Kitz Forum
Broadband Related => ISPs => Topic started by: Dabber on August 19, 2007, 12:45:17 PM
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Another new poster here. I've read a few threads re BT and having just migrated from Orange to BT (Option 3) and having numerous problems with speeds I thought this may interest a few BT users.
Having waited for the 10 day settling in period and also having Vision installed during this time, I was amazed to find my speed at less than 1.5mb. Contacting the Indian helpdesk was a nightmare. My slow speed was down intially to the CPU (it was running at 10% when running the speedtest). After convincing them they were talking thru their aris, it was then blamed on Vision being incompatible!!
After picking myself off the floor I had to explain that Vision was THEIR system and if it was imcompatible then they could take it out and then explain to Ofcom why they were marketing the product. The phone was then put down on me (NB I was never agressive all through the 2 hours on the phone). Anyway eventually someone who knew what they were talking about. Apparently my line was capped at 2 Mb. I explained that paying £22.99/month I expected at least double that speed. He agreed and requested the order Management team take the cap off and hey presto my speed is now around 5.5Mb.
Why the hell they put a cap on my line I don't know but if I hadn't asked them to remove it (and threaten to cancel the contract) I would still be running at a max of 2Mb. In fact at one stage my speed went down to was 138kbs for 2 days >:(
Mike
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hi mike and welcome to the forum
i'm on option 3 since jan this year and have had umpteem problems with bt. not a capping problem but a throttling/shaping prob. i argued with them for months actually telling the indian call centre what my problem was and how to fix it but none of the departments would admnit to traffic shaping. eventually they updated their fair use policy and hey presto, they admitted it.
i wrote to them complaining bitterly about the bad service and what their policy was on lying to customers and eventually offered me $7.30 compensation !!!
i told them where to shove it but they still gave it me !!!
BT ey??
paul
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Hi Mike and welcome.
I rather suspect that what actually happened is that your IP profile was stuck at 2 Mbps, rather than deliberate capping. This seems to be a rather common occurrence, and the help desk really ought to know about it. But we see so many messages from unhappy BT customers that I can only conclude that their help desk people get next to no training in doing anything other than reading the scripts.
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Hi and welcome :)
Could be numerous things going on here.
>> Apparently my line was capped at 2 Mb.
Wondering - what was your speed at Orange? It could be possible that if you had a 2Mb fixed connection with them, then during migration your line could have come across as 2Mb and not been upgraded to MAXdsl.
Your router should tell you your sync speed did you happen to notice what speed you were syncing to the exchange at?
Theres also the possibility that during the transfer you got whats known as a stuck 2Mb profile - which is quite common for some newly maxed lines.
As Pwiggler has also said - there have been problems with BT throttling connections during peak and traffic shaping which has effected all protocols... running at 1.5Mb seems to be the "normal" peak time throttling.
>> In fact at one stage my speed went down to was 138kbs for 2 days
That could be a bad sync which affected your IP profile - which will limit your speeds for a few days until it adjusts.
[edit]
Sorry eric our posts crossed - see the stuck bRAS problem also occured to you.
Although BTr should be aware that such things can and do occur... BT (and AOL) seem to be one of the ISPs whose help desks have little knowledge about it. :?
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Hi Kitz,
Looking at my router stats completely confused me. The downstream speeds were all over the place for the first few days (ranging from 2600 to 6500), but when the engineer came to install Vision, it shot up 8096 and stayed there for 24 hours and then dived to around 4000. I ran a few speed tests, including BT Speedtester and the speed tests were as alot lower (some below 1000), hence why I got onto BT.
With orange the speed was pretty constant around 1500 to 1800 when it worked. I used to have outages of 2 or 3 days at a time with Orange always blaming my wireless network hence me moving to a "better and more reliable ISP" - I am a sucker for punishment ;) . Oh and believe me BT's helpdesk are IT gurus compared with Orange's helpdesk.
Mike
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That does sound as though you were on a fixed 2 Mbps connection with Orange. Could you show us your router stats (particularly the attenuation and noise margin figures) as this may help us to diagnose the problem.
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Hi Eric,
The stats are:
Bandwidth (u/d): 448/8096 - this has changed again this afternoon as it was 448/7584 this morning
Attenuation (u/d): 16/32
SN Margin (u/d): 20/5.5
Ouput power (u/d) 12/19.5
What I have noticed are the CRC and HEC errors (not sure what they are). The stats for these are:
CRC (u/d): 0/9814
HEC (u/d): 0/6812
Things seem OK at the moment. Maybe they have sorted things out, but this is BT we are talking about. Reading the many posts it seems anything can happen.
BTW thanks for the quick responses. Suppose you aren't interested in taking over the running of the BT helpdesk :)
Mike
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At 32db Atten then your current sync rate looks about right. It was possibly lower this morning because something had made your line unstable at some point and it dropped the connection resyncing at a lower speed. 7584kbps is still within range though.
Your SNR Margin of 5.5 looks ok right now - but if it falls too low during the course of the evening then you may resync again at the lower speed.
CRC and HEC errors (without going into techy detail) are often a sign that your router has had patches when its not quite been able to hear the data and some packets have been lost. These data packets will have been re-requested by your router. A lot of errors can be an indication that your line is about to loose sync.
If you are syncing in the 7500 - 8000 region then your IP profile is going to be around 6500, which is an indication of the maximum throughput speed you are going to see.
Bear in mind though that with maxdsl this can and most likely fluctuate. You can check your IP profile by performing a BTw Performance test (http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/btwperformancetest.htm).
Be warned that this does get busy in the evenings so day time is normally the best time to use it.
To help increase the stability of your line, try some of the tips on my low SNR page (http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/lowSNR.htm).
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Thanks for the replies and help. I'll check the links to see if I can stabilise the connection a bit more
I'm monitoring the stats twice a day to check the performance. I have tried to use the BT speedtester, but it invariably fails on the lat part of the test with an exception error so I can't get the IP profile.
Thanks for the help again
Mike
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>> but it invariably fails on the lat part of the test with an exception error so I can't get the IP profile.
:(
Perhaps try early in the day when it isnt too busy.. and also check you have the latest version of Java installed.
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I could do with a bit of help as the numpties at BT Support (with the exception of 1 BT Vision engineer) seem incapable of understanding or answering a couple of questions that I believe require answering to sort out my ongoingt and never ending problem.
The BT Vison engineer believes (after he spend 3 hours at my house 1 evening) that the number of CRC and HEC errors I am getting downstream are far too high - in the 10's of thousands - and this indicates a problem either with BT Vision box I have connected or a problem with the line. BTw keep saying there are no errors being displayed when they run their tests but my router says different. Why is this and is the BT Vision engineer right?
I personally think the cause of my problems is connected to this as after a while (and as the errors increase) the router re-syncs at a lower speed. It does this about every 2 days and eventually the downstrean speed drops to around 4Mb. I'll be interested in other people's comments and advice on how to make some headway with BT - writing two letters of complaint to the Customer Service Director didn't help as I didn't even get the courtesy of a response or acknowledgement >:(
Mike
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hi dabber
i take it that you have been writing to:
Customer Service Director
BT PLC
Correspondance Centre
Durham
DH98 1BT
if you have then write one final letter to them but include on this one that if a response is not received within 7 days then your direct debit will be stopped/payment with held until a satisfactory conclusion has been achieved.
thats what i did and i did get a call from someone (altho from india!).
good luck.
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Hi Paul,
The last one did include this plus asking for the MAC code. Still waiting for a reply from them although I do get phone calls from India and BT Vision team asking if they can close the case down as "there is nothing wrong with your line, router, Vision box etc". Well if there isn't why the hell does my speed keeping dropping, can't use on demand TV without it freezing and the router re-syncs every couple of days >:(
I said to one of the BT Vision guys that I'll move over to Sky if they couldn't sort and he said "they're not much better" :D
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>> It does this about every 2 days and eventually the downstrean speed drops to around 4Mb.
That along with a high CRC error count indicates a problem between your home and the exchange.
BT Vision Engineer? Is that a BTw adsl engineer - or someone that is sent out by BT Broadband to check/install BT Vision hubs?
Reason I ask is that if it was a BTw adsl engineer and he noticed and commented on the amount of errors, I would have expected him to perhaps try some more diagnostics from the exchange.
If it was someone who does an installation I would have expected him to try a different hub/router... or at least he should be able to confirm to BT Broadband on your behalf that he is seeing many errors.
Have you tried connecting the router in the test socket behind the master socket to see if things are any better from there?
http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/troubleshooting.htm
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Hi Kitz,
The guy was sent from BT Vision to change the box as they thought this ws the problem. I got speaking to him and he was actually quite knowledgeable and caried out a lot of testing in the extension socket the previous engineer had put in for the Vision box, the master socket, test socket etc. His conclusion was either a problem between the junction box (I think he called it the junction box, but its the grey box) on the wall outside and the master socket or it is either a problem on the BT line/exchange. He put all this in the report, but the numpties on the helpdesk haven't looked at the report. They also have no idea what I mean by the HEC and CRC errors. They sent me a new Home Hub over the weekend and I very reluctantly agreed to change over to it. The errors are still there and my router has re-synced 3 times since Saturday :'(
I'm really struggling to get this resolved. They seem to think these errors are nothing! Surely they must be the cause of the problem or am I barking up the wrong tree.
Mike
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Thanks for the clarification - it sounds like the BTVision guy has done all he could... and the problem is BT broadband not reading the report properly :(
From here it looks like theres some sort of intermittent line fault which causes the line to drop every so often.
Unfortunately these sorts of faults are often the hardest to track down :(
The CRC errors are indicative that the interference is becoming bad, but not quite bad enough yet for the line to physically drop.
Is there any pattern to these symptoms eg when lights/heating etc are switched on?
Theres also a few more tips to try here
http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/lowSNR.htm
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I can't see any obvious pattern and I know one of the engineers at BTw was also looking for a pattern but couldn't see anything obvious (unfortunately he's now disappeared off the case as he was the one who initially picked up on the errors).
I have removed the ringwire but that didn't do anything. The BT Vision guy did remove a cable between the vision box and socket (he said that it wasn't needed, although the manual says it is :o). That did have an immediate effect cos at that time the margin was at 18 and straight after dropped to 7.5.
I'll have another look and see if I can see a pattern and I'll go thru the list you provided to see if there is anything else I can do at this end. I must admit the BT Vision guy did fit a filtered plate for me but had to take it off cos Vision and Hub wouldn't work (both these are connected to an extension BT put in when vision was first installed).
Thanks for your help again and at least i can now get onto BT and tell them that sorting out these errors may actually resolve in me getting better and more stable speeds.
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btw (sorry if you already have)... but have you tired a quiet line test?
- Dial 17070 and select option 2
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I did try back in August when I first had the problem and is was OK. Just tried it again and there is now some faint noise on the line, but no crackling.
I'm throwing it back to India tonight and getting them to investigate these errors as the router re-sync'ed yesterday lunchtime and the count although re-set to zero after the re-sync has already climbed to 10,000+
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>> I'm throwing it back to India tonight and getting them to investigate
Good luck
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That didn't work.
They did "something" as all of a sudden I've now got over 1.2m FEC errors :'( and the speed has halved again. They really are useless. Think I'll go back to dial up :(
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What happens if you plug the router in to the test socket behind the master socket?
Are things any more stable from there?
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The number of errors (CRC and HEC) are a lot less, but the speed didn't really increase.
The router was in the test socket for 48 hours so whether it would have improved after that I don't know. The BT engineer thought it wouldn't and was convinced it was either the exchange or the line but OpenReach just won't do anything about the line
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>> The number of errors (CRC and HEC) are a lot less
hmmmm indicating that some sort of interference is being introduced in between the master socket and its normal residence.
Its entirely possible that the telephone cable extension is running past something which is introducing additional errors. If the combination of any external influences and plus the internal influences take these too far then this is when your line will drop.
You could (and perhaps should) look at the CRC errors being an "early warning sign" that things are getting bad and the line is about to drop if it gets much worse. The less CRC/HEC errors you have the better.
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Thanks Kitz for that.
Another BT engineer (no 6) is coming out on Monday to "fix my problem once and for all". Perhaps he's coming to take the whole lot out. That'll certainly cure it :D
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eke I hope not lol :D
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Hi,
Have you tried plugging another router, not a homehub into the master socket and monitored the situation for 2 days?
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Yes I tried by trusted old Netgear and although it didn't re-sync all the time the speed was still crap. :'(
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Hi,
I too thought the netgear was trusty, not so for me with similar problem as you.
I highly recommend you get yourself a speedtouch 585 v6 from ebay like I did for £25.
I'm holding on now, whereas the netgear and hub could not hold sync.
This router is well regarded for this.
Hope this helps.
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I tried my Netgear DG834G on my Be ADSL2+ line... which syncs at > 9Mb with the Speedtouch 585v6. The Netgear managed 7Mb, so maybe there is something about the Speedtouch.
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Can the Speedtouch be used with Vision (yes I was daft enough to go for this as well) and my hub phone? If so I may ask BT to agree to swap over if they can't sort out the crap they've given me.
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Well BT have been at it again. They have done "something" to my line and the speed is now all over the place ranging between 1Mb (bake bean can speeds) and 6Mb (nice). When I questioned them they denied all knowledge and said the line/router must have sorted itself :no:
The errors figures now are going ballastic - see below - but I'm confused now. When I started getting the CRC and HEC errors before, the router would re-sync itself after apprx 48 hours at a slightly lower speed. Now the downstream speed is constant at 7552. Why??
Also I now have loads (101M) FEC errors which I believe are connected to check bit data to the outgoing data. However, this I believe eats into bandwidth therefore I would have expected a really low speed all the time but my speeds are all over the place. Unfortunately asking this question of BT India is like asking someone to explain the theory of relativity. Can anyone explain what these FEC errors are and has this "stopped" the router re-syncing (cos of the CRC errors)
Uptime: 6 days, 22:43:37
Modulation: G.992.1 annex A
Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 448 / 7,552
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [MB/MB]: 308.69 / 643.55
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 12.0 / 19.5
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 15.5 / 31.0
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 21.0 / 8.5
Vendor ID (Local/Remote): TMMB / TSTC
Loss of Framing (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Signal (Local/Remote): 4 / 0
Loss of Power (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Link (Remote): 0
Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 1,151 / 0
FEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 101,599,500
CRC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 37,562
HEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 35,564
Sorry to be a pain, but I've really coming to the end of my tether with BT. I'm now looking at contacting Otello and getting them to help sort it out. I would look to leave and get them to sue me for the rest of the contract but if the problem is the line then moving to someone else will not resolve owt as I would still be stuck with a crap line.
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My Be line racks up the FEC errors like you wouldn't believe... but the line still performs fine. Unless your line is absolutely perfect, you'll never get an error-free line.
101 Million FEC errors over nearly 7 days of uptime is probably a very small proportion of the total bandwidth that you have used, and certainly won't have anything except a negligible performance hit.
I don't know whether the figure reported as "FEC errors" by a router means FEC errors that have been corrected, in which case, that would be good, and shows that Interleaving is doing the trick nicely, or whether it's errors encountered whilst trying to correct the errors... but I have a feeling it's the first one.
The number of CRC and HEC errors are important, and aren't really that high over 7 days.
If I were you I would be tempted to leave it for a bit and see how it goes. Are your speeds generally bad at peak time (which at the moment is probably more like all day, every day, except the wee small hours). Any chance of trying a speedtest at silly o'clock in the morning to see if your speed issues are now simply down to contention (either at the exchange or your ISP)?
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>> I don't know whether the figure reported as "FEC errors" by a router means FEC errors that have been corrected, in which case, that would be good, and shows that Interleaving is doing the trick nicely.
Thats what I'm led to believe
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Hi Chris,
I've tried the speedtests at all hours between 0700 and 2300 on all days. Sometimes the weekend is when the line is fastest, sometimes its early pm on a weekday. There doesn't seem to be a pattern other than I normally had a "good" 3 days then the speed would tail off until it was bake bean can speeds. BT would do something at the exchange the speed would rise, stablise for a few days and then fall again.
However since they did a change (their words) at the exchange just before Xmas the router has stopped re-syncing which is good but the speeds are now all over the place (I maybe back in the training phase again??). Another engineer (a specialist this time :)) is coming out on Monday to sort it out again. Tha's after I lost my rag with the Indian guy on the end of the phone who had logged onto my PC and decided it was the number of cookies I had as well as the security settings on my browser - I kid you not :lol:
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Can the Speedtouch be used with Vision (yes I was daft enough to go for this as well) and my hub phone? If so I may ask BT to agree to swap over if they can't sort out the crap they've given me.
BT Total Broadband can be used with any ADSL router, provided you are using the right PPP username and password.
(Username: firstname.surname@btbroadband.com, password: none required but bt if router insists)
And the BT Vision box works with any router as well. It communicates like any other IP device and I have no problems with it downloading content through my netgear router. I dont know if the Home Hubs are pre-configured with any QoS priorities but the only reason they want you to use it is so that the support process is kept simple.
The BT Vision box itself shouldn't cause lots of errors as it is just an IP device on your network. Line errors should be down to the communication between the router and exchange.
Note that I have heard that the Vision box, Vision platform and the broadband equipment in the exchange do communicate about various things such as speed and that depending on what the Vision box reports to the platform the platform can apparently mess around adjusting the noise margin, target speeds etc.
Whether that is all correct I haven't a clue. Perhaps again it might be something home hub specific.
As far as I know you cannot configure BTTB VoIP Lines on anything other than the Home Hub or Voyager routers.
You could at one time buy a Voyager 1500 I think it is which is a add-on VoIP router you can connect to an existing
router. You then configure it up and plug your phones in. I dont think it has DECT though.
You might also be able to configure a Home Hub or something and daisy chain it up but I dont think that works. I havent tried as I dont really think much of VoIP (cheap, con, fad, etc etc) and hence dont use it.
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Thanks Soms.
I'll speak with the engineer tomorrow and see if they'll agree to swap out the router. If not I'll put my Netgear back on and see if the Vision works. Its not working at the moment as the bloody thing keeps freezing. If it still doesn't work with the Netgear BT can come and pick up he box and take it back.
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No problem.
What you'll find with with the Vision box is that on-demand, if you have ever tried it, will not work if your IP profile is less than 2000k I think it is.
When we first had it a while back the line was not that great, >63dB attenuation with a maximum sync speed of around 1.5mbps on a good day.
As a result the box worked in the sense that it registered with the platform servers and was able to download the programme guide, software updates and so on but refused to stream on-demand video.
A couple of months ago the line improved presumably after some works somewhere and now syncs comfortably over the 2mbps mark and everything works.
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well the engineer has been and gone and hey presto, he has found, what he thinks, is the problem :)
Looks like an engineer at some point in the past had bodged a repair job in a junction box outside. He's now removed it completely and the errors have virtually disappeared. Speed is now around 5.5Mb and the household is now a swear free zone again - for the time being ;)
Its nice to have a BT engineer who was more interested in sorting the problem out and than getting back out through the front door.
A big thanks to all those people who helped on the forum - got to be the best forum for broadband issues.
Happy New Year to everyone
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To be fair most BT engineers DO want to sort out problems but they are given workloads which are physically impossible to do unless they either drive well above the speed limit or do unpaid overtime.
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To be fair most BT engineers DO want to sort out problems but they are given workloads which are physically impossible to do unless they either drive well above the speed limit or do unpaid overtime.
Not to mention that engineers aren't allowed to do echange work if they are sent out as a CSE.
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If BT had a SERIOUS purge of middle management then they would see profit AND customer satisfaction rates soar. Working for BT used to be a good career. It really isn't now :(