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[KHell]

Hi all. I have read these forums for some years now & only with recent events, decided to post something abut the issues I have experienced for several years with all sorts of Internet connection technologies. My current ISP is Sky & has been for around 2 years now & only because it's about the cheapest option going. BT are still my line provider & here in Cornwall, unless you have BT wires, there is no other way to get on the Internet. (not counting Satelite)

I'm nearly 50 years of age, HND Qualified in Mech/Elec Engineering with Advanced A Level Maths & a very competent Computer Practitioner & Network Technician with several years of experience in telecomunications solutions & Campus Network environments.

Up to about April 1999, good old 56K Hardware modems were the only way I could get online. We had to have the Gain turned up to about 7 in order for a decent Hardware modem to stay on line, without disconnecting every 2 minutes or so. From April 1999 to April 2002, I had BT Home Highway. For about the first 18 months, it worked great, the latter being absolutely shocking. Worst case scenario was seeing my ISDN PCI card log on, yet no home page loaded for about 45 minutes. I was connected but could not even ping the DNS servers I was supposed to be connected to. 

On April 16th 2002, ADSL went live @ my Exchange & I was the 6th person to have ADSL Enabled. I remember my CBUK # ending in 0006. £30 for a 512K connection was a lot to pay, but far cheaper than the £120/month for Home Highway & boy was it fast. I had a PIII 450Mhz CPU with Voodoo 3000 graphics & I could download files in the background & still play FPS shooting games (Counter Strike, HL Deathmatch & such) without ANY loss of FPS in any instance. However, as the years have gone by, I could now imagine a better Internet experience sat on the Moon in a Deck Chair, wearing flip-flops & using a wireless Laptop to try & connect. It's pathetic....

Since 2002, I would hate to even try & guess how many times BT have been to my address to try & resolve my wildly fluctuating Noise Margins & last year around October, my ISP sent a BT PTO (Precision Test Officer) Engineer to monitor my wild fluctuations in Downstream Noise Margin. Sky had monitored my SNR dropping from 14/16db during the day to 2db & less in the evenings. This PTO Engineer had been to my address on several occasions over the years & really did help get me the best service possible, though never resolving the real issue of chaotic fluctuations. On the arranged date, BT PTO Engineer arrived @ 7.30pm & I'd already had a check of downstream SNR showing 12db with a 6.5Mb line speed applied. At 9.30pm, the PTO Engineer  left saying he would put his report in to the ISP & badgering him for what he thought, he retorted saying the SNR was 7db at the time of arrival & was the same when he left. I did tell him he should have been monitoring the Downstream SNR which was now down to 3db. Even Sky Customer Resolution Management were perfectly willing to accept these results, even though they were the wrong Values & I had to insist that they checked the logs to see the upstream was 7db & that the Downstream was 12db @ 7.20pm & a terrible 2/3db by 9.30pm. This made no difference & it was all railroaded through as being all they could do for me as an ISP & offered me a MAC code in order to transfer to another ISP. I already know that the service will be just as bad with any other ISP because BT are not providing adequate provision. At this time, BT were calling it a REIN issue, yet there is nothing random about it at all. It's crap all the time & getting crappier as more time goes by. 

So whilst having a 6.5Mb line speed with 12db downstream SNR back in October 2010, December rolls in & I have to get onto Sky again because my Router is now dropping Sync randomly in the evenings as the Downstream SNR is dropping below zero. BT send an Engineer out, he moves my BT Pre-filtered face plate out of the Window sill as he thinks the Mains supply to the house is causing interference. I've lived here for 15 years & the Mains box has always been there. 
He tried several BT pre-filtered face plates, but there was still hiss on the phone line, despite a Choke being fitted in-line with the ADSL pre-filtered plate. BT insisted this choke had to be in place, otherwise they could not & would not attend any ADSL issues to my address. - wtf? Final result from this exercise was an ADSL Filter as supplied with the Sky Router & this filter actually does a better job of reducing the noise than the official BT Pre-filtered face plate fitted to this address back on 16th April 2002. The original had been swapped out over the years in order to rectify issues of noise, but again without success. Logic would dictate that if the Pre-filtered BT ADSL plates are no longer working, something is seriously out of spec.

About 3 weeks ago, I started seeing my Router dropping Sync during the day. Purely random, but wild fluctuations in Downstream SNR. Seeing 12db one second & 2db or less the next....It was all over the place. Sky were telling me I had CRC errors showing & the last snapshot they took at the time of the call revealed over 100,000 of them. During this call, the chap dealing with it said that fast-track might help. This is another pile of bs thought up since BT brought in Interleaving. All Interleaving does is shove your ping times through the roof meaning you might as well be sat on the Moon if you plan on playing games. Interleaving was thought up to allow poorer lines to reamin in Sync. It use to be Interleaving off or on & should always be off if you are an avid & wannabe online gamer. Sky eventually book an Engineer to call 6 days later.... I had telephoned Openreach RE my BT pole leaning sharply to one side & because Openreach had not closed the case or even dealt with it, Sky could not book an Engineers call for my ADSL problems. BT send one of their ADSL competent Engineers & his equipment disconnects as soon as he plugged in. Eventually, he's down the Cabinet 700 yards from my home & an hour later arrives to try more tests which he then says are fine. Sky phone me later in the day as we pre-arranged & this same Sky chap who booked the Engineer tells me I still have CRC errors. He puts me on hold for another hour & then tells me its the fast-track that is causing the CRC errors, even though he told me that irrespective of Interleaved or fast-track service applied to my address, CRC errors should not show in either instance. More lies....
So December 2010 dropped my 6.5Mb Sync speed with 12db to 5184Mb with the same SNR downstream of 12db & the last visit 3 weeks ago dropped my line speed to 4992 with 8db downstream SNR at best. Again this gets slaughtered to 2db & less in the evenings & is virtually un-useable.

About 5 years ago, BT moved my phone line from the rear of the property to the front. This took me off an Electric Pole & removed all the background hiss, pops & bangs from the telephone calls. Less than 18 months later, the hiss was back again. The pole at the front of the house wasn't leaning then & despite them replacing the drop wire 9 months ago from this pole since it has leaned, that made absolutely no difference what so ever. Another waste of time.

2 years ago, I left UKOnline ISP for Sky. I was wasting money paying £26 month for a crap 8Mb service that Synced @ 8192 & un-Interleaved. UKOnline are or were owned by Sky at the time so I was on all the same equipment with Sky & I had the same connection speed of 8192Mb when I migrated to them. At this time of an 8192Mb connection, I had a downstream SNR of 16db, though it should have been much higher. I know my wires to this address are very capable of 8192Mb with 23db Downstream SNR. Since those 2 years ago, I'm now down to a 4992Mb connection speed with only 8db at best. I can see 10db for a few minutes of Router hard reset or soft re-boot, then it starts it's wobbly antics going as low as 4db & then settles around 7 or 8db. The evening loadings just slaughters this to well below 5db, which anyone knows to be dis-connection teritory in every instance.

Looking at the housing development in our area does not help in any manner, though it kind of does to me. 4 years ago, a new housing estate popped up in our beautiful rural area & slapped nearly 500 homes onto my one & only Cabinet 700 yards down the road. As the estate started filling up, my services just got worse, meaning the moved pole drop wires put more noise back onto the line. 2 years ago, this Estate had their own "E" side cable with Cabinet fitted, which should have removed the noise off the line but it didn't. Its just gotten slower thanks to BT pumping BT Vision data down their lines. In the last 4 weeks, ths Cabinet to the Estate has had a Fibre Cabinet fitted, thereby removing the "E" Side cable they did have & whilst the Fibre is not yet switched on yet (End of October apparently) it is quite apparent that BT must be loading the "D" side of copper from the cabinet with this estates wiring until the Fibre is enabled. This Estate will be the first site to have FTTP (Fibre to the Premises) in the UK. This probably explains why I'm now down to 8db at best with a slightly slower connection speed to boot.

Adding to this story, BT are investing £80m in a Fibre Network for Cornwall. They also picked up £58m from the European Fund making the total £138m & the way they are rolling it out, they might as well be turning on a set of Christmas tree lights for the Blind. 
This new Network will still leave all the background hiss & noise in place as the likes of me are still relying on the "D" side copper to get to the Fibre cabinet. So FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) is just going to be as bad as ADSL currently is, because if you can't have ALL the SNR to your address that your "D" side wires are capable of delivering, your service is never going to work correctly. SNR values are not something to be taken lightly & play a key part in your ADSL working in the correct manner. With lack of adequate provision by BT Wholesale & over-loading "D" side copper from cabinets by Openreach just means your Internet Experience is going to be pi$$ poor @ best & I do have some serious evidence.
On October 27th 2008 @ exactly 2 minutes to mid-day, my ADSL service dropped out. I was sat in front of the computer & online at the time & noticed the Router had it's amber Sync light on. Logging into the Router, I quickly reset the Router as I like to keep an eye on my uptime stats for both WAN & LAN. I was gob-smacked seeing the LLU sync in 15 seconds & the WAN connecting in 30 seconds. Looking at the Stats, I had 8192Mb with 23db SNR downstream. I grabbed the phone, dialed a nine to get rid of the dial tone.... "S-I-L-E-N-C-E !" with no backgound hiss of any kind. I Whoo-Hoo'd with arms in the air shouting they'd fixed it & jumped into the first CS:S server that listed with a decent ping & decent player count. Everything worked as it should. Just one shot in the enemies head & they were brown bread. Most Spraying is only ever out of frustration because nothing registers correctly when your SNR is slaughtered in the manner mine is. Two & a half hours later I'm still in the game & then dropped into dead space with a connection warning. Router is Amber lighting again....
Alt-Tabbing & logging into the Router again, I see the LLU take 30 seconds to sync & then a full 1 minute 30 seconds elapse before the WAN is up. (Home page able to load) Looking at the Stats, back down to 16db & noise back on the phone line again. Jumped back into the same game server & I was a noob all over again @ couldnt hit sh!t because nothing was registering correctly. Back to spray & pray. 
When the PTO Engineer was here back last year, he consulted his Day book & did say there was some Cabinet "D" side repair work being carried out on the 27/10/08. He was actually at my Cabinet to prepare for some "E" side work requiring attention following a lightning strike. The work he was consulting for was completed in November of the same year.

So with recent events in the last 3 weeks I now get reduced to 4992 with 8db at best, wait 50 seconds for the LLU to sync & a whole 1 minute and 52 seconds before the WAN is up (home page able to load). I have seen 2 minutes & 10 seconds on some resets in the last 3 weeks.

There appears to be no way to reslove these issues & whilst knowing I can get an 8192Mb connection with a very healthy 23Db Downstream SNR down the wires I pay BT rent for, BT still take 100% line rental fees for a 4992Mb speed with a shockingly reduced SNR. 23db to <3db in the evenings represents approximately 80+% reduction of SNR. I really feel my only course of action is to refuse to pay the next bill. Complaining to Ofcom is also a waste of time. The BT Chairman's Office tried to resolve these issues many years ago & didn't. Ofcom pass you to the Communications Ombudsman, & then they pass you back to Ofcom & Ofcom tell you your ISP are responsible. Then your ISP tell you they can't do anything about it, are not thottling you in any manner & blame BT and as always, BT pass you back to your ISP. Meantime, BT Wholesale stick to tight budgets and pathetic provison whilst getting fat Xmas bonuses for doing so, scoop up £138m for a Fibre network that does not resolve over subscription on "D" side copper which will result in poor FTTC speeds. Even talking to a BT Wholesale representative involved with the Fibre roll-out in Cornwall left me feeling I might as well have been talking swahili for all the good it was. I have Emailed this BT Wholesale fella I spoke with 8 weeks ago, through another organisation here in Cornwall who are liasing with BT Wholesale & Cornwall County Council to roll out Fibre for Cornwall. The last time we spoke, he was convinced I should get my wallet out & get onto the Fibre as soon as my Local Cabinet is enabled. He seems to think at worst, I would have 15Mb Fibre, but can not get it through his corporate head that noise on the "D" side will reduce the performance of Fibre in terms of Speed & Quality of service. Quality of service is where you need to have ALL your SNR, otherwise the services applied will not function in the manner they were intended to. If the ADSL is screwed as it is, how does a man in this position ever think that Fibre will be fine?

Britsh Telecom. They couldn't even wire up a Lan party!

[roseway]

I'm not sure if there's a question there, but I think what I would have done is to swap to one of the more professional ISPs such as Zen or AAISP. You'd be giving up the advantages of LLU and paying more, but getting an ISP who knows what he's doing and properly supports customers.

[catzi]

I just a typed out a monster reply, pressed something inadvertently and lost the lot 

To paraphrase:

- Have you checked for REIN with an AM radio tuned to 612Khz? That certainly helped me identify that I was indeed suffering a REIN fault.
- Have you ruled out interference from any devices in your home? I ended up sticking the router on a battery and powering down the whole house at the mains to make sure. Of course you'll need a mobile device to access the router.

Cheers,

Iain

[razpag]

Some stats would be agood place to begin.

[KHell]

Thaks for the comments folks.

@ roseway

Not really any question in any manner.  I already know. It's more of a Story to perhaps answer some of the concerns an awful lot of people have RE: reduced SNR Values over time. Let's not also forget, these are B.T. wires we are talking about. These monkeys have shared Business leased lines with other companies in the past. I'm just a humble home user getting abused here.
RE ISP's: I gave up the more expensive & serious ISP's many years ago. Nildram gave me a stunning 8Mb service & actually got through to B.T. about the noise on my phone line when ever I talked to my line manager. Through his help & my persistance, I was moved from an Electric pole at the rear of the house to a real Telegraph pole at the front of my house some years ago. All the hiss with random pops & bangs dissapeared off the PSTN side of things & the Internet was great for about nearly 18 months. Then the hiss came back with a vengence around 4 years ago, during which time to date, I've ended up with a slower D/S speed & a whopping reduction in D/S noise margin. In the last 12 months, I lost about 60% of upstream noise margin too, going from 26db to a pathetic 7db, though interestingly, since loosing another 4db D/S in the last 3/4 weeks, I'm now back to 12db U/S with 800Kbps applied.
Also, Sky certainly know from me that I think their support totally sucks. I went to them nearly 2 years ago with 8192Mb D/S & 16db noise margin D/S that reduced to 0 by around 9pm. I'm now @ 4992 with 8db up to early evening & then down to 2db & less by 10pm. Adding to this, the LLU Sync has gone from 30 seconds to 52 seconds & almost 2 full minutes before a Web page will even load.
They were logging my wild D/S Noise Margins for about 6 weeks before they sent the B.T. PTO Engineer out, who actually reported back to them with the U/S db being 7 at the time of arrival & 7 when he left. This PTO Engineer was suppose to be monitoring the D/S db, which was at 14db, only minutes before he arrived @ 7.30pm & was at 3/4db when he left @ 9.30pm. Sky Customer Resolutions Management were more than happy to suck up his incorrect information & I was begging on the phone for them to consult the Logs & confirm my D/S & U/S values between those times. They still did sweet FA about it.
On another occasion in my early days of Sky, B.T. Broadband & PSTN Engineer came to run tests. Within 30 seconds of plugging in, he told me I was on the wrong protocol for him to run his ADSL tests. My partner was stood with me at the time whilst I was asking what that meant. He replied saying that he could only do as his boss had told him to do & that if he was told to fit a pink elephant to my address, he would. I did retort by saying that if that was the case, he would certainly be leaving my address with said pink elephant shoved where the sun doesn't shine. The end of that visit was that my ISP were responsible. When my ISP called me later in the day, the Sky representative said the report for the Pink Elephant Fitter was that everything checked out fine? - Such bare faced lies in every instance.
I do wonder if this has something to do with the Official BT Speed test refusing to work for me & has been like this for around 6 years now. I did get my Sky id#, 2 of them actually from 2 different representatives. Both of them get refused as an Invalid id#. 

@ catzi

Using notepad or similar on the desktop is a far safer way for mega-posts. I've been there myself several times over the years & even save every paragraph just in case Bill's crap software decides to blue screen. 
REIN was the conclusion of BT for having the B.T. PTO Engineer here this time last year. Between 7.30pm & 9.30pm, he was chatting quite regulary with two other BT chaps down the road with Radios glued to their ears. Nothing was found.
I too have had the mains off & used a gen-set to test. My house was fully re-wired back in Sept 2004 & I had the electrician fit a Noise filter to the ring main that supplies power to my Computer Workshop & my Home Cinema sockets. Going onto another un-filtered Ring Main makes no difference.

@ All

I did send a reminder Email to my contact down West of me & have had a reply today saying my reminder has been sent on to the B.T. Wholsale representative. Just waiting to see what bs this corporate muppet comes back with this time. He really does not have a clue from what bs I've already heard from him.
Also, this really is not a "speed" cry. I'd be happy with 3Mb, so long as I was getting all the SNR my wires can deliver to this address at that speed. Unfortunately I am not & with the heavily reduced SNR I am getting, on-line gaming is just impossible to attempt. Warping players; Players just arriving on screen in an open area that was clear milliseconds earlier before I looked left; Guns mis-firing; Dying before you even hear the shot/s that killed you; Seeing your own death animation as you re-spawn; 30 seconds of video taking 5 minutes to download despite a real 4Mb connection; Web page unavailable as soon as you click the link, yet clicking it again loads up the web page. - The "worst-best" one is clicking on a hyperlink but nothing loads & then you realised you should have clicked another hyperlink instead. So you click the one you actually wanted, deal with the info you are looking at & then click back on your browser button. Seeing the first hyperlink that you clicked by accident load up is just too hilarious to comprehend. TCPIP does not work in this manner. It's almost like you are being cached out somewhere.

I have some concerns about B.T. actually offering geniune information even if they do consult their work logs for the 27/10/08. An awful lot more loading has been slammed on the "D" side of things since then, but you never know. Maybe whatever cable they did have off the cabinet on that day has our Local Post Office Cash Machine on it. It could be something that simple, even if wishful thinking.

Meantime, I've sold my Water cooled GTX 580's on my 4.2Ghz Water cooled i7 rig. Just using a 1Gb 9800GT now that use to do my PhysX stuff. It's just dead money getting worth less & less as each day passes, & when you get to be my age, sitting in the corner of your computer workshop just playing with yourself really isn't on the agenda....