, everyting looks a bit better than of late, but still not what it was for the first month.
Was it the shielded cable, or the old cable/joints between the telegraph poles, or the master socket/filtering?
I will obviously monitor matters for the next few days/weeks.
After being reconnected for roughly 2.5 hours, SNRM has dropped (only a little) & DS CRC errors now total only 6, FEC errors 5 & HEC errors Nil.
Paul.
The graphs are attached......
Edit:
I musn't forget to add thanks to Plusnet (Alex R in particular), for not just fobbing me off with this matter.
It's not over until the fat lady sings, but at least I think I am now beginning to hear her loosening up her throat in readiness.[attachment deleted by admin]