Gentlefolk,
This is another "Are you sitting comfortably ?" story of little technical merit but of overwhelming importance particularly to VDSL users.
{Pace BS - this investigation shows quite definitely, as one of the very first in Ewhurst, that a very well meaning Openreach engineer of some significant experience had been dropped in it from a great hight without the slightest understanding of the implications of the much higher frequency / bandwidth requirements concerning installation practices. Furthermore, like many installations, it had been engineered to solve the specific needs of the EU with an unusual solution. The quandary the engineer and I had to solve was the minimum disturbance to the wiring arrangements and the decorations within the house.}
I had spent some time recently meandering amongst the Ewhurst worthies and came across IP Profiles (AKA bRAS figures in as much that they show identical figures).
When you have done this a few hundreds of times, some figures shout at you that all is not well with that particular service, or in this case a pair of services. When you see an IP profile of 14.52, and then apply BE's magic 96.79% factor, you obtain quite incriminating evidence that DLM has done its dastardly deed and permanently capped the service with a sync speed of 15 Mbps.
It was the first time I'd been invited into this particular house which is one of about 50 on a small recent development all built to the same basic design. The initial obstacle is that the developer laid ducts and BT very nicely provided BT66 boxes outside each house which feed the master socket right behind the front door but only sometimes with a single 13A power socket - i.e. just about the pessimum arrangement for anybody using the telephone. The result is that all these houses have slave sockets liberally spread about in far more convenient places. Now add the fantastic modern ADSL services; so where to mount the modem and then the computer ? But last November along comes the sparkly meteoric "Infinity" solution which, at a stroke, solves every maidens' prayer !!
That is until the the hapless uninitiated Openreach engineer arrives with the modem and HH3. He quite definitely did his best and the EU was overjoyed after he left as his speed had jumped from 3 Mbps to an astronomic figure for a few hours a bit less than the 41.1 Mbps promised by the BT Wholesale checker, whist it was being watched, but settles just under 15 after the customary training period.
So I arrive to a horrible birds-nest which takes some time to evaluate. The Master socket still has the correct incoming blue pair connection but the lower faceplate contains three sets of twisted pairs, all everywhere with the bell wires still connected feeding a total of 3 slave sockets and now a new master socket in the upstairs home office. The green pair of the incoming cable is fed back down to the BT 66 and then via standard external grade BT cable all round the outside of the house to the upstairs rear office now fitted with the correct SSFP arrangement. (Orange / white for the main A & B pair and green for the bell wire fed directly through to pin 3 of the lower front plate.). One other 2 pr cable just feeds the slave socket in the living room whilst a standard 3 Pr goes upstairs to the bedroom socket and then downstairs to the kitchen socket. Every one of these connections still include the bell wire. Little surprise that the service struggles along at under 15 Mbps.
The next problem is that the first master socket had captive nuts which just rotate so it was a demolition job even to dismantle it. Fortunately a very generous engineer, from an entirely different location, had provided me with a complete spare SSFP. I had little choice but to segregate the internal pairs connecting the green VDSL pair to the correct filtered output IDC with the other two into the lower faceplate. Upstairs in the rear office I removed that SSFP entirely and substituted a non-standard single RJ11 socket feeding just the modem. It remains to be seen how well this will perform in practice, but it is almost certainly a far better VDSL solution.
Now to get the cap removed taking about 3/4 hour to get the process rolling. Screen pictures of the BT Wholesale VDSL estimate and a horrible red worm on the BT speed test indicate that there's something rotten in the State of ....
More about that on-line chat conversation can be seen here:-
http://www.ewhurst-broadband.org.uk/?p=2281&cpage=1#comment-722However the quite inexcusable fault process has been specifically designed for a "Tick-Box" approach for those within the organisation which is utterly bewildering for the uninitiated EU. What possible excuse can there be for the "track a fault" to announce immediately that the fault has been
cleared ? Follow that with the slightly more detailed fault stating twice
"Your fault should now be fixed" but then adding
“Further diagnostic investigations are currently taking place. We will contact you as soon as possible to advise of progress.” We might like, but do not expect, miracles from the field staff but IMHO Ofcom needs to fire every conceivable weapon at the managerial buffoons who think they might be helping their bonuses by perpetrating such utterly confusing drivel for every individual EU to comprehend. They might do well to study the operations of their subsidiary PlusNet who at least protect the EU from the worst excesses of the elephantine administration.
You may not be surprised that I have gained some notoriety and I am often greeted with broad (and much relieved) smiles when I happen across these types of pantomimes.
Kind regards,
Walter
