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[toulouse]

Miaooooooooow,

It has all been in place for some considerable time by the look of it all. I suspect that the previous occupier had a moonlighter in to add in the extension and possibly install a Linebox at the same time. All the wiring from the D.P. to the J.B. to the Linebox is under a few layers of paint. I must get around to tidying it all up. The extension cable all looks fairly new by comparison, but as  rizla said earlier today it must have been done some time ago, as 'modern' installations use a 4 wire cable or less if I understand it correctly.

I can't wait to see what happens on Monday


Miaooooooooooow

 

[Black Sheep]

What's irritating is that the BTO guys quite obviously never checked the socket. I know you're pushed for time on jobs but that's no excuse when its such a quick check.

You're taking somebody's word for what has gone on, I work to facts. Either way, extention wiring is of no concern to BT Openreach, unless specifically instructed to, ie: The EU pays for us to work on it. The demarcation point is the Master Socket. Toulouse has obviously managed the dark art of plugging a phone in, to see if the socket is actually 'live'. Hardly a great irritation imo.

 

[toulouse]

You have MY word that what I said, and what rizla said about it, is the case.

toulouse

[Black Sheep]

Good to hear. My statement also still stands. extention wiring or associated sockets are NOT our concern. An able-bodied individual should be capable of checking their own sockets.

[toulouse]

Ok, I'm glad to hear that. And what about those who have a long term illness or disability.

When told by 2 separate engineers on 2 separate visits that the socket was disconnected from the circuit, at what point would you suggest that a customer practice the dark art of 'plugging in a phone' - while the engineer is still present or before or after he's left on his obviously extremely tight schedule ? I do know that it isn't the engineers fault that he only gets a limited time for any task, but the leviathan that BT is these days, does need a good pull through with a very stiff brush, at least that's how it appears to us on the outside.

I'm sorry, but it's like most things in life these days, I think it's best practice not to believe single thing that anyone tells you, or at least have a means of checking what you're told - but what a world that would be.


   

[Black Sheep]

Ok, I'm glad to hear that. And what about those who have a long term illness or disability.

When told by 2 separate engineers on 2 separate visits that the socket was disconnected from the circuit, at what point would you suggest that a customer practice the dark art of 'plugging in a phone' - while the engineer is still present or before or after he's left on his obviously extremely tight schedule ? I do know that it isn't the engineers fault that he only gets a limited time for any task, but the leviathan that BT is these days, does need a good pull through with a very stiff brush, at least that's how it appears to us on the outside.

I'm sorry, but it's like most things in life these days, I think it's best practice not to believe single thing that anyone tells you, or at least have a means of checking what you're told - but what a world that would be.


 

BT have got measures in place for the disabled or elderly. That's why I said 'able-bodied' in my comments.

The point at which you should check the socket is before an engineering visit is made. The Time Related Charges that could apply (dependant on the fault), are immense. You'd soon be kicking and screaming if you were hit by a £160+VAT bill, if the fault was proven to be your internal wiring/sockets causing the fault.

The issue I'm trying to put over is you (The EU) own your internal wiring/sockets. Ergo, it shouldn't be termed an "irritation" if 100+ engineers say that your extention socket is 'dead'. You should check it yourself in the first instance.

This isn't meant as inflamatory Toulouse, this is good practice for anybody reading these boards to save a possible bill landing on their lap.

[toulouse]

Ok Black Sheep, thanks for clarifying that. I certainly don't want to get into any arguments over this thread, but I REALLY would like to know if there is anything else I can do to try and get a little more oomph, and a little less attenuation out of my Plusnet line, or at least get it on a par with the newly installed ( Jan 2011 ) O2 line.

Following my adventures yesterday the extension socket is, I think, no longer a part of the equation, at least it has been disconnected from the junction box type 'thingy'. The wiring is currently still in place but disconnected from the circuit.

As I'm not sure whether you have read this thread from the beginning, just a brief outline of the situation.

When I moved to my ground floor flat in 2007, there was a telephone line here which I think had been cut off because of non-payment by the previous owner. I had the line reactivated by BT, and during the first year or so I was happy with their service, but I went with Plusnet as my ISP. From day 1 that line connected at the full 8128/448, with Downstream Attenuation of 32dB, and I was a very happy bunny indeed. Over the course of time, I switched to an ADSL2+ product, having been assured by the ISP that I could expect to see speeds of Upto 14Mbps. This line has never achieved anywhere near that speed, the maximum being around the 12Mbps with Downstream Attenuation of initially something in the region of 35.0 / 35.5 / 36.0 as reported by my Netgear router. I'm fairly sure that this has varied as shown over a period of maybe 2-3 years and I'm not sure if it's particularly significant. I could probably find some recorded figures from the Speedtouch ST516 supplied by Plusnet, if required, but as far as I can recall they are pretty much the same. 

However, the line which was '*** installed ***' by O2 (actually 2 BTO engineers came to my flat, installed a Linebox and tested the line) has performed consistently at in excess of 14Mbps, aside from one or maybe two external, and as far as I know completely unauthorised  'construction worker' customisations of the national telephony infrastructure. That is to say, and I'm sure you've seen a few of these in your time, they hit an underground telephone cable or put a spade or something through a cable which they shouldn't have done.  I think the BT / ISP term for this type of occurrence is a Major Service Outage.

Note -> above '*** installed ***', an NTE/5 LInebox was fitted, but no new cable was fitted, at least not from the D.P. As a non-expert in the telephony arena, I was kind of expecting some new cabling - was I wrong to expect that ?

Anyway, I digress,.....

What I was hoping to achieve when I started this thread was to seek opinions from those people, like yourself, who frequent this excellent forum and are far more knowledgeable about this subject than I am. It was my view, that the 2 telephone lines which I currently have, and which both originate at my local telephone exchange, somehow arrive at the building in which I live, are connected to what I have since found out is called a Distribution Point, from where a cable enters my flat and provides me with two separate telephones, and two separate broadband services, in an ideal world ought to provide a similar if not identical service in terms of speed. Sadly, that just is not the case. Perhaps, I was wrong about this all along. Oh well, you live and learn.

Anyway, and I didn't set out to achieve this, but the thread does seem to have generated a good exchange of views and has certainly pointed me in the direction of a couple of things to try. So maybe I should wait and see what happens when my ISP 'uncaps' my Upstream speed tomorrow. I'm not expecting it to change much at all, but time will tell.

Thanks for your input


TTFN


toulouse 

[guest]

What's irritating is that the BTO guys quite obviously never checked the socket. I know you're pushed for time on jobs but that's no excuse when its such a quick check.

You're taking somebody's word for what has gone on, I work to facts. Either way, extention wiring is of no concern to BT Openreach, unless specifically instructed to, ie: The EU pays for us to work on it. The demarcation point is the Master Socket. Toulouse has obviously managed the dark art of plugging a phone in, to see if the socket is actually 'live'. Hardly a great irritation imo.

Then they shouldn't have told him the extension socket was disconnected on two occasions should they? No problem with them not testing, but saying it was disconnected when they never bothered checking is garbage - and indefensible, although you seem to want to try.

Anyway we'll see what we see, hopefully it will at least make the line stable which would be an improvement.

[Black Sheep]

Ok Black Sheep, thanks for clarifying that. I certainly don't want to get into any arguments over this thread, but I REALLY would like to know if there is anything else I can do to try and get a little more oomph, and a little less attenuation out of my Plusnet line, or at least get it on a par with the newly installed ( Jan 2011 ) O2 line.

Following my adventures yesterday the extension socket is, I think, no longer a part of the equation, at least it has been disconnected from the junction box type 'thingy'. The wiring is currently still in place but disconnected from the circuit.

As I'm not sure whether you have read this thread from the beginning, just a brief outline of the situation.

When I moved to my ground floor flat in 2007, there was a telephone line here which I think had been cut off because of non-payment by the previous owner. I had the line reactivated by BT, and during the first year or so I was happy with their service, but I went with Plusnet as my ISP. From day 1 that line connected at the full 8128/448, with Downstream Attenuation of 32dB, and I was a very happy bunny indeed. Over the course of time, I switched to an ADSL2+ product, having been assured by the ISP that I could expect to see speeds of Upto 14Mbps. This line has never achieved anywhere near that speed, the maximum being around the 12Mbps with Downstream Attenuation of initially something in the region of 35.0 / 35.5 / 36.0 as reported by my Netgear router. I'm fairly sure that this has varied as shown over a period of maybe 2-3 years and I'm not sure if it's particularly significant. I could probably find some recorded figures from the Speedtouch ST516 supplied by Plusnet, if required, but as far as I can recall they are pretty much the same. 

However, the line which was '*** installed ***' by O2 (actually 2 BTO engineers came to my flat, installed a Linebox and tested the line) has performed consistently at in excess of 14Mbps, aside from one or maybe two external, and as far as I know completely unauthorised  'construction worker' customisations of the national telephony infrastructure. That is to say, and I'm sure you've seen a few of these in your time, they hit an underground telephone cable or put a spade or something through a cable which they shouldn't have done.  I think the BT / ISP term for this type of occurrence is a Major Service Outage.

Note -> above '*** installed ***', an NTE/5 LInebox was fitted, but no new cable was fitted, at least not from the D.P. As a non-expert in the telephony arena, I was kind of expecting some new cabling - was I wrong to expect that ?

Anyway, I digress,.....

What I was hoping to achieve when I started this thread was to seek opinions from those people, like yourself, who frequent this excellent forum and are far more knowledgeable about this subject than I am. It was my view, that the 2 telephone lines which I currently have, and which both originate at my local telephone exchange, somehow arrive at the building in which I live, are connected to what I have since found out is called a Distribution Point, from where a cable enters my flat and provides me with two separate telephones, and two separate broadband services, in an ideal world ought to provide a similar if not identical service in terms of speed. Sadly, that just is not the case. Perhaps, I was wrong about this all along. Oh well, you live and learn.

Anyway, and I didn't set out to achieve this, but the thread does seem to have generated a good exchange of views and has certainly pointed me in the direction of a couple of things to try. So maybe I should wait and see what happens when my ISP 'uncaps' my Upstream speed tomorrow. I'm not expecting it to change much at all, but time will tell.

Thanks for your input


TTFN


toulouse

You wouldn't neccessarily see new wiring by having a 2nd line installed, Toulouse. There were obviously spare wires available for the engineers to use from your 1st line cabling, to 'bat the circuit' through. This is common practice.

My educated guess is that your 2 circuits are on different E-side (Exchange side) cables from 'Exchange to Cab'. One obviously has a lesser attenuation than the other. The D-side (Distribution side) cable from 'Cab to DP' is what it is, and no improvement can be made by swapping of pairs. 99% of the time this will be the case, as there will be only one cable from 'Cab to DP'. On rare occasions, we do have 2 different cables feeding a DP, but this is not 'The norm'.

Circuit routings are robotically made via a tool called 'ROSE'. There could be 5 different cables feeding your 'Cab', with a variety of differing attenuation readings. Because OR do not guarantee speeds, ROSE will just chose the next available E-side to give the engineer to connect to. If you are severly troubled by your speed difference of 2 Meg from your other circuit, then you can request a 'Line Plant Arrangement' from your ISP, whereby if there is a spare pair available on the best cable, we can transfer you on to it. Different ISP's look upon this differently, some will charge you, some wont. Also, there may not be any available capacity in the better cables !! So it then becomes a gamble.

IMO, 12 to 14 Meg wont make any real difference at all unless you are a family of 6 all using the Internet at the same time, or you download vasts ammounts of data. Hope this helps and isn't to much of an an irritation for rizla ??

[burakkucat]

The curious b*cat asks if a sequence of pictures could be made available, please?

(1) The DP.
(2) Where the solitary service cable enters the flat.
(3) The junction-box (with its cover removed).
(4) Each of the two NTE5/A (perhaps in one picture) showing how the cable from (3) arrives at each.

 

[toulouse]

Hey Black Sheep, things are really now beginning to make some sense.

Your description of the possible routing from the exchange via multiple cables has made everything fall into place, and I'm left with the impression that I could carry on making changes to my internal wiring and it ain't gonna make the slightest difference whatsoever. The situation is completely outside of my control. But at least now, I have a better understanding of why this situation exists, so thanks for explaining.

I don't suppose anyone is too concerned, but if things don't get better tomorrow, then I'm likely gonna be an ex Plusnet customer.



toulouse

[toulouse]

Miaooooooooooow,

Yes, burakkucat, I think that could be arranged without too much trouble. Will tomorrow do ?


Miaoooooooow, purr, purr, purr

[c6em]

My line has the same attenuation figure as yours of 36dB on ADSL2+ (it was 33 on ADSLmax)
Running at a 3db downsteam target SNR margin my sync speed is around 13300kbps.
That gives an IP setting of 11.7Mbps (88.3% of the sync speed).
So the maximum download speed I can ever achieve is probably 11.6Mbps - in practice it's around 11.1Mbps measured.

I know someone the the same/just over distance in the other direction from the same cabinet we are both supplied from.
Obviously they are on a different D side cable being on a different road and who knows what E-side cable they are on from the cabinet back to the exchange.
They have an attenuation of 38 and can only run at the higher target noise margin level: different cables, different noise, different routes...who knows. Their sync is around 10000 kbps. So their IP setting will be 8830kbps and achievable download probably only around 8.5Mbps at best.

So if you can achieve a measured download of 12Mbps from a line which returns a router calculated attenuation of 36Db - I'd say you are rather lucky.

[toulouse]

No, sorry for any confusion, but any reference to 12Mbps would be a 'connection' speed and not a measured 'throughput' speed.

I think the maximum I have seen on a measured 'throughput' speed test would be somewhere between 9.8Mbps and 10.1Mbps,
but not much above that.

[burakkucat]

Yes, burakkucat, I think that could be arranged without too much trouble. Will tomorrow do ?

That would be just purrfect. Thank you.