Kitz Forum

Broadband Related => ADSL Issues => Topic started by: Weaver on March 24, 2021, 05:38:52 AM

Title: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: Weaver on March 24, 2021, 05:38:52 AM
Using my new stats-summary tool, I’ve noticed that line 3 upstream is giving ES, more than 60 per hour. I looked at the graph on clueless.aa.net.uk, and I can see red for packet loss, so called “dripping blood”. I resynched the modem and the upstream speed dropped to ~184kbps [!!] :( Before this it was just under 400k u/s.

This is not good; the line is contributing very little to the total upstream combined speed and I need all the upstream I can get. We’re getting down towards dial-up speeds; well, ISDN anyway. Wonder why its speed has suddenly halved? Its SNRM is around 6dB, as it should be. It hasn’t gone through the roof. Downstream is ok. I have asked AA for some advice.

When I first saw the errors, I first tried increasing the upstream target SNRM to 9dB instead of 6. This of course made it even slower, something like 128kbps, I forget exactly, and it connected at just over 10dB SNRM.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: burakkucat on March 24, 2021, 04:22:18 PM
b*cat reads . . . but has nothing about which to write.  :(
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: Weaver on March 24, 2021, 10:37:17 PM
I’m still getting a few ES on line 3 upstream even at an SNRM u/s of 9.6 dB, and that’s down to 158kbps upstream sync rate !
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: Weaver on March 25, 2021, 04:25:06 PM
Not surprisingly AA has said that there’s nothing they can do, after spending some time looking into it. They have asked me to do a quiet line test.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: Weaver on March 29, 2021, 06:53:16 PM
Line 3 upstream went down to 120 kbps and has since risen to 240kbps, but on Sunday night it was back to normal at 389k u/s, until it dropped the connection today (Monday), and that’s when the speed dropped once again ti what it is now.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: burakkucat on March 29, 2021, 06:58:25 PM
 :(
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: Weaver on March 29, 2021, 09:07:26 PM
I am seriously thinking of getting rid of line 3 and getting a replacement line, but the most important thing is not to get back the exact same pair that I got before, so I would need to order an additional line first and then cease this line. What do you think? I would have to talk this through with AA of course.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: burakkucat on March 29, 2021, 09:27:39 PM
I am seriously thinking of getting rid of line 3 and getting a replacement line, but the most important thing is not to get back the exact same pair that I got before, so I would need to order an additional line first and then cease this line. What do you think?

Logically, yes, that would work. However, given your location and what would be required to provide another pair for yet another circuit, Openreach may decline to accept the order.

Quote
I would have to talk this through with AA of course.

Yes, see what A&A think.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: Weaver on March 30, 2021, 03:37:47 AM
> may decline to accept the order.

Indeed, I had thought just that. And it also means all the unnecessary work of running a third drop cable out from the poles.



I’m getting packet loss now with this line (line 3). This is not good at all, so have informed AA. See:
(https://i.postimg.cc/W4WqS1J1/671321-EE-ABB4-44-B8-81-E5-AE962-BA759-D9.jpg)

In the snapshot above, the line status is red (down) currently because I had just forced a resync, in order to try and restore stability, and the link had not come back up yet.


It seems that all the problems are to do with data corruption in the upstream path of line 3; the following is downstream | upstream, note the ES counts for the period since the link came up:

Since Link time = 2 hours 3 min 55 sec
FEC:      304      35673
CRC:      19      2184
ES:      10      481
SES:      0      36
UAS:      0      0
LOS:      0      0
LOF:      0      0
LOM:      0      0


Is ~233 ES per hour very bad news ? Seems to me that it is not good. Both downstream and upstream are set to a 6dB target SNRM. The presence of PhyR L2retx is presumably keeping the uncorrected error counts so very low compared to the upstream.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: jelv on March 30, 2021, 08:23:16 AM
How much is it costing you per month in total for this sub-standard service?
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: Weaver on March 30, 2021, 09:29:19 AM
Not sure, I’d have to check. Unsure about figures including or not including the copper line ‘line rental’ (which goes to AA, not to BT or OR) and not sure about VAT, but I’m guessing £30 pm very roughly. I buy data separately; it’s independent of how many lines I have on this old ‘units’ tariff.

It all went badly wrong at the start of last year, with repeat faults that never got properly fixed, just temporary fixes that no-one understands. It would need someone from OR with a huge brain and a lifetime of experience on the problem to get it thoroughly sorted out. One problem is that AA does not get back sufficiently detailed info from the engineers in their notes- mind you, they engineers have not known how they fixed the problems anyway, so that doesn’t help matters.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: jelv on March 30, 2021, 09:49:28 AM
I meant all in including line rental. I was guessing it must be somewhere around £100.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: jelv on March 30, 2021, 10:03:47 AM
Something to consider in the future. From what I've seen their latency is going to be perfectly acceptable.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: Weaver on March 30, 2021, 10:04:59 AM
All in, inc VAT it will be £30-40 pm. It’s not even close to £100. :-) And my other costs that are not per-line are: download units (varies), email, renewal of lots of domain names and costs of 4G data SIMs per month. A lot of very small items.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: jelv on March 30, 2021, 10:07:19 AM
Surely four times line rental is approaching £50 before you add the ADSL?
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: Weaver on March 30, 2021, 10:18:47 AM
Sorry, I meant per line per month for that figure.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: burakkucat on March 30, 2021, 03:04:54 PM
. . . it also means all the unnecessary work of running a third drop cable out from the poles.

If I am remembering correctly, the high-level (upper) pole has been given a D warning label. So no climbing.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: jelv on March 30, 2021, 06:09:40 PM
So around £120 to £160 per month. If Starlink turns out to be even half as good as they are saying it looks like that would dive you a huge uplift in speeds for about two thirds the cost. And I bet it would be a lot more reliable.

https://uk.pcmag.com/networking/132246/what-is-starlink-spacexs-much-hyped-satellite-internet-service-explained
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: tubaman on March 31, 2021, 08:34:10 AM
So around £120 to £160 per month. If Starlink turns out to be even half as good as they are saying it looks like that would dive you a huge uplift in speeds for about two thirds the cost. And I bet it would be a lot more reliable.

https://uk.pcmag.com/networking/132246/what-is-starlink-spacexs-much-hyped-satellite-internet-service-explained

I'm surprised that @Weaver hasn't looked at a satellite options before - eg http://www.northsat.co.uk/. The main downside is of course the massive latency, but If you're not gaming that may not be an issue.
Interestingly I also found this article - https://uk.pcmag.com/switches/128545/spacexs-satellite-internet-service-latency-comes-in-under-20-milliseconds - for Starlink which claims latency is only 20ms. I would take this with a large pinch of salt!
 :)
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: parkdale on March 31, 2021, 10:21:53 AM
The only problem I see with using Satellite broadband is weather, rain/wind  :(
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: jelv on March 31, 2021, 11:08:40 AM
Interestingly I also found this article - https://uk.pcmag.com/switches/128545/spacexs-satellite-internet-service-latency-comes-in-under-20-milliseconds - for Starlink which claims latency is only 20ms. I would take this with a large pinch of salt!

If you had read the article I linked you'd know this was a fact, not a claim.

All satellites up until now have been orbiting at a height of around 20,000 miles. Receiver to satellite, and back to ground station, then back again with the reply is 4x20,000 miles which at the speed of light takes 430 milliseconds before you take anything else in to account. Starlink are low earth orbit satellites at a height of around 300 miles (that's why they need so many to provide continuous service as each one quickly disappears over the horizon), which adds 6ms.

It wouldn't surprise me if for Weaver the latency on Starlink was better than he gets now.

Finally, if you'd read the article, you'd have seen this:

Quote
Can You Game on Starlink?

Yes, on YouTube, you can find numerous videos of Starlink users playing games such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive on the service. There may be some lag, especially as your connection hops from one Starlink satellite to another, but users report the experience is playable.

Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: jelv on March 31, 2021, 11:15:20 AM
The only problem I see with using Satellite broadband is weather, rain/wind  :(

Unlike the issues Weaver has with his current 'service'?

I hate too think how many hours of his life Weaver spends nursing his setup, contacting AAISP, dealing with engineers.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: RealAleMadrid on March 31, 2021, 12:25:30 PM
@Parkdale When I used a dish to watch Freesat the only time there was a problem was during a very heavy snow shower. I don't think rain or wind would be problem.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: parkdale on March 31, 2021, 01:11:36 PM
I was looking at the pictures of the reception/transmission dish they will be supplying, seems small.. bigger dishes are better, my Freesat dish is 2x the (normal) size required for signal down here on the south coast.

With the amount of call outs Weavers had, hopefully OR will start to think about Fibre delivery :fingers:
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: burakkucat on March 31, 2021, 03:25:38 PM
My only concerns, if a Starlink service was used at "The Weaving Shed", are the extremely high winds experienced at certain times of the year and the random atmospheric lightning discharges which are rather prone to occur over the Isle of Skye.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: tubaman on March 31, 2021, 05:04:07 PM
If you had read the article I linked you'd know this was a fact, not a claim.
...

I clearly didn't read down far enough - sorry.  :-[
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: niemand on April 01, 2021, 05:23:00 PM
Weaver is in the very strange situation of having a /26 of public IP address space which would almost certainly be lost moving to a new ISP. If they have to fill out a RIPE form to justify it it'll go nowhere.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: Weaver on April 02, 2021, 05:46:30 AM
If I remember correctly things started all going very wrong at the start of last year. OR is bringing a cherry picker to ascend the pole(s) that are marked ‘no climb’. It’s coming all the way from Fort William next Tuesday or Wednesday. An Engineer popped in briefly to tell my wife this and make some measurements.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: Chrysalis on April 05, 2021, 12:00:13 AM
> may decline to accept the order.

Indeed, I had thought just that. And it also means all the unnecessary work of running a third drop cable out from the poles.



I’m getting packet loss now with this line (line 3). This is not good at all, so have informed AA. See:
(https://i.postimg.cc/W4WqS1J1/671321-EE-ABB4-44-B8-81-E5-AE962-BA759-D9.jpg)

In the snapshot above, the line status is red (down) currently because I had just forced a resync, in order to try and restore stability, and the link had not come back up yet.


It seems that all the problems are to do with data corruption in the upstream path of line 3; the following is downstream | upstream, note the ES counts for the period since the link came up:

Since Link time = 2 hours 3 min 55 sec
FEC:      304      35673
CRC:      19      2184
ES:      10      481
SES:      0      36
UAS:      0      0
LOS:      0      0
LOF:      0      0
LOM:      0      0


Is ~233 ES per hour very bad news ? Seems to me that it is not good. Both downstream and upstream are set to a 6dB target SNRM. The presence of PhyR L2retx is presumably keeping the uncorrected error counts so very low compared to the upstream.


To me the SES is what stands out.

In my experience of years and years on DSL, My rule of thumb is ES on their own are not usually service affecting (unless they trigger DLM), but SES usually are, and yep you have SES on that upstream.

If you was getting a steady flow of ES but each ES was maybe just 1 or 2 CRC, you probably would have no red on your graph and wouldnt notice it, but looks like its coming in large bursts.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: GigabitEthernet on April 05, 2021, 10:13:56 AM
You seem to pay a huge amount of money for a quite unreliable service, you seem to have quite frequent problems. Is it time to switch?
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: tubaman on April 05, 2021, 12:20:11 PM
You seem to pay a huge amount of money for a quite unreliable service, you seem to have quite frequent problems. Is it time to switch?
The issue is that @Weaver has few options for switching. Unless he moves to a 4G or satellite service then AAISP are one of few who will offer to bond multiple lines, and this is the only way he can get a remotely usable service.
 :)
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: GigabitEthernet on April 05, 2021, 01:36:00 PM
Just find it odd they spend so much time ramping for AAISP here when it seems pretty obvious they don't offer a particularly good service.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: RealAleMadrid on April 05, 2021, 02:50:11 PM
You've got completely the wrong end of the stick about AAISP, they are providing Weaver with the best possible service in the circumstances. His phone lines are many miles long with only ADSL2+ available so they are bonding 4 lines to get about 10Mbps or so downstream. No other ISP would be prepared to go to the trouble for one customer and deal with the many support calls when the lines have faults. That is why Weaver and others praise A&A so highly. :)
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: parkdale on April 05, 2021, 04:01:23 PM
Sadly even mobile phone service is patchy as well in his area :( so there no good options left.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: jelv on April 05, 2021, 04:20:09 PM
Just find it odd they spend so much time ramping for AAISP here when it seems pretty obvious they don't offer a particularly good service.

If you look at this (https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Hotel_Review-g7277628-d3822695-Reviews-Skye_Shepherd_Huts-Heast_Isle_of_Skye_The_Hebrides_Scotland.html#/media/3822695/?albumid=101&type=0&category=101) you'll get an idea of how remote they are with his lines coming across miles of open moorland. Predicted ADSL speed is range 1Mbps to 3Mbps and he's miles from a cabinet so no FTTC.

The truth is that it's OpenReach that is not providing a very good service. AAISP have been amazing for him, accepting all faults and getting OR to work on them. I suspect most other ISPs would have left him with a far worse service and told him that's as good as it gets - accept it.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: meritez on April 05, 2021, 05:22:48 PM
3% can get FTTC according to this: https://www.telecom-tariffs.co.uk/codelook.htm?xid=599232&postcodeloc=10782&cabinet=P10

Why does that look like a Street cabinet outside the exchange.
75% can get less than 2 Mbps as they are on exchange 8.

The other 22% must be sheep  :lol:
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: Ronski on April 05, 2021, 07:56:26 PM
Weaver is in the very strange situation of having a /26 of public IP address space which would almost certainly be lost moving to a new ISP. If they have to fill out a RIPE form to justify it it'll go nowhere.

Presumably Weaver would still be able to use https://www.aa.net.uk/broadband/l2tp-service/ and thus retain his IP addresses.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: GigabitEthernet on April 05, 2021, 09:49:54 PM
Seems like a lot of money to pay for an unreliable service. If AAISP are good as they are supposed to be, they should surely have already resolved all of these issues.

Just think it’s expensive for not much gain.

Anyway, sorry for polluting the thread.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: Weaver on April 05, 2021, 10:53:10 PM
What Jelv said.

The problem is that Openreach are useless and there’s a limit to the amount of control AA has over the situation. Every time a fault has arisen, AA has resolved it very quickly. From my point of view, the service (meaning internet access) has always been 100% reliable because if a line becomes faulty, it doesn’t affect the reliability of the overall service at all, in the sense that the overall service never goes down, there is just a drop in speed. If one line becomes extremely sickly I can just knock it out of the bonded set. Even if all four lines were to go down, the router would just switch over to 3G. So the reliability is outstanding and that’s what really matters to me.

Also, apologies for stating the obvious, I have four lines, so I’m likely to have roughly four times as many faults per unit time.

It seems as if something different is possibly happening this time, because OR sent out an engineer who just made some initial measurements and told Janet that a cherry picker was coming, but didn’t fix anything, and didn’t tell Janet where or what the fault was. I don’t know if they had located the fault very quickly that day last week and had found that there was a problem in the drop cable(s) or their joints, or whether they had just decided to replace the drop cable(s) in order to ensure there are no more callouts? (Touch wood; complete guess)
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: Weaver on April 07, 2021, 08:58:43 AM
Two Openreach vehicles have turned up, one normal OR van on the road and a cherry-picker at the house by the pole.

(https://i.postimg.cc/NG8s5HHn/A04-D64-D2-FDAE-45-C2-9-F68-F545078891-F3.jpg)

(https://i.postimg.cc/XYtS2j5F/0-A291-EE9-B057-461-D-9088-6036-B052-E169.jpg)

Janet saw one of the two men unwrapping new drop cables from a packet. She went to talk to the OR man and he said that OR doesn’t use twin-pair drop cables any more, so they’re putting in two new drop cables to replace the one that was (line 1+line 3). Drilling an additional hole just now.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: Weaver on April 07, 2021, 03:24:30 PM
Since they have replaced cables, the results look excellent, although it’s rather early still. Line 3 looks clean and has 1 ES downstream and 2 downstream CRC errors since it came up following the repair, which is over a period of 2 and a half hours ago. The errors were close to the link-up event, as best I can make out.

Line 1 is looking good after the replacement, although its downstream speed seems a bit slow which could be to do with my messing around with settings in clueless. (I was getting so many link down/up messages from Andrews & Arnold’s CQM that I tried as an experiment to change a clueless per-line setting to "extra stable" or "super stable" and I think I got mixed up between line 3 and line 1, looking at the wrong page; anyway, this may have changed the speed and I have now initiated a reset command to force it back to normal, although this takes some time to take effect.) I am now using 6dB downstream SNRM for all links.

So an excellent result, fingers crossed.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: burakkucat on April 07, 2021, 04:09:28 PM
. . . went to talk to the OR man and he said that OR doesn’t use twin-pair drop cables any more, so they’re putting in two new drop cables to replace the one that was (line 1+line 3).

Interesting. I guess that they didn't have any of the twin-pair drop cable left in the local store and what there is, nationally, will be used up as and when.

As for the faults you have experienced, ever since that nearby lightening ground-strike (in early 2020 ?) which took out some multi-pair cables from NSBRD, near the road junction to Heasta at Harrapul, I have had a little niggling suspicion regarding the integrity of the pairs that supply "The Weaving Shed". Time will tell.  :-\
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: Weaver on April 07, 2021, 10:46:03 PM
Unfortunately the good news did not last. The upstream has dropped to 61k [!] There have been several link-down periods tonight and periods of packet-loss. I have given AA the bad news. If this line is going to prove too much of a nuisance for AA and make life a misery for them, then I will just cease the line.

(https://i.postimg.cc/nLnnBWV8/F6782-D5-A-1-E7-C-4119-A144-86055-D203827.jpg)
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: burakkucat on April 07, 2021, 11:24:39 PM
Unfortunately the good news did not last. The upstream has dropped to 61k [!]

  :o  :(  :wall:
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: Chrysalis on April 08, 2021, 12:41:14 AM
Its giving me memories of my ADSL line here, it was around 4km even though I am in a city and had all sorts of issues, the only thing that made the line stable was SRA, which only one isp in the entire country ever had SRA working properly. :(
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: Weaver on April 08, 2021, 01:36:50 AM
Someone ought to be able to work this out. Why only line 3 upstream? And in fact why is it only upstream that is incredibly slow? (Mind you, this is having not yet properly looked at any downstream issues since the drop cable swap-out, regarding packet loss.)

And, agrees with Burakkucat :)

Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: burakkucat on April 08, 2021, 04:17:12 PM
In all seriousness, if senior management (and yourself) could cope without Internet access for, say, one hour it might be a worthwhile experiment to power off each modem and then disconnect each one from its respective NTE5. Once the "off time" has elapsed, power on each modem and then reconnect each one to its respective NTE5.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: Weaver on April 09, 2021, 02:20:17 AM
Will do. I’d be interested to hear more about your thinking behind leaving a modem powered off for the duration vs leaving it powered up but merely disconnected.

I’ll recruit senior management for this task in the morning.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: tubaman on April 09, 2021, 08:16:08 AM
It is curious that the fault appeared gone after the drop-wire was replaced but returned a few hours later. This suggests to me either a poor joint/connection somewhere or a modem starting to fail once 'warmed up'.
If you've already tried swapping the modem and power supply, which I seem to remember you have, then I'd try disconnecting and reconnecting both ends of the line cord a few times to clean those connections and then another line cord if that made no difference. At least then you have proved that none of your equipment is the cause and that it is definitely an Openreach issue.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: Weaver on April 09, 2021, 01:06:50 PM
I haven’t swapped over the modem or its psu recently. I just think that I spoke too soon the other day, saying that all was good; it was good/bad for various periods, that’s my my best guess.

AA has suggested that I disconnect the modem for a while so that it doesn’t muck up the overall bonded connection, saying that it’s pointless to try sending anything upstream up a 61k sync rate link. AA is going to book one final Openreach engineer on it and then we have agreed that we will give up if no success.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: burakkucat on April 09, 2021, 11:18:31 PM
Will do. I’d be interested to hear more about your thinking behind leaving a modem powered off for the duration . . .

The modem will then perform a cold boot, with all counters, etc, initialised to zero and the physical electronics in a (temperature) cold state. As tubaman has mentioned, above.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: Weaver on April 10, 2021, 11:36:59 AM
Oh I see, I didn’t get the literal temperature thing. Good point, thanks Tubaman, have done as you suggest.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: Weaver on April 11, 2021, 06:14:18 AM
The engineer from OR arrived on Saturday afternoon. Janet really needed my help in speaking the tech words to the engineer, so I wobbled out of my bed and was manoeuvred into the infrastructure- and servers room, aka Janet's dressing room. I explained very carefully to the engineer what the fault was, its importance and the background. He really ‘got it’; it was quite clear that he understood perfectly, but he didn’t have a solution. Fortunately there was something else wrong besides the agreed appalling u/s sync rate, which was a number of ES upstream during a 5 min long standard test. (Is it called a "close-out" test?) Because of this fail on ES and the general mysterious vexing nature of the problem, he phoned BTW support 2nd level or whatever it’s called; again couldn’t hear half of it; Anyway our man was escalated past the first-line representatives, but couldn’t get anything useful. He thought about changing target SNRM but I told him that that wouldn’t make a remotely big enough difference, which indeed turned out to be the case. He asked me about capping of the upstream - I had forgotten that there is such a thing for ADSL2 upstream - and I said that no one had applied any such thing, and it would show up in clueless’ logs anyway.

After we had discussed it for a little while, our engineer then left, saying he was heading to the exchange.

Whatever he then did, he somehow had fixed the problem and phoned back, so I gave him the good news that I agreed that it was looking superb at my end too! Even if he didn’t know how; he did something. Back up to 399 kbps @ 6dB. So a superb result.

Because the sound quality was better, yet totally appalling, the engineer's call to BTW was ‘audible’ to me (barely) on the phone’s loudspeaker. I asked the engineer about the audio quality of these calls and he said it was a continuing pain in the neck. At times we couldn’t make out anything at  all, due to a combination of bad call quality and very heavy Indian accents. It was very interesting to get an insight into what an engineer gets up to when he/she is in a call; I’ve never been in attendance before.

So line 3 has been saved from the chop.  ;D

I just wish there were fewer mysteries.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: tubaman on April 11, 2021, 09:32:44 AM
Let's hope it remains fixed as issues like this that go away but you're not sure why are really frustrating. I suspect he reseated a card and/or connection of some sort in the exchange.
 :)
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: burakkucat on April 11, 2021, 10:22:07 PM
Hopefully that good news is not short-term.  :)

I wonder what feedback, regarding the engineering visit, A&A will receive?
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: Weaver on April 12, 2021, 07:16:27 AM
AA should get the engineer’s notes and they have already had my full write up, which unfortunately omits the crucial last chapter if there is any, if anything was known about any solution found.

I am know left with another problem for AA to look at, that of dripping blood on line 3.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: burakkucat on May 20, 2021, 10:14:35 PM
[Moderator note: This post and the five that follow it have been split off from the AA MSO topic.]

I get three times as many messages because I have three lines.

What has happened to number four?
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: Weaver on May 22, 2021, 07:54:59 AM
Line 3 upstream was so bad that I killed it. There was no way of getting OR too do the right thing as they don’t give any kind of upstream guarantee, which is ridiculous as they should treat it the same as downstream. I agreed with AA that we would get nowhere with OR after an unsuccessful call-out. Line 3 was always slow on upstream, with only ~400kbps as opposed to >500k sync rate. But other than that it was ok until a month or so ago. I also decided that there was a possibility that upstream might be affecting TCP and I mentioned this to AA who agreed that it was not an unreasonable thought. The sync rate had been ~150k @ 6dB or even worse at higher SNR. Downstream was excellent. I should really split this off as an obituary thread.

I’m thinking of getting a new line but guess what, I’m bound to get exactly the same pair that I’ve just given up, knowing my luck. I could of course just risk it, as what’s the worst that could happen. The pair I’ve given up would be fine for POTS usage, if anyone still does that. I outfit also need to organise the engineer a bit to make share that she or he doesn’t give me an unneeded drop-cable.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: burakkucat on May 22, 2021, 05:30:28 PM
Line 3 upstream was so bad that I killed it.

Looking in my notes, are you referring to the third line you had installed (i.e. drop cable 2, pair 1) or the line carrying the *@a.3 service (i.e. drop cable 1, pair 2)?
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: Weaver on May 22, 2021, 06:22:58 PM
It is the line carrying the *@a.3 service that is no more and ‘[I think that is indeed drop cable 1, pair 2, just as you said.

I had been making changes (upgrades in flexibility) to software that I have written for the iPad that allow for a non-dense, one-to-on mapping between so-called "slot ids" ie the number in ‘*@a.3" AA’s service identifier and the interface object that it maps to in the FB2900 and the associated VLANs that connect from the FB2900 to each modem. With no #3 any more, the VLAN numbers are 101, 102, 104 now (vlan=100+slot_id, or 100-1+slot_id, I forget which). Originally the slot id numbers were assumed to always be consecutive and that had to be changed so several new functions were written mapping a given slot id to one of various link/modem property values and these functions hid the details of such mappings. These get_property_xx( slot_id ) functions are driven by a small database. Even though these changes were made in readiness, some bugs were still found when a non-trivial mapping came into being with the deletion of the various slot-id #3 objects leaving 1, 2, 4. Mappings use the same slot ids as before, it’s just that there is a hole/gap in the set of input values to the function, as there is no longer any slot=3. Debugging really subtle bugs in the middle of the night. Ho hum.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: burakkucat on May 22, 2021, 06:27:33 PM
Acknowledged.  :)

With only three lines, to three modems, you could do away with the small switch (acting as a MUX) and connect the three modems directly to the FB2900.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: Weaver on May 22, 2021, 06:49:33 PM
I could indeed. I am inclined to keep it though as an added layer of protection for the Firebrick - I’d rather have modems and the small VLAN switch die first when the next lightning surge hits. It saved me last year. I’m aware that this is wishful, over-optimistic thinking though and it doesn’t permit complacency.

I am thinking carefully about getting a replacement copper pair; a new line *@a.3. Was talking with my wife about it and the associated difficulties. How not to get exactly the same pair again!
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: Alex Atkin UK on May 23, 2021, 09:02:34 AM
I'm kinda surprised you didn't keep the line and order a 5th, seeing as its pretty much the only way to guarantee you wont get the same line.
Title: Re: Line 3 Upstream (Again)
Post by: Weaver on May 24, 2021, 10:26:50 AM
That’s a good point. I maybe should have done that. I thought I would just be denied a fifth, because when I ordered two lines before BT just said no. I tried again, much later on, ordering just one line, the fourth, and was successful.