Hi Walter,
I suspect you have long since passed the record for the longest thread on Kitz's famous site - and VERY well done for being so persistent !
(In a different context perhaps you have noticed my tenacity elsewhere !)
I have indeed noticed & I wish you all the best of luck in what appears to be an increasingly uphill struggle.
I did just have a nasty fear that the engineers' up the pole might have been using a tone generator but I'm relieved to read your recent reports of ongoing difficulties.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by that. Could you please clarify it for me?
I'm trying to summarise the likely causes of the recent disturbances after quite a long time of reasonably steady, but degraded, performance.
1. It is much colder now that when you started this marathon, but there were perturbations in warmer times too, so this is unlikely to be a major factor.
A few slight improvements do appear to have occured as the weather has become colder. Some slight improvement did coincide with with being switched to the 17a profile in October (a few more DS bit-loading tones available at the lower frequencies - although the slight speed increase did appear to be the start of me seeing massive error counts).
I have wondered if any contraction of cables could cause a "tightening" effect & make some dry joints better?
Also, I'm sure I have read of a seasonal phenomenon where broadband speeds & stability can increase due to reduced radio propagation/skip in winter, thus reducing any effect of interference/noise levels.
The worst period of instability was from reinstatement of my services at the end of July to around the middle of September.
The double jumpering issue was “fixed” near the end of August.
2. Upon the assumption that the engineers are actually climbing on the pole, physical movement and vibration on the pole generally might be a contributory factor.
The 2 engineers from last week did indeed climb the pole.
AFAIK, any previous engineers have used a cherry picker.
I.e. a) it is possible that a joint or the local feed cable has poor crimps and / or corrosion
b) the drop wire itself or the cable towards the static house components is damaged; however I seem to recall that the drop wire has been replaced ?
The drop wire was indeed replaced, along with the complete master socket and faceplate.
c) EITHER the idc connections, if they are provided, that your service uses have been stretched or corroded OR similarly the crimp joints, if they are provided, are faulty ?
d) assuming that the drop wire was replaced, then the supply cable pair within the DP has been damaged - either the wires themselves or the insulation to other metallic parts is damaged
f) an unusual connection method has been employed where there are other components in circuit such as another cable join, perhaps in a BT 66 box or similar ?
The pole is an old timber telegraph pole.
The new drop wire does appear to be quite tight in comparison with the previous sagging drop wire.
My immediate neighbour & I do not have BT 66 boxes.
3. Given the current minimal maintenance regime employed by BT Openreach (at least around here), the chances of having the entire DP replaced are probably minimal. You just might, if you are very lucky, persuade the next engineer called out to investigate to swap the pair from the through joint up on to a different pair of connectors and also perhaps to replace the drop-wire with a new length of drop-wire 12 preferably as a single length direct into your NTE.
I think the chances of any of that are remarkably slim.
The whole point of all this is that my connection was perfectly fine until it was accidentally disconnected at the end of July & that nobody has yet discovered why it has been rather unstable with low speeds ever since.
For all I know, the double jumpering could well have been in place right from the start, the drop wire could have needed replacing right from the start, the internal shielded cable that has raised a few eyebrows was in place right from the start.
All of these various “fixes” have brought some slight improvement, but the underlying cause of the issue, in my opinion, is still to be located & “fixed”.
If all the other incidental “fixes” have improved matters, maybe I should by now be expecting the full 40Mb sync speed, very low error counts & very infrequent re-syncs.
Maybe I should also be looking forward to a slight possibility of being able to achieve something from BT’s soon to be rolled out 80/20 speed doubling.
My maximum attainable rates are still only around 35Mb maximum & that is only immediately following a re-sync (on the occasions that I do actually sync at just below 30Mb).
My connection MUST have actually synced at around 35Mb or so when I was able to achieve throughput of 33Mb (as reported via speedtest.net & mybroadbandspeed.co.uk et al.
Even then, I was aware that BT’s own speed/performance test produced DS throughput speeds of 1Mb to 2Mb lower than the other online testers.
Here is just one example of the result from a BT speed test, from around 23:00 on 30th June, some 6 days after installation.
Download speed achieved during the test was - 32359 Kbps.
According to BT’s SIN 498 document, the “training period” for FTTC services is not 10 days (it would be quite helpful if all ISP agents were aware of that).
The document states that if any severe instability is seen within the first 24 hours of installation, DLM will take immediate action.
Otherwise, it will take action within the next 24 hour period.
As we know, my connection was able to maintain higher speeds & apparent stability right through the irrelevant 10 day period starting 24th June to 21st July when it all suddenly fell apart.
Paul.