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[Ixel]

Hi all,
A rather unusual post for me, but I feel it's worth pointing out.

On Friday I had some issues with my BT Business Infinity connection, slowing to a lovely speed of 1Mbps/0.2Mbps, with a lovely ping to bbc.co.uk varying between 7ms to 1000ms+. After waiting a few hours and testing different filters and such I managed to get on the BT site eventually to report a fault, which the system determined was "probably somewhere in BT's network". Friday afternoon after reconnecting the modem again the problem seemed to disappear. This morning unexpectedly an engineer put an oscillator on the line about 8:30am which made everyone jump lol, then 10 minutes later arrived at the door which I said the fault disappeared on Friday afternoon, he said no there's still a fault which I need to investigate. So he came in with various equipment and 15 minutes later said there's definitely a problem but I can't easily locate it. Well, suffice to say after 2 hours or hunting between about an apparent 200m run or so of line cable from here to the cabinet the engineer just swapped the wires round in the cabinet for my line and the 'battery' reduced from around 50v to about 5v-12v.

As a result of this, my attainable speed has jumped from about 82,000Kbps/27,000Kbps to 94,000Kbps/29,500Kbps with the HG612. He was unable to reset the profile as he didn't have an OGA number due to this being reported as a phone fault by the BT website. He told me to call BT Business and they should be able to get it reset for me (not tried yet, will try this afternoon, as it's currently capped at 60/20).

Credit to the engineer for his determination, although I wasn't expecting him this morning. Well done, for a change, BT.

Edit: Tried calling BT Business Infinity helpdesk, no luck though. As far as they're concerned my line is achieving slightly above the estimated speed that Openreach give and can't justify uncapping my 60/20 to 80/20 by a profile reset. Very annoying, so if DLM is frozen then I could be stuck at 60/20 for the next ice age .

[burakkucat]

Well done that Openreach technician!  :clap2:

Was he wearing black wool, all over, by any chance? 

Just in case you do not know, there is an Openreach website page where you can formally log your appreciation of his efforts.

[Ixel]

Well done that Openreach technician!  :clap2:

Was he wearing black wool, all over, by any chance? 

Just in case you do not know, there is an Openreach website page where you can formally log your appreciation of his efforts.

I'll do that. Ha, black wool, no, how come? Just annoying that I can't get my speed uncapped, as it's been at a max of 60 for weeks, even though the attainable rate is higher. No impulse noise protection or interleaving though interestingly, despite having a cap of 60 megabits. I'd expect to have some interleaving/inp with a cap applied.

[burakkucat]

Ha, black wool, no, how come?

I was just checking to see if it was our own Black Sheep who had attended to your line. 

Just annoying that I can't get my speed uncapped, as it's been at a max of 60 for weeks, even though the attainable rate is higher. No impulse noise protection or interleaving though interestingly, despite having a cap of 60 megabits. I'd expect to have some interleaving/inp with a cap applied.

I wonder if Bald_Eagle1 will comment and perhaps advise on that?

[waltergmw]

@ Ixel,

I think you could consider the Cap as an artificial ceiling giving you some "leg room" so that interleaving is probably unnecessary.

Kind regards,
Walter

[Ixel]

@ Ixel,

I think you could consider the Cap as an artificial ceiling giving you some "leg room" so that interleaving is probably unnecessary.

Kind regards,
Walter

Hmm, I see. I wonder if perhaps MTBE related stuff controls the level of interleaving/INP and MTBR related stuff controls the min/max rate bands? Perhaps if my connection remains up for a couple of weeks of uptime it might lift the band?

[Black Sheep]

Nope, wasn't me I'm pleased to say, for alas I can only assume your joy is a double-edged sword ?

As always, my caveat is, I wasn't on-site and so do not know the full-story by any means, and can only comment on the OP's posting.

To begin with, if you had "50v of battery" on your line, that shouldn't be there, the chances are you wouldn't have had any DSL signal at all. Most 50v contact faults are found in the Exchange (where scrap wire can bridge neighbouring pairs), or trapped in a DP lid, etc ....... it's very, very rare to have a 50v contact in a faulty length of cable ??

Talking of which, I can only assume the engineer didn't locate the actual fault within the 200mtrs of cable, which should have been relatively easy with that ammount of fault voltage on it (Using the Wheatstone Bridge method)?? I can also only assume, that he hasn't found any spare pairs within the cable to swop your circuit onto, as you also say all he's done is reverse the wires in the Cabinet ??

Again, if this was a 50v contact fault, it wouldn't do much good. Certainly, a few 'fault volts' can be 'soaked up' by ensuring the faulty leg is connected to the 50v feed leg, as opposed to the Earth leg, which can fool the DLM but it's still a fault voltage at the end of the day. When the test systems are applied, they feed voltage is disconnected at the Exchange and subsequent tests are against a 'dead pair', the fault voltage will be detected in this way.

Something doesn't add up at all, and I think there's probably more to the resolution of this than you may have been told, Ixel. However, it does indeed sound like you had somebody prepared to try, and a result of sorts has been accomplished.

I sound like a right old misery guts, chucking water on your fire, but I have to say it as I see it (circa: Roy Walker).   

[Bald_Eagle1]

I'd agree with Walter's comment that being capped at a level well below attainable rate removes the need for Interleaving.

Didn't you experiment with intentionally capping your sync speeds to introduce stability at one time though?

I wonder if a setting has remained active as it's highly unusual to see 94,000Kbps attainable capped to 60000kbps.
Is that exactly 60000kbps by the way?

Maybe patience is now a virtue & the higher speeds may return if the connection is left to do its own thing for a couple of weeks or so.

[Ixel]

...

Thanks for the detailed reply. From another engineer's view it's interesting, but what I've said in the OP is what he told me, he apparently reversed the wires. Given I have no knowledge of the inner workings of the telecommunication network I accepted what he told me, plus to the fact that my attainable rates have gone up (currently hovering around 91,000Kbps downstream and 29,000Kbps upstream, but that's likely due to it being night time and the SNR dropping a little).

Perhaps he was a little vague in explaining what he did, but he told me he was unable to locate where exactly the fault was when he first arrived and did some testing with the oscillator running at the cabinet. He said I had 50v on the line that didn't belong on it (aka battery contact fault), but I did have VDSL2/FTTC sync fine still. After an hour and 30 minutes or so he returned and said can you plug the oscillator into the master socket and I'll do some more testing.

About 10 minutes later he returned and told me what he did and has managed to get rid of most of it albeit 5v to 12v still not belonging there apparently. So he did some stuff with his JDSU, called BT line testing facilities a couple of times checking his mobile regularly and after I checked my speeds he went back to the van to call for a profile reset but sadly was unable to get it done as they asked for an 'OGA number' so said I should phone BT Business who should do it (but didn't as I'm getting what I'm estimated despite equipment saying otherwise).

Sorry for the rather extenuous paragraphs above. Don't get me wrong, I'm more than happy that he's improved the line capabilities, but I was hoping given a fault was found and mostly resolved that an approved profile reset wouldn't have been too much to ask for.

...

I see, I guess very much similar to if I was on 40/10 then I wouldn't have interleaving due to the large buffer negating the need for any interleaving.

Yes I did experiment using the Fritz!Box 7390 previously, but the rate has restored far quicker in previous tests (within 48-72 hours of sync uptime as I recall, not weeks). The FB 7390 reports the max rate as 60000, min rate 30000. HG612 syncs at 59999. Haven't tried ECI as that may be one too many re-syncs in a 24 hour period. Will check that out tomorrow as my last point of call before leaving the connection well alone for another couple of weeks.

[Black Sheep]

No worries, Ixel.

The reference is an OGEA (Openreach Generic Ethernet Access) code. He could have easily obtained it via our CSS data-base, by accessing 'DCS' (Display Customer Services). The OGEA is unique to your VDSL circuit, like your telephone number is unique to your premises (at least within your trunk-call locality).

He does sound like he's tried a bit, rather than cut and run. With i-POP breathing down his neck, he's probably got the best result he could on the day ?? If the whole 200mtrs of cable is kaput, the planners would be unlikely to re-new the whole length (costing reasons) and would want the fault narrowing down to a smaller section, if possible. All takes time and effort, for which we get measured against in a negative way.