Kitz Forum
Broadband Related => Telephony Wiring + Equipment => Topic started by: Weaver on August 03, 2018, 08:06:58 PM
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I may well have missed an email or two from AA, my ISP, and was waiting on BT or certainly thought I was. Anyway, Janet got an email saying
I don't think it will come down to excess charges, please see the updates below :-
*Pratiksha Shinde (14:10:57) They have provided the update as Spares found on CSS Divert may be possible. *
*Pratiksha Shinde (14:14:16) So I request you to check on 25/06/18 for an update on the order.IF the engineer provide any update till 25/06/18 that will be very helpful. *
So we should know a little more next week.
and later -
The order is still plodding along, cabling work is still required, it is moving
but taking a little longer than we'd hope
*Pooja Kiran Chavan (11:42:27) Mikey I could see the job is with contractors for cabling work and they have given the ECD is 25/07/18. *
I shall keep chasing and update you ASAP.
Then finally the other day another one saying that BT would be coming on the 8th of this month to install an additional copper line. Yippee. I didn't think that BT was going to go for it.
I wonder if BT had to do some actual work around here before they could promise a date? - sounds a bit like it? Could it be possible that they needed to first check how many free copper pairs were good? Would probably have that information to hand already?
So -
The cost is £130 for installation. I can't remember what it was before, but £60 is the usual AA price for a copper pair install, I think. BT can perhaps just demand whatever they like, as they did before? Such is the joy of being an effective monopoly. Or perhaps Ofcom has got their bony grip on BT wrt this too. I am pleased that it is so cheap anyway, a relief. :-)
Then, iirc, per month: £12.20 for the copper, £12 for ADSL and an optional £12 for ‘premium’ traffic prioritisation. And I have no idea if there is VAT on top of that lot or not, doesn't say on the website, or if it does then I cannot see it. I hate it when you cannot see inc-VAT / exc-VAT in situ.
1. I have to get the small switch up and running which will be acting as a VLAN mux to connect all the modems into the Firebrick. It will be modems to small switch, then switch to Firebrick. This addition is needed because I will not have enough free ethernet sockets on the Firebrick. AA has the config for the small switch on their website, iirc. 2. I then have to do a config file for the modem itself. I have written a program in the iPad that can do that, generate the XML config for a ZyXEL modem. 3. And finally I must change the main Firebrick XML config to reflect the changes.
Anyway, next wed is the day. That means I need to buy some very nice biscuits for our BT man. Kettle will be on etc.
It is the second pair in the second drop cable.
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I very much doubt that there was any reliable and up-to-date network records . . . I suspect that a "proper little man" had to be sent out to survey and prepare an inventory.
A new circuit provision will, of course, have a new NTE5C. So remember to request that just a telephony front be fitted. You won't require the xDSL filter front.
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I asked AA if they could attach a note to the job, to ask our man to bring a normal telephony front with him. I don't know how much stuff like that they have spare in the van. I would rather not waste an additional small amount of money having to buy yet another entire NTE just to get the front, as before.
Do BT engineers sometimes need to make some other actual changes in advance, for any reason?
There has been a wee bit of Openreach van coming-and-going down into the village over the last couple of months. New (individual) houses were mentioned in an earlier post and that could well be the reason.
I am wasting a lot of money on BT+AA ‘premium’ traffic prioritisation. This has been discussed in a couple of threads maybe, once or twice before. Unfortunately the only way to find out its worth would be a long and careful comparative test, which would be really hard to design. The cost is such that I could get another copper line out of the money saved by killing Premium.
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I asked AA if they could attach a note to the job, to ask our man to bring a normal telephony front with him. I don't know how much stuff like that they have spare in the van.
I would expect that both types would be carried in the van. I know there are other specialised variants e.g. the one to disable the connection to the incoming metallic pathway, fitted when the telephony service is carried over FTTP and a link cable is used to connect the on-board ATA of the ONT to the pre-existing internal telephone extension wiring.
Do BT engineers sometimes need to make some other actual changes in advance, for any reason?
I think that will depend upon the circumstances of the actual provide process. Removal of a DACS unit, for example.
I am wasting a lot of money on BT+AA ‘premium’ traffic prioritisation.
Ultimately that has to be your decision but perhaps you could try without it and see if you notice its absence?
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As for a trial, by its very nature you would have to wait until various networks are heavily loaded to give it some stress. I can't remember, but with some if these things there is a BT charge for turning a feature off, also maybe a one-off charge turning it on. That was true for the BT enhanced care feature or whatever it is called - the premium / priority maintenance call out thing which I also have on one or two lines.
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Good luck for Wednesday and I hope it all goes smoothly :)
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thanks kitz! ;D I am looking forward to 33% more upstream as that is a real pain. Uploads generally, using the iCloud, iMessage, photos, doing backups sometimes taking a couple of hours. Should take me to ~1.5Mbps upstream real TCP payload throughput, with any luck.
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I didn't understand the bit about "CSS divert".
And I wonder what the "contractors' cabling work" was all about, as I have the drop cable already?
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I didn't understand the bit about "CSS divert".
And I wonder what the "contractors' cabling work" was all about, as I have the drop cable already?
I can only guess that there is an element of cable to be 'dug down on', or some other 'civils-type' work, that we employ contractors to perform ???
Regarding: 'They have provided the update as Spares found on CSS. Divert may be possible.' ..... CSS is a database we use, and one of the functions it has is to look for 'spare pairs' on other DP's should there be a shortfall on your own serving DP.
It would appear there is at least one spare pair on another DP that can be diverted to your own DP. There should have been a full-stop placed between the words 'CSS' and 'Divert' on the original message from your ISP. :)
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Sorry for such a basic and ignorant question, but I am not familiar with the physical layout of things. With long EO lines, where are the DPs?
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Could be anywhere from outside your premises, to a few miles away ............ especially on long rural runs.
That would be my only <slight> concern ...... there may well be 'spares' available to be diverted to the DP, it depends where the DP is situated and the capacity beyond this point ???
The engineers will work this out. :)
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There are no cabs outside my house - referring back to that previous thread, which Burakkucat found for us - I am just in the middle of nowhere, on the northernmost edge of our village, nearest to NSBFD (http://Dropped pin
near Broadford Church, 5 A87, Broadford, Isle of Skye IV49 9BF
https://goo.gl/maps/MaMVSHp3YXK2) and the copper bundle is coming down to the village from the north, from NSBFD eastwards via Harrapul on the main road and then southwards down the three+ mile long lonely Heasta road across the high moor then down to me.
Any cabs must definitely be on the main road (https://goo.gl/maps/hmd1cyfNSxD2). I think FTTC cabs have sprung up now all around Broadford, along the main road heading west-north and then east towards the Skye Bridge. There are some shown in Harrapul and in Breacais too. So presumably there were existing straightforward interconnect cabs near them? (Apologies, not sure of the correct terminology) PCPs ?
So I am thinking there were maybe enough pairs in the bundle to Heasta, but not enough supplying a PCP in the middle of the path to me that is located in Harrapul, so they had to sort out things from the NSBFD exchange to that PCP. Would that make sense?
I had always naively assumed that there were either enough in the Heasta bundle or not and in the latter case, I would be right out of luck.
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Peering up at the pole-top (with the help of a Google Street View image from 2011) there appears to be just a BT66, from which the aerial drop-cables originate. There is one (or is it two?) carrier poles before those cables enter the office at Weaver-land.
There is a multi-pair cable that descends the pole. Clearly it branches off from the main cable(s) which meander down into the village. I wonder if it might just be at the ground-level joint where the diversion is proposed.
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So that will be the pole just across the road below my house?
From there, two drop cables rise high up to a pole on the high ground level with our house from whence it is straight in horizontally to the office window upstairs.
And there is the split where the rest of the pairs carry on south into the village?
Actually, I think I can just see the BT66 in this pic (https://www.dropbox.com/sh/l3xczbv3kif20ls/AABY4Zs3tR7ijeytpxb5V9oya?dl=0).
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So that will be the pole just across the road below my house?
Yes, that's the one.
From there, two drop cables rise high up to a pole on the high ground level with our house from whence it is straight in horizontally to the office window upstairs.
That is the carrier pole.
And there is the split where the rest of the pairs carry on south into the village?
Somewhere at the foot of the roadside pole (the one with the BT66) would be my guess.
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I hope those are gel-filled or something. Out in all the wild weather.
The topology is like so:
modem 1 ---
modem 2 ---
modem 3 --- VLAN switch --- Firebrick --- main LAN switch === WAPs === computers
modem 4 ---
The small VLAN switch is a ZyXEL 8-port unit which acts as a MUX. The main lan switch is an HP 24 port one. The Firebrick FB2700 is the router. There are two, soon to be three, ZyXEL WAPs, each one of which has two radios in it. Currently one of the four radios is 2.4GHz and three are 5GHz.
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The cost is £130 for installation. I can't remember what it was before, but £60 is the usual AA price for a copper pair install, I think. BT can perhaps just demand whatever they like, as they did before? Such is the joy of being an effective monopoly. Or perhaps Ofcom has got their bony grip on BT wrt this too. I am pleased that it is so cheap anyway, a relief. :-)
I just tried a dummy order on the AA website, and as you say, their standard charge for a new line is £60. As such, I would ask them to explain why they are charging you more.
Telco's/ISP's set their own retail prices for new lines but the price they are charged by Openreach have been fixed (unless excess charges apply) and regulated for decades
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I asked them for a breakdown and they said
Cost split as follows:
#
PSTN GBP60
ADSL GBP50
DLink bridge modem GBP20.
No idea about VAT inc/excl. I said I don't need the modem, so that should hopefully be taken off.
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Are you on ADSL1 Max Premium or 21CN? If the former cancelling Premium would mean your upload speed would be a maximum of 448Mbps
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If I am remembering correctly, all circuits are 21CN.
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All are 21CN now
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In that case I would doubt Premium is doing much for you - is there any evidence of the exchange being overloaded?
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Jelv wrote:
> exchange being overloaded ?
I really wouldn't know. It may be a Wimbledon-final only thing, and I do very much care about things like that. There is also the thing about AA’s internal network, because they apply it within their own systems and you get guaranteed no internal packet drop which is very good.
What I am unsure of though is: Being so slow, do I get less out of this with or is it irrelevant? Maybe it is irrelevant, because they - AA and BT - perhaps just drop a certain random fraction of all the packets they have so my fraction would be the same as anyone else's fraction if we are both non-premium.
My instinct was: if in doubt spend the money, don't risk it. A lot of other people might very well have the opposite instinct!
I had no inclination to drop premium when we went 21CN even though, so I believe, the upstream sync rate cap of 448kbps no longer applied. Actually since the modem change, two of my lines are just below 448 unfortunately and before they were all above. That was the really bad thing about going to the ZyXEL modems - lost over 100kbps total sync rate upstream, which would be 88kbps IP PDU rate (ie including IP headers, so actual TCP payload would be even less, as IPv4/IPv6 headers + TCP headers + possible TCP timestamps would need to be taken out too).
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Have programmed the small VLAN MUX switch tonight. Mrs Weaver was finally grudgingly ready to help me with plugging cables in.
This job turned out to be a nightmare either because the ZyXEL switch hates Safari/iOS or because iOS was behaving really weirdly, but I think I ruled out the latter. A third alternative is that the switch does not like the absence of dns, or the absence of internet connectivity, or no dhcp server or something. About the symptom was that on many web pages most of the text was missing from web pages. For example on one page I could see radio buttons, action buttons, edit boxes and other controls but no labels next to them so I had to simply guess what they were meant to do. Tried two different web browsers, Safari and iCab. I had to upload a config file into the switch semi-blind. But in the end I got there, somehow. I should perhaps talk to ZyXEL about it.
The Firebrick config is done but untested. Need to plug the modems in tomorrow morning and test it. And also need to configure one more modem out of the spares pile by pushing a config file into it.
I left everything till the absolute last minute after having had weeks and weeks. Of course, it doesn't really matter if anything at all is done before the BT man comes, but it just feels as if it is somehow right for us to be ready to rock and roll straight away.
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All are 21CN now
Premium used to be worth it on the 20CN exchanges for a couple of reasons, the obvious being the increased upload speed and less obvious is the 20CN backhauls had very limited capacity when it came to bandwidth as it was literally using the old MSiP backhaul and 155Mb VPs. That is why Openreach/BTw just could not increase the speeds above 8Mbps because the backhauls would literally go in to meltdown. VP congestion was not uncommon on the standard home product and why BTw offered premium where the VPs had higher priority.
21CN changed this. Some people think it was the new MSANs which made the difference, but the reality is most of the 21CN investment went into the backhauls and a brand new topology. By using WDM (https://kitz.co.uk/adsl/21cn_network.htm#WDM) it meant that some of the initial costs were high, but it was a worthwhile investment as it makes backhaul bandwidth more readily available and cheaper in the long term. Backhauls went from being 155Mbps/622Mbps to 1Gb/40Gb/100Gb.
I used to pay Premium when I was on 20CN but have never bothered since. You may get the occasional hot SVLAN, but BTw usually fix this quite quickly simply because its easier to do so on 21CN. I suspect the WMBC MSILs these days are more of a point of congestion rather than the backhaul SVLANs.
You could always drop the premium and then go back on it if you do see problems.
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Today is the day. Hoping that all goes well, otherwise we might have to ship B*Sheep to Skye . . . :D
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Today is the day. Hoping that all goes well, otherwise we might have to ship B*Sheep to Skye . . . :D
Ha ha ..... I couldn't handle the conditions up in rural Scotland anymore B*Cat, not at my tender age !! ;) ;D
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Big cock up, Scottie van over too late - another chap is coming tomorrow to do the job, no dial tone on the other (new) pair
Destroyed cwcc@a.3 around noon, 170k sync rate [!] flapping, so now we have one less line than before.
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Oops. :(
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I was totally wrong - apologies to BT and all Black Sheep's brethren in the far North. I am pretty sure it was the ZyXEL VMG 1312-B10A that has gone bad, after swap out tests. New modem goes in and all is good again. I should have done swap outs yesterday, if I were not such a fool, it was partly the coincidence.
No sign of BT yet, perhaps still time though?
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Did you swap it out and then in again to prove the modems fault? I'd be wary of jumping to any more conclusions if not.
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Put another modem onto that line, put that modem onto another line. Those were the tests done, amongst others. Will re-examine the modem later on. Now, with that modem gone, the line is well-behaved, no flapping, no catastrophic packet loss.
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Sorry if I'm being slow, but you put the faulty modem on another line and it produced the same very low sync?
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We put the faulty modem in a good line and no sync that time in fact. Janet came and did the plugging and unplugging for me. But we did not get any further into testing of the accused modem after those two critical tests which were: good modem on accused line, accused modem on good line. This was because we did not want to get started on something more substantial when the BT man was due any minute. Mind you, that ‘any minute’ thing remained true all day as we had no idea when to expect him.
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@johnson also the problem modem was resynching every so many times per hour for 12 hours, until in the end I woke up and dropped it from the bonded set as also it had huge packet loss which was polluting the rest, duh. :-[ :'(
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I don't doubt that the modem on that line was misbehaving, I'm just uncertain of the failure modes that could cause a spontaneous modem death. High voltage spikes on the line input, extremes of temperature maybe? But without these circumstances I'd be inclined to think the modem was not at fault and maybe an unfortunate set of conditions when testing made it seem like it was. Could be very wrong obviously, with the number of 1312s you have the chance of a faulty device goes up a good deal.
Well once you have thoroughly confirmed its for the bin you know where to post it! :D
Edit: Or does the chance go up that much? I probably need to brush up on my bayesian inference..
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Assuming it is indeed dead or ill, retest pending either as a sanity check or in case it was somehow temporary, since it is so suspicious that it chose that day to die, I wonder if there is any possible way in which BT fiddling about could have killed it remotely? I can't see it. One or two staff are a bit clueless. Like the guy who shorted out the Broadford exchange a couple of years back by letting a piece of solder or a piece of wire fall into the wrong place or similar, not at all sure of the exact details. That caused me a repeated problem short term, but did not kill any kit, unsurprisingly.
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I would be inclined to give the device a good period of time without any power then, after powering up, reset it to the factory defaults.
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Not sure what they could do other than short the pairs. Would some clumsy fingers in a cabinet or poor procedure of disconnecting and reconnecting cause damaging spikes? I honestly have no idea.
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@johnson if the probability of failure is low, then approx it is the sum of the probabilities. More accurately though it is 1 - ( 1 - p )² iirc. Memory fades, but you just apply the binomial theorem to that expression and dump higher power terms and that gives you the approximation - eg for 2 units, 1 - ( 1 - 2p + p² ) ≈ 2p, or in general np or, more generally still, the sum of small probabilities.
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I'l take your word for it, my brain was going down the line of "If the modem tests as failed and the test is highly accurate but the likelihood of a modem failure is low" etc etc, but I know better than to get into an argument about probability with a physicist.
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A physicist who knows nothing about stats, amazingly, because I was a theoretician solely, and so did not do a lot of modules at all, and no lab work after term 4, but experimentalist would definitely have to learn it yet why we all didn't, not just the ten theoreticians, is very odd.
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Anyway, no show today, so we now see if anything happens on friday and then } while ( true );. I was told to let A&A sales know about the no-shows, so I dropped them a line late this afternoon.
Openreach I think charges you, what, £90 if you are not there to let them in. So how much do I charge them, £180 for being two days late? It is a good think I did not have to take two three days off work waiting in for the man. But cynically maybe because here is here, they assume that no one could conceivably ever be out to work in the day, not without a wifey left in the kitchen. :o I sincerely hope and expect not. [Unfair.]
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Side track: I saw this post this morning: https://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/topic,14362.msg268409.html#msg268409
Is this me?
And a beginner's question, just checking my understanding: What exactly is the definition of a DP?
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Side track: I saw this post this morning: https://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/topic,14362.msg268409.html#msg268409
Is this me?
In my examination (via Google Street View) of things communications related, close to the Weaving Shed on the Isle of Skye, I saw no evidence of such a jointing post.
And a beginner's question, just checking my understanding: What exactly is the definition of a DP?
A Distribtuion Point is where the individual circuits to end-users will split off from the multi-pair distribution cable. It could be underground, surface mounted (on a building) or at a pole-top.
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I don't know if any of the tin boxen down on the main road at Harrapul near the Claymore restaurant might be anything to do with me. Janet has seen such. I have not.
BT now coming on Tue.
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I don't know if any of the tin boxen down on the main road at Harrapul near the Claymore restaurant might be anything to do with me. Janet has seen such. I have not.
The most recent Google Street View images for that section of the A87 are dated July 2011. So too old for me to examine any recent infrastructure. If Mrs Weaver would be able to take a few photographs, when next passing the target area, we might be able to identify the gubbins.
A few simple tests that you could do would be to enter each of the telephone numbers that are associated with each of your lines into the BT Broadband Availability Checker (https://www.dslchecker.bt.com/) and see what those pages display. If your EO lines have been migrated to route through a primary cross-connection point (PCP) it would display the cabinet number.
BT now coming on Tue.
To misquote the maestros --
'Twas on the Tuesday morning,
The Openreach technician came.
He called me Mr Sanderson,
Which isn't quite my name.
I can't come up with another four further lines, detailing a further misfortune, to finished off that verse . . .
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No mention of such from that page.
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You have a PM, with details of a file to download . . . ;)
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I have used that telecom-tariff thing, very good.
The BT thingummy checker says something about Bridge Tap: Status U
What does the U mean? Unknown maybe?
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The BT thingummy checker says something about Bridge Tap: Status U
What does the U mean? Unknown maybe?
Yes, I believe it is "U" for unknown.
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Mine says N for None or No and a recent check according to the date yet I have the latest socket fitted by an engineer.
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Am trying to get Tue appointment shifted as I realised that they said am and am never good so asked AA sales if BT could be moved to the 17th pm, but nothing heard yet and I have possibly blown it. Sales never responded to my email which was sent at weekend, so I successfully IRC'ed them today and they said they would try, but no confirmation yet.
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Sales did come back to me. The BT man is now set to come back on the 22nd in the afternoon to install new line cwcc@a.2, and so then we try again.
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BT man should be coming this afternoon. Due to serious illness I would be ready at my end, so the plugging in of the small switch and plugging in of all modems will have to be done later in the week. I have done the small switch config ready, also the Firebrick config with vlans is written, ready, but untested. I can't remember where I have got to with programming a modem ready to fulfill its role as modem #4 listening to admin i/f on 192.168.4.1. I have finished testing the tool that I have put together to customise XML config files for modems to set them to be modem #n, so I can just use that on a suitable modem.
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Hopefully it all goes well. :fingers:
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Mrs Weaver is too busy in the morning to help me with modems anyway, but we planned things so that she would be free in the afternoon to see the BT man. It is just a matter of testing the line at the time, that is all that really matters; making sure it works; and also ensuring nothing else gets broken in the process.
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BT man has been and gone. Very young chap from the North End.
Looks like there is no PPP possibly and the line entry in clueless for the new line cwcc@a.2 is light grey. Briefly said a hello to one of the support guys from AA in IRC but no one got back to me and time was getting on. So no luck at all. Will talk to AA in the morning.
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Modem synced this morning, following chat with AA support. It had been 'training' possibly all the time for umpteen hours.
Stats are utterly horrible, u/s sync is 43kbps !! downstream is 1.515M. So the upstream is slightly better than dialup at 33k.
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Nightmare. Asked RevK if he would help the guys out.
I can't remember the magic incantation for bits-per-bin listing.
Was incredibly ill yesterday, paralysed and burning, then burning cramping innards at night, now just legs burning a bit. All caused because the Fentanyl patch was running out. Memory is completely gone.
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Have now finally changed everything over
- new config employing VLANs installed in Firebrick
- a new modem programmed for its role in cwcc@a.2 - the only distinctive thing being its admin IPv4 address
- plugged small ZyXEL VLAN MUX switch into Firebrick and all modems into the small switch
The new line, cwcc@a.2, is not talking to AA or not talking PPPto the brick, one or the other.
No IP working to the admin interfaces of the modems, either because I have got the modems the wrong way round or because my method of NATing etc no longer works. So now, I can no longer talk to the modems through the Firebrick. Will have to debug the setup, try and find something new, or simply put a network cable from a modem to the main LAN switch instead.
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BT coming on the 27th
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That reads as if a total pig-ear has been made out of a simple "line and service" provision. :(
(If only I was next door . . . I'd be round with all my doings and gubbins.)
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It may not be so simple when its over many kilometres of mountainous terrain. :)
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The thing is it should have been just a matter of making the other pair in the drop cable live, but there were complications nearer the exchange apparently and then there was this mysterious fault on the moor which appeared on the very day of the first installation.
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That reads as if a total pig-ear has been made out of a simple "line and service" provision. :(
(If only I was next door . . . I'd be round with all my doings and gubbins.)
You will be made extremely welcome, especially with gubbins. Welcome extends to my other friends amongst the Kitizens too. I realise that Burakkucat's health is not perfect. There is the sleeper train from Euston to Inverness then the train to Caol Loch Aillse / Kyle of Lochalsh which is by the Skye Bridge. Or there are flights from Heathrow, Gatwick and Luton. The latter is £35, if it ever turns up, being easyjet. Flight does make it so easy tho and the cheapest option.
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BT coming on the 27th
I hope all goes well today :fingers:
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Bit of a cockup because it is apparently a bank hol in England, so no AA staff about if needed.
BT here now high resistance fault plus some other thing wrong but Janet couldn't remember - cwcc@a.2 new line installed 5 days ago, bad on day 0. At low pole now just across the road by the stream.
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Hopefully you will have had the services of Black McSheep.
The other part of the fault could possibly be --
- split legs of the pair.
- poor (low) AC balance.
- one leg dis.
It's probably not worth troubling Mrs Weaver to ask if any of the above could be what was also mentioned as, hopefully, it will be in the report that A&A will eventually receive.
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BT man worked at the pole for a while and then disappeared in the direction of civilisation. Did not come back to the house so job still incomplete. Got a phone call at around 17:45 BST to let us know there would be a continuation job, but don't know when that means.
Told AA what was going on.
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@burakkucat there is a huge amount of info in AA's clueless.aa.net.uk server and also I discovered another server called something like www.bt.aa.net.uk which is a web server that displays 'trouble' or problem report logs relating to a particular fault resolution job. I can see all the conversation with BT, most of which is very strange and confusing, and also a load of info coming from BT including tests’ results and updates on progress.
Nothing to show relating to today yet. No idea when they are going to come back. It is not very good that the first fellow left with it in such a state saying it was 'installed' but I had never got a demo from him because I think AA had not turned PPP or lower layers on in time so I could not actually have got everything up and running for a real test. That is why I did not detain the BT man last week and let him escape with no idea whether it was working properly or not. The idea last week seemed to be that if we were given good copper then that was enough, yet AA pay BTW for BTW’s DSL service so it is that that needs to be tested and demoed. Let me temporarily play along with the fantasy that there are all really several different companies, while as far as I know there is just one company, one legal entity and one company number for the one plain 'BT'. If there is no such a thing as a 'BT Wholesale engineer' only a 'BT Openreach engineer then there is a kind of gap in the service. I hope there is just no such thing and that they remember that.
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Nothing to show relating to today yet.
No, I suspect it will take a while before anything appears. Possibly not until Openreach close the task.
The idea last week seemed to be that if we were given good copper then that was enough, yet AA pay BTW for BTW’s DSL service so it is that that needs to be tested and demoed. Let me temporarily play along with the fantasy that there are all really several different companies, while as far as I know there is just one company, one legal entity and one company number for the one plain 'BT'. If there is no such a thing as a 'BT Wholesale engineer' only a 'BT Openreach engineer then there is a kind of gap in the service. I hope there is just no such thing and that they remember that.
I'm going to suggest that you leave it to Adrian Kennard to "play that game" and do not get involved. :-X
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@burakkucat Agreed. I indeed shall leave it all to AA to sort out, that's why they get paid the big bucks. It is not as if it is a priority anyway as I already have working internet access and am not in any hurry. After all, it has taken me five years or so to get round to placing this order anyway.
I would have got more detail if I had met the engineer but I could not get up because of too much pain and fuzziness/dizziness/burning.
I forgot to mention that the engineer told Janet that he could hear loud crackles on the line. So there you have it, not good.
[Moderator edited to combine three sequential posts into one.]
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Won't be much longer before we (Openreach) are a separate entity. TUPE going on as we speak .... new uniforms despatched and van-livery being changed.
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Won't be much longer before we (Openreach) are a separate entity. TUPE going on as we speak .... new uniforms despatched and van-livery being changed.
Good luck Black Sheep - I went through a TUPE exercise many years ago and it wasn't much fun.
On a lighter note, will you need to dye your fleece a new colour?
:)
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Good luck Black Sheep - I went through a TUPE exercise many years ago and it wasn't much fun.
On a lighter note, will you need to dye your fleece a new colour?
:)
Ha ha ..... kitz is my fashion consultant where my fleece is concerned. ;D ;D
Re: TUPE ... it appears it will be pretty much seamless and will be business as usual for the boots on the ground. We transfer out retaining all the same T&C's and pension rights.
For now. ;)
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You are going to be ok then? Very best wishes my friend. Wish you were up here.
This will be the fourth visit is it? I've lost count. Depends on whether or not you count the mysterious fault in the other pair that came out of nowhere on the day just before the first engineer turned up.
I think it must be pretty difficult. When copper joints are mended, are gel crimps now put in? Forgive my total ignorance, apologies in advance.
Janet is really busy today which is a problem. I probably will not be able to sit up much today, I suspect that I will be confined to bed.
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You are going to be ok then? Very best wishes my friend. Wish you were up here.
This will be the fourth visit is it? I've lost count. Depends on whether or not you count the mysterious fault in the other pair that came out of nowhere on the day just before the first engineer turned up.
I think it must be pretty difficult. When copper joints are mended, are gel crimps now out in? Forgive my total ignorance, apologies in advance.
Janet is really busy today which is a problem. I probably will not be able to sit up much today, I suspect that I will be confined to bed.
Thanks Weaver ..... I would hope it goes through OK.
Gel crimps are used in all instances of metallic UG joints ..... and as mooted above, a hefty D-side cable run in your geographical location is probably as testing as it gets for an OR engineer.
Local knowledge will play a major part, as our 'Network records' aren't always on the money.
Each job is different and without specifics of your task, I couldn't even begin to comment on what is required to be worked on ??.
Be slightly more comfortable in the knowledge that 'tails' (As this task will now begin to fall under), are heavily scrutinised with closure being put on them asap ..... in whatever form that may be. :)
Have as good a day as you possibly can.
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I would think then that in these cases a repair of a joint is an upgrade because now with gel crimps it won't ever corrode ?
We delved into the details of my copper in an earlier thread sine years back. I saw something in the regular BT line test results (the line is getting a quick test every hour) which if I understand it correctly says the line is 7.95km long which would be 600m longer than I thought. But what do I know.
Not much pain this morning, but unfortunately kept waking Janet up all night for more and more pills. So she is tired now.
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Ha ha ..... kitz is my fashion consultant where my fleece is concerned. ;D ;D
I do believe I did one in the exact Openreach purple a while ago in one of the Chat threads, but the consensus was the current colour was preferable. :D
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You did indeed ...... and I've been pulling the rams ever since with this beautiful purple number. ;) :) :)
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An engineer was doing something down in Broadford near or at the exchange this morning, told AA it was all good. It wasn't. It is still 46k upstream. That is not remotely acceptable, in fact it is about 10% of 'acceptable'. So now exactly in the same place as we were 6 days ago.
I've just forgotten now, how many engineers have we had? Previous lines were done in an hour or so, with the one visit. Other folks in the village are going to want copper pairs, metallic path facilities.
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I've just forgotten now, how many engineers have we had? Previous lines were done in an hour or so, with the one visit. Other folks in the village are going to want copper pairs, metallic path facilities.
This kind of thing does make me wonder how openreach is profitable. I'm sure this case is a pretty far outlier, but have recently seen 3+ openreach visits (vans and people in caverns) in my area for what a nice OR bloke I spoke to was "a few houses connected to the wrong place". How much do all these visits cost in real ££, a fair amount I guess.
Is communication on jobs usually this difficult black sheep?
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BT Fault 3-762548671326 Right When Tested; End User Equipment;IP session terminates on RAS, check cust logon
Did all the connections, extensions and DSL filters meet the minimum standards ?: Yes
Did you complete the end customer premises equipment module ?: No
Did you disconnect any end customer wiring to resolve a problem ?: No
Did you complete the Base module ?: Yes
Have you conducted a sync test (modem light on) ?: Yes
What was the result of the initial pair quality test ?: Fail
Did you complete the end customer Premises Wiring Module ?: No
Have you successfully demonstrated connectivity to the NTE ?: Yes
Did you replace the NTE and why ?: Did not replace
BT
Today 11:25:46 Test line called (L) cwcc@a
Today 11:24:22 Today 11:24:33 BT Fault 3-762548671326 Right When Tested; End User Equipment;IP session terminates on RAS, check cust logon
End customer contacted ?: 1602.01-I completed the ring ahead with the end customer JanetWard and progressed to their premises.
Did you get access to the end customer premises (inc access to internal comm / equipment rooms) ?: 749.01-Engineer got access to the internal comm / equipment rooms.
What did the end customer describe as the primary issue ?: 3762.01-End customer informed us there is no broadband connection.
Prior to any work where did you perform DeltaR / Autoprotective PQT ?: 3743.01-DeltaR / Autoprotective PQT test performed at NTE back plate.
Prior to any work, what was the leg difference in the DeltaR / Autoprotective PQT Test ?: 3763.02-The test failed due to resistance outside permissible range for broadband on 28/08/2018.
Did you complete TDR to locate the fault ?: 3748.01-TDR completed.
Where was the fault located ?: 743.02-Fault located in the D side underground network.
Have you completed all the base module activities listed below ?: 755.01-Base module checks completed.
What did you do to fix it ?: 745.11-Resolved issue in joint.
Did you replace the NTE ?: 750.03-NTE not replaced.
Where did you perform the final DeltaR / Autoprotective PQT ?: 3837.01-Final DeltaR / Autoprotective PQT performed at the NTE back plate.
What was the result of final DeltaR / Autoprotective PQT ?: 3838.04-The test failed due to resistance outside permissible range for broadband on 28/08/2018 .
Where did you perform the final PQT ?: 3835.05-Unable to / did not perform final PQT.
What was the result of the final PQT?: 3836.04-The line test did not initiate.
Where / how did you perform the final Eclipse / FastTest ?: 3417.03-Final FastTest completed.
What was the result of the final Eclipse / FastTest ?: 4000.03-Engineer was unable to complete an automated test. Engineer confirmed service restored on 28/08/2018 11:04:01. BT
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The problem in my view, don't know what you think, is partially that AA is not talking directly to the engineer. Engineer escapes without demoing that the service is now working, and AA is not helping and supervising him.
However, there is more to it perhaps.
As I see it, sometimes small ISPs need to rent the services of an engineer. Other times they should be getting BT Wholesale to oversee and manage the entire job if the ISP is buying DSL from BT, which is the case here, as opposed to to just buying the use of a copper pair and that is all. Now here AA has ordered working good DSL from BT Wholesale yet AA is expected to oversee and fix the delivery of a service from BTW that AA has paid for and BTW is not doing anything, it is not ensuring that BTW’s customer AA gets the service that has been paid for.
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I do not know if engineers have a time limit but when I had a problem (gradual decline eventually below handback threshold) the engineer worked on it solidly for quite some time even lifting manhole covers for a poled line (reroute perhaps) but end result was no phone call with an update, even worse broadband and he just disappeared and then a day or two later I realised I was without voice also. I made my unhappiness known to ISP.
Next engineer seemed to be even more experienced he had notes from past engineer (pity these were not shared with me as it would have at least calmed me down not sure even ISP had them - Plusnet).
End result of this visit was fully restored service back at max sync - result. He did have to ring engineers to take his other jobs he couldn't get too though which makes me believe either I would have been left again with no service or someone else would have had a engineer no show.
As an end user I think communication needs to improve both engineer and ISP to keep the customer informed. If something isn't fixed or made worse tell us, apologise and tell us why and when it will be fixed. This would have made it so much better - at least for me.
I also think having a near 25Mb drop in service being classed as acceptable (very wide acceptable range even wider now) is not on. I had previously raised a fault due to this months before and told everything was fine by an engineer - this was not the case as there was a damaged underground cable that was bypassed by the most recent engineer so clearly everything wasn't fine. If I didn't go below the threshold I would still be having issues.
I think engineers have a tough time but some engineers are way better than others, if there are time constraints on engineers these need to be removed, let engineers have a bit more freedom, finally keep the user/customer better informed and perhaps believe them if they are saying something is wrong.
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Something needs to be done about the current system, it just seems to be madness to me. If an engineer is stuck, there is I hope someone's that they can call for help?
And the oversight of engineers thing needs to be sorted out.
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On good thing that I found: the slowness if the one line upstream is not affecting the whole thing adversely. Last time the bad link halved the measured overall upstream. This time no such bad effect, so I can leave the new link up. Must have been packet loss before, from all of the crackles.
AA wants the modem left up and running for a while, and now that won't cause any problems so Janet can still get some work done.
This all started on the 8th of this month. A lot of the delay has been because Janet has been busy and can't just help on any day at all.
Any advice for me as to what I should do?
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This kind of thing does make me wonder how openreach is profitable. I'm sure this case is a pretty far outlier, but have recently seen 3+ openreach visits (vans and people in caverns) in my area for what a nice OR bloke I spoke to was "a few houses connected to the wrong place". How much do all these visits cost in real ££, a fair amount I guess.
Is communication on jobs usually this difficult black sheep?
Not a question I can answer I'm afraid johnson, as I don't have vision of costings in my role as a customer facing engineer.
I suppose it will be like many blue-chip companies in as much as they may have to take a hit on one task, but the other ninety-nine tasks prove to be profitable ??
Regarding communication on tasks ..... again, I would have to quote the 'percentages game' to generalise what we see.
In most cases most of the info required will be visible to us on the task ..... however, when something akin to Weavers task occurs, a lot of the notes may be missing from our screens but a call to our 'Task fluidity' people will reveal exactly what has, or hasn't, gone on. :)
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The problem in my view, don't know what you think, is partially that AA is not talking directly to the engineer. Engineer escapes without demoing that the service is now working, and AA is not helping and supervising him.
Several years ago (3/4?) Openreach put a proposal that they would be able to directly communicate with the EU. A couple of the large (LLU) put the blocks on this, thus any plans were scrapped.
The LLU ISPs have more direct communication with Openreach, whereas the likes of AAISP and even BTr have to go through BTw. I still think splitting Openreach off was a mistake and they should have instead split off Retail.
There is/was a lot of overlap between Openreach and BTw, In my mind it would have been better to leave all the network and plant under one organisation. That way the ISP's could purchase exactly what product(s) they need from one company (eg purchase just PSTN & DSL OR purchase PSTN, DSL & Backhaul). This would also have made all ISPs more equal irregardless if they were GEA or WBC customers.
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Not a question I can answer I'm afraid johnson, as I don't have vision of costings in my role as a customer facing engineer.
I suppose it will be like many blue-chip companies in as much as they may have to take a hit on one task, but the other ninety-nine tasks prove to be profitable ??
Sounds logical, thanks for the response :)
Lets hope the info for Weaver line gets shared in the end and things get sorted.
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I agree completely with kitz, sounds far more logical. I would have thought that change could be made even now though, no? Sell BTW to the new Openreach. Has that ship already sailed?
I don't know where I am now, I am hoping AA will get on with it and start pushing.
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AA was indeed beavering away yesterday. Another BT man coming this afternoon.
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Openreach man is here. Said "AC balance" to Janet. Has gone off on a mission.
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Openreach man is here. Said "AC balance" . . .
That certainly makes sense.
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Success! sort of, more thereon later.
Sync rates are now perfect following discovery of yet another bad joint near the Claymore restaurant on the main road, so E-side pair swap. Our man was working for something like five hours, long day for our diligent hero.
BT Fault 3-762548671326 Right When Tested; End User Equipment;All BT tests completed ok, for the reported symptoms
Did all the connections, extensions and DSL filters meet the minimum standards ?: Yes
Did you complete the end customer premises equipment module ?: No
Did you disconnect any end customer wiring to resolve a problem ?: No
Did you complete the Base module ?: Yes
Have you conducted a sync test (modem light on) ?: Yes
What was the result of the initial pair quality test ?: Fail
Did you complete the end customer Premises Wiring Module ?: No
Have you successfully demonstrated connectivity to the NTE ?: Yes
Did you replace the NTE and why ?: Did not replace
BT
Today 17:47:37 Today 17:48:01 BT Fault 3-762548671326 Right When Tested; End User Equipment;All BT tests completed ok, for the reported symptoms
End customer contacted ?: 1602.02-I completed the ring ahead but there was no answer (voice message left where available). I continued to progress to the end customer premises.
Did you get access to the end customer premises (inc access to internal comm / equipment rooms) ?: 749.01-Engineer got access to the internal comm / equipment rooms.
What did the end customer describe as the primary issue ?: 3762.03-End customer informed us that broadband is not stable / intermittent.
Prior to any work where did you perform DeltaR / Autoprotective PQT ?: 3743.01-DeltaR / Autoprotective PQT test performed at NTE back plate.
Prior to any work, what was the leg difference in the DeltaR / Autoprotective PQT Test ?: 3763.01-The test passed with resistance within permissible range for broadband on 2018-08-30T12:03:14.
Where did you do an initial PQT after DeltaR test ?: 3854.01-PQT performed at NTE backplate.
Prior to any work what was the result of the test ?: 3749.04-The test failed on 2018-08-30T12:03:14.
Prior to any work, did you identify any issue at the PCP or noise on the line ?: 4059.01-No noise, misrouted / crossed lines or left in FTTC jumpers in PCP on the line identified.
Where was the fault located ?: 743.03-Fault located in E side / PCP.
Have you completed all the base module activities listed below ?: 755.01-Base module checks completed.
What did you do to fix it ?: 745.01-Resolved with pair change between MDF and PCP.
Did you replace the NTE ?: 750.03-NTE not replaced.
Where did you perform the final PQT ?: 3835.02-Final PQT performed at the NTE front plate.
What was the result of the final PQT?: 3836.01-The test passed on 2018-08-30T17:22:25.
Where / how did you perform the final Eclipse / FastTest ?: 3417.03-Final FastTest completed.
What was the result of the final Eclipse / FastTest ?: 4000.01-The test passed on 30/08/2018 17:32:10. BT
Today 14:00:53 Today 17:47:37 BT Fault 3-762548671326 Engineer dispatched
Right When Tested; End User Equipment;All BT tests completed ok, for the reported symptoms
However, weirdness. With the new modem included, the combined measured upstream drops by 50% so measured combined u/s speeds are around 0.3Mbps according to various speed testers including AA's one. (In contrast, downstream has as expected gained 2.5 Mbps combined.)
So, Firebrick cockup in config - can't see it. Or upstream packet loss but not downstream. That is all I can think of just now. AA looking into it right now.
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So we now have a definite statement that one (if not all four) of the lines serving Torr Gorm are now routed via a (newly installed) primary cross-connection point (cabinet no 10, I believe) near the Claymore Restaurant. (If Mrs Weaver could photograph it, when next passing, a copy of the image would be appreciated, please.)
I appreciate that you will not be able to easily make the following sequence of tests but, ideally, it would be good to connect a computer directly to each of the four modems, in turn, and establish a PPP session from the computer to the end-point in A&A land. For each connection, note the synchronisation speeds and then throughput speeds.
Once that has been completed, reconnect all four modems to the mux (small managed switch) and connect a computer directly in place of the Firebrick FB2700. In theory it should be possible to configure the computer to, once again, establish a PPP session with the A&A end-point. It might be somewhat awkward due to the four VLANS . . . :-\
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I was indeed going to run an ethernet cable directly into that modem instead.
But I am afraid that don't have anything other than the Firebricks that can generate PPP if I understood correctly, no Pcs at hand, nor Macs and I broke the raspberry pi again some while ago.
I can get all the sync speeds courtesy of BT and AA in fact. That is what I relied on before I worked out how to do the whole NAT-through-brick thing.
Modems 2 /3 /4 are all about 440k u/s sync. Modem 2 is about the same as the others, at 2.9Mbps downstream.
The combined downstream measured rate presumably TCP payload according to say AA's speed tester is 10.2 Mbps so exactly as expected since before the combined downstream TCP payload rate was about 7.6Mbps from speedtesters.
With three modems the measured combined upstream was around 1.1Mbps, so I was expecting something like 1.4 - 1.5 Mbps u/s combined TCP payload.
I just wonder what I am doing wrong, or whether there is still some kind of real problem.
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One other thing, I notice that Mrs Weaver has got links 2 (new) and 4 swapped at the wall sockets, due to eqpt testing last week. I should expect this will not matter as the sync speeds are the same and Firebrick egress rate limited settings are the same too, or am I way way wrong?
I have an iPad monitoring tool that inspects links' states via the Firebrick and it actually rang a bell to tell me that there was a swapped pair of links. Yay. The tool works. (It spotted that the reported BBEU values were the wrong way round.)
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Resolved:
After Mrs Weaver swapped the links back the correct way round, the weirdness went away. I don't really understand that.
The two links were supposed to be the same.
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I don't understand it. But you have a good result. And better throughput speeds. :)
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Tests with a number of speed testers with the links unswapped show that now the combined upstream is about 1.1 Mbps so no improvement at all from adding a link, which is very disappointing indeed, and really perplexing given that obviously a substantial improvment is indeed achievable given the downstream results.
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That is very odd. :(
It is almost as if a cap has been applied to the US. Confused. ???
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I finally found the answer.
For some reason DLM had got upset and the upstream SNRM had got pushed right up on one of the other modems, probably to a 9dB target. Just now I noticed that the upstream SNRM on that modem #3 was 8.2dB. This had cut the upstream sync speed by over 120k to 318kbps from c. 440k before. Now this meant that the Firebrick was driving that modem way too hard, with an egress rate set for the old incorrect sync rate, and this meant enormous packet loss in that modem as the Firebrick tried to push too much of a share of the packets into it, trying to force it to go at 88% of 440kbps instead of 88% of 318kbps.
With this fixed, the upstream throughput jumped to 1.3Mbps from 1.05-1.1Mbps and that is with the reduced sync rate, 120k down, due to the crazy high target SNRM, so the throughput should be expected to improve to around 1.4Mbps exactly as predicted. So mystery solved completely.
I should have rechecked all the numbers.
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I am pleased to know that the mystery is finally solved. Is there no way that the circuits can "find their own levels"? It seems to be somewhat of a weak link that calculations must be made to tell the FIrebrick at what rate it should operate each circuit.
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It is an absolute nuisance that the Brick needs to be told what rate to police the packets at. I am told by RevK that the Firebrick does not actually pump the packets out at a particular rate, and does not hold them back until the correct release time, which is a real shame. It sends packets to the modems straight away. RevK says it merely polices the rate, imposing a maximum rate. It must also split the traffic in the correct fractions between links though, because otherwise I can't see how it would ever work as well or as sensitively as it does.
It is highly error-prone as it is though and needs constant checks. AA gets feedback from BT and TT regarding the line rates and that drives the routers regarding downstream.
If there were a modular software subsystem that could grope some nasty interface exposed by modems, html if really desperate, and find out what the current sync rates upstream are, then there would also need to be the black magic of what I call the 'fudge factor' - a parameter which I calculate to convert sync rate into an IP data rate by using knowledge of the particular protocol stack and its parameters relating to header bloat, PDU size and ATM overheads.
I have not managed to completely automate the process, although it is semi automated, the rate calculations are done by software, and the XML snippet required is generated automatically, the last step remaining is to integrate the Xml snippet with the correct rates in it into the rest of the XML config for the Firebick, because I have a tool already working that uploads a new XML config file into a running Firebrick and causes it to take effect immediately. I can't complete the whole chain because of stupid bugs in some of Apple's Workflow tools that I have used to write the whole lot in and I just cannot get them fixed.
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If all else fails, write it in native assembler. Or C, perhaps?
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Ah, would I not love to write it in C or asm or D. Apple makes it really hard to publish apps on the iPad, so I believe. Of course you can use the Apple development kits for Objective C and Swift. We have developers here of course. I don't speak Python but I am told that the Pythonista development system is superb.
The Apple Workflow thing is very cumbersome but has a number of extremely high level powerful routines that are very well suited to the kind of problems that the typical developer comes across. Regexes and handling html tag soup are things that it does very well. There is a catastrophic bug in the text file handling stuff that prevents you from reading certain files because you get back the file name sometimes instead of the file content. For example, opening a text file and searching it for a string is often impossible; the conditions are not well understood. A lot of routines that hand files just take an abstract file object or handle, not the content, so sometimes you think that file access has succeeded but only as long as it is a case if one routine that operates on files passing the resultant file handle to another such routine that takes that handle as an argument.
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Tidying up some loose ends and cross referencing posts.
If Mrs Weaver could photograph it, when next passing, a copy of the image would be appreciated, please.)
See this thread here (https://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/topic,22355.0.html)
See this thread here (https://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/topic,22341.0.html) regarding line testing.
[Moderator note: Above adjustment was made at the request of Weaver.]
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[Moderator note: A sequence of five successive posts to this thread have been removed, as requested by Weaver.]