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[kitz]

Couple of snippets Ive just seen on another forum.
These are genuine cases within the past couple of days...  but thought Id share.


Case 1 - TalkTalk.
The ME in the quotes isnt actually "me", but someone who does have a fair idea about adsl.

Recently I was helping somebody who had got talk talk, and had no ADSL signal at all;-

ME "Mrs X has not got an ADSL signal at all, ive plugged into the test port on the master socket, and tried the supplied modem and other routers to be sure. PLease could you test the line?"
TT " We have tested the line and its fine"

ME "Well obviously its not, please can you do a WHOOSH test?"

TT "Whats a WHOOSH test?" (pause)

ME "Have you got Google, or do you actually want me to explain?" (pause)

ME " OK its a test done by BT wholesale that tests more than the factthat you say its active on your computer system, It will come up as failed and you can then ask BT to do something about it, and save yourself the time going through the pointless asking me about what computer I have, and if i have the right drivers for a modem I am clearly not using"

TT " I'll check hang on" (pause 1 min)
TT " Yes, we can get that done, but BT wholesale dont really want to talk to us, can you ask them to do it?"

ME " I think you'll find that BT Wholsale will only talk to you, its in your contract, they dont deal with end users. If you cant do that, can you get me a supervisor"

TT "Hang on" (pause 3 min)
TT "Hello, yes they are going to do that, you will have to get off the phone though for about 15 minute while that is done (If they dont ask you to do this, you can be fairly certain they are not actually doing it, just fobbing you off).

ME "Thankyou"
After 20 min

TT "Yes you have a problem on your line and BT are going to fix it"

I thought everyone knew that BTw will not speak to us mere plebs...
or maybe it was an easy way to get the customer off the phone :/

[kitz]

Case 2 - Virgin.

I know of this particular case fairly well since its someone whom Ive corresponded with in the past.

Background info is despite not being on a particulary long line, the connection has iirc a fairly poor attn stats and couldnt get more than 1Mb on traditional adsl.  = The 1Mb was stable though.

Anyhow this particular line has recently been maxed, and was having the usual training problems of d/cs that you would possibly expect during this time on a "long line".

The OP posted on the forums when in despair his speeds had dropped right down to to

"21KBS - far slower than I used to get with a 56k modem may years ago. That is twenty one KBS, not a typing error"

I'm not sure if that is 21kbps or 21KB/sec, but from other posts I think he may mean kbps as he also typed "1MBS or even 512KBS.".

Anyhow here are the snippets...

Resetting the router so many times also trashed the wireless connection my wife has used for her laptop.

When asked why all the reboots, and advised it may be best to try avoiding rebooting, since it may confuse the DLM... the reply back was

My ISP advised that I disconnect and reconnect several times a day during the training period which has now expired.

okayyyyyyyyyyy...  now perhaps we know why speeds were gradually getting lower and lower.

now this is the bit where my jaw dropped to the floor

My ISP told me to also unplug the RJ11 cable to disconnect it.

Yeah that works..  yank the cable out of the modem several times a day
 

[mr_chris]

> Yeah that works..  yank the cable out of the modem several times a day

Great... so DLM thinks you're getting disconnected and therefore lowers your sync rate. So he'll end up with a 15dB SNR margin and Interleaving applied, which will probably end up him getting about a 300kbps sync.

Nice one Virgin

[Astral]

To be fair to the other ISP's (and of course I don't want to be) PN's advice was not always stunningly good. Admittedly they were probably fed it by BTw but my Max took a lot of fixing and really only got sorted by one of the comms team via PUG.

[kitz]

oh Im aware of that Astral...PN do drop some clangers
sometimes I think theyre all as bad as each other...
but then again one of the forums I visit have less techy astute pple and some of the things that the likes of  tttttsk, wannn etc manage to fob their customers off with sometimes makes me wonder.

---------

It was just reading the Virgin.net one this morning when he asked me for some advice cause he kept getting lower and lower speeds despite keep turning the modem off..  and I went why?
and thats what he told me..  I was like Ohhhhhhhhhhh myyyyyyyyy Gawd.   

>> 300kbps sync

yeah 288 and what bRAS profile goes with that?

You me both knows what happens with adsl when you start getting slow speeds/throughput
 - it doesnt function well at all, and dial up does start to look faster.

[feliscatusx2]

Now you know why I'm sticking with 2mb fixed ADSL for as long as I can possibly get away with it.  I almost never drop below 1.91, more often getting 1.95, and that's with 51db attenuation.

Better the devil you know......................