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[Roxy]

I can't really comment conclusively on your specific job, as I don't know what the engineers found with their tests ?? I do have to tentatively remind folk looking in though, that OR have a specific mandate of tests to follow and if they pass then that is our remit fully satisfied.

Possibly, but these guys never give any indication about what is actually going on.

OR have (out of their own purse, as it is a non-CP chargeable task), sent two men to try and resolve what is a very intermittent fault at best. As the KITZ REIN page states ....... 'tracking down REIN faults can prove quite tricky' ........ and as a REIN engineer myself I can confirm that. The last briefing we had it stated that it took on average nationwide approximately 3.8 visits to determine the source of the REIN.

Well they didn't send two men. They sent out a ticket for a proper REIN engineer to pick up, and this guy grabbed it because he recognized the address, and thus took the call. The colleague of his was only an impromptu thing as he was also in the area.

There's no mystery as to why it would be the same engineer as what turned up last night. It often happens with myself. If I'm visiting on a bog-standard BB fault and subsequently find the issue is likely to be REIN, then there has to be an official REIN case raised to satisfy various protocols and red-tape.

What I always do, unless it's absolute proof-positive that it is REIN utilising our WHOOSH systems, is collate information from BB circuits on the same serving DP as the affected EU, and also others in the same locality. I can more often than not make an informed decision as to whether the interference is local (only the EU affected) or remote (other circuits affected). I can only do this with BT Classic circuits, or GEA products .... as I don't have access to LLU's systems.

Sadly, they aren't you. None of what you've just described, has been done.

All REIN cases are monitored by both OR and the ISP. So you are at liberty under the FOI act to ask what the engineer has done thus far ? If REIN has been found emanating from another premises and the offending item sourced, you will NOT be told where it was found, but you will be informed that REIN is/was the cause of you issues.
The problem is, OR can not demand somebody cease using their dodgy set-top box or whatever we find is causing the problem ?, unless (I believe) it is a radio-ham who is knowingly broadcasting. So, it is possible that REIN can be found but nothing can be done about it.

I am trying to generalise things here, as every case is different.

Asking is never encouraged, and responses are always mumbles, waffles or lies. However I did clarify that even if I just got confirmation that it's REIN related, then that puts us on an appropriate path to hopefully discovery. And if we can't do any thing about it, then that's that.

Any ways, the same guy managed to lose us 10mbps in the course of 24 hours, and as usual, they don't stick around for thirty minutes to test their work.
And it might even be slightly acceptable if this new 'port,' fixed the CRC errors and SNR fluctuations, though already it obviously hasn't. What really is salt in the wound, is that 36mbps was the lowest we ever had and that was on interleaving, but yet now we've got that speed on fast path.

Now I have to tell BT that OR have made a further mess of it and we're still no closer than we were before, please send me a boost engineer to put me back on a decent port. I know exactly what will happen. Either BT will say it's 'within acceptable speeds,' or the engineer will say 'that's all you can get. No, you never had 47mbps before, you must be mistaken.'

[Black Sheep]

For information purposes only: A REIN Case wouldn't (or shouldn't) be issued to just any engineer. Tasks are issued based on the engineers skill-set, (UG, CAL, OMI, DACS, REIN, ISDN, PW ..... the list is endless). I will admit though, it has been known in times of low work-stacks to give any task out and if help is required, an 'Assist' will be built for a relevant-skilled engineer to attend site to help. This is not the norm though.

By 'two men', I mean exactly that. OR have taken two men 'Off the park' to attend that particular task. Whichever path it took to get there, the bottom line is two engineers were working on the line in whatever guise at no cost to the EU or the ISP. However the outcome may be perceived, I personally think that's a big chunk of goodwill on OR's behalf.

Like I say, I can't comment conclusively on your circuit as I have no idea what has been going on behind the scenes ??
I see part of my 'job' on this forum as to make people aware of how we operate officially, and to try and balance the debate out. I am not saying you don't have an issue, far from it, I'm just trying to put over that OR are giving time and attention to your problem ..... for FREE.       

[NewtronStar]

Roxy to me I am amazed you got an engineer call out for a REIN issue without being charged, my line is full of RFI in the evenings but have not contacted my service provider BT as it's not effecting my broadband that much yes there is a low level of hiss on the telephone.

For me a pair swap would do the job for me as my original pair have become way out of balance over 3 years and the effects are low SNRM in the evening and US CRC when phone rings if I left this line for another 3 years as is it would definately become service affecting.

[Roxy]

For information purposes only: A REIN Case wouldn't (or shouldn't) be issued to just any engineer. Tasks are issued based on the engineers skill-set, (UG, CAL, OMI, DACS, REIN, ISDN, PW ..... the list is endless). I will admit though, it has been known in times of low work-stacks to give any task out and if help is required, an 'Assist' will be built for a relevant-skilled engineer to attend site to help. This is not the norm though.

By 'two men', I mean exactly that. OR have taken two men 'Off the park' to attend that particular task. Whichever path it took to get there, the bottom line is two engineers were working on the line in whatever guise at no cost to the EU or the ISP. However the outcome may be perceived, I personally think that's a big chunk of goodwill on OR's behalf.

The problem is that the individual engineers are not interested, not prepared and/or not capable. And thus each step of progress is drawn out unnecessarily longer than it should be. It's OR's own fault for not seeing the pattern here and asking themselves why the issue persists, yet BT keep requesting engineer visits. Meanwhile I am stuck in the middle, and getting nowhere - and now in fact have gone backwards.

Like I say, I can't comment conclusively on your circuit as I have no idea what has been going on behind the scenes ??
I see part of my 'job' on this forum as to make people aware of how we operate officially, and to try and balance the debate out. I am not saying you don't have an issue, far from it, I'm just trying to put over that OR are giving time and attention to your problem ..... for FREE.     

I am not sure what you mean when you say behind the scenes. What we know is the line internally, the external cable run, the cabinet and the junctions are all fine according to the engineers. Yet BT and myself see the data that says something is wrong. We both agree that the issue isn't fixed and BT are fortunately still on my side to have the issue resolved. OR don't seem to know, or show interest in trying to progress this further than 'let's just see how it goes..' and then drive off before seeing how it goes. So in terms of official operation, I would find that highly inefficient and waste of everyone's time, yet instead of trying to identify the problem, they keep chucking out generic engineers and getting nowhere.

Roxy to me I am amazed you got an engineer call out for a REIN issue without being charged, my line is full of RFI in the evenings but have not contacted my service provider BT as it's not effecting my broadband that much yes there is a low level of hiss on the telephone.

For me a pair swap would do the job for me as my original pair have become way out of balance over 3 years and the effects are low SNRM in the evening and US CRC when phone rings if I left this line for another 3 years as is it would definately become service affecting.

Hi Newtron,

I have had no REIN engineer. The guy that showed up was in the neighbourhood any ways and was just responding because he noticed a duplicate ticket(I guess?). He didn't come here and do anything REIN related.
As for interference; it's too coincidental that I have CRC errors and SNR fluctuation, where the CRC grow increasingly greater during the bad periods of SNR movement, and not so surprisingly the line goes on interleaving days later(and never comes off).

Please stop me now if everyone is in agreement that's acceptable and it's ok for fibre lines to behave in such a way.


What I find interesting is now that I'm down on 36mbps DS, my US has jumped to nearly 10, where as it averaged 8.5 before. Additionally the upstream has an average SNR of 7db. Historically it was the lower of the two at around 6.0db


I am just tired and frustrated after several months, I am worse off when I started and now my holiday time window is closed for another several weeks. Apparently OR don't do Saturday appointments any more...

[NewtronStar]

Please stop me now if everyone is in agreement that's acceptable and it's ok for fibre lines to behave in such a way.

What I find interesting is now that I'm down on 36mbps DS, my US has jumped to nearly 10, where as it averaged 8.5 before. Additionally the upstream has an average SNR of 7db. Historically it was the lower of the two at around 6.0db

I am just tired and frustrated after several months, I am worse off when I started and now my holiday time window is closed for another several weeks. Apparently OR don't do Saturday appointments any more...

I know it's good to take your frustration out in text it does help, you need to take a step back and look at your line situation from a different view.

Yeah it's very annoying to see a loss of 10000 kbps from your downstream it may come back and also with fastpath enabled it's just you will need to be patient the DLM could have taken action on your line with all that has been going on.

Just keep your FTTC modem on for 7 days and if you can get some 24/7 stats monitoring software running as it will give you and us a clear picture what the hell is going on with your line.

And yes FTTC seems all fine & dandy when your 300 meters from the cabinet, FTTC then becomes a lottery after 550-700 meters it is a pain in the arse    and please feel sorry for the 1000 meters users like me and others 

[Black Sheep]

Roxy, sweeping statements like, "The problem is that the individual engineers are not interested, not prepared and/or not capable", just isn't true. That's only your opinion based upon frustration and a lack of understanding of our working practices.

I'm assuming you are not an engineer, or have ever had to deal with an intermittent fault as tiny as what yours is ? There has to be a period of, 'Let's see how it goes' due to the very nature of how Broadband/DLM works.I refer you back to my comment about national averages on time-to-repair with REIN tasks.

 

[kitz]

REIN is, and always has been, the most tricky of all the faults to remedy.  We've seen plenty of REIN faults on here, and although BT does try, very often the symptoms are worse in the evenings which is outside of BT work hours.. and its possibly why in a good portion of cases its the EU that has tracked down the culprit themselves using an AM/MW radio.  We've seen TV sets which have affected several neighbouring houses, and a stereo system which took out DSL for half a street.  The Stereo system was interesting because BT were involved in that and several REIN engineers that had been in attendance, yet it was the owner who found it himself -  whilst a REIN engineer was actually there.  What Im trying to say is that even sophisticated equipment doesn't find it and sometimes the trusty radio does :/ 

We do understand your frustration and yes Id be feeling the same way.

Forgive me if I dropped out of your thread a bit, I've had a lot on, but I'd been looking in knowing that you were in safe hands with the likes of BS, BE, b*cat etc..  the guys who have commented know their stuff.   

However..  did I note that you had an RF3 installed... and then later you say you lost downstream sync speed?   Is the RF3 still there, and did the loss of connection speed start after that?   Its not unusual to see a loss of >2Mb downstream on adsl2+ after installation of an RF3.  Ive not seen the effects of an RF3 on a VDSL line... but there is a good chance this could be your culprit for some of the downstream loss.  As you will know Interleaving also takes up a chunk of sync speed.

I am to understand that anything over 30 or 40/hr is too many?

Err Secs are normalised over the course of a 24hr period. We dont know the exact threshold figure, but everything Ive seen leads me to believe the DLM may work on an MTBE red threshold of 30.  Which works out as:

86400/30 = 2880 per day.. (if the connection has been up for the full day's 86400 seconds). 

It also depends on which stability profile that your ISP uses.   Theres only been Zen and Plusnet so far who have catagorically stated they use 'Speed' which supposedly has the 30 threshold.   Its assumed that TT use either Standard or stable so that figure threshold figure will be at least doubled, resulting in the error tollerance for MTBE being halved. 

I've actually though about moving it, but my understanding is fibre only works at the master socket,

It will work on extension sockets, youd need to ensure that it was decent quality extension cable though.    There are many fttc installs which are done using a data extension kit.
It may be worthwhile considering as a test only if you want to eliminate say your PC & peripherals.   Im not convinced it if would work or not though.  First of all I'd try turning my monitor off as DSLstats can still run be running in the background on the PC to see if it makes any difference.    I suppose if you had/borrowed a laptop, then you could run DSLstats on that for a while too, just to check if switching your PC off makes any difference.  At least that way you'd know.

--
striked out what I remembered wrongly.

[Roxy]

@Newtron

I'd be happy to leave it for seven days and do some more monitoring, however as of eight this morning the CRC count was 72000, and the line dropped to a max attainable of 9mbps with -7db. It then disconnected and hasn't come back up since.

@BS

We'll have to agree to disagree. I only base my comments on the lack of service and poor attitude of the attending OR employees concerning my situation.

As of seeing how it goes, that's already been done - multiple times. And in each case, CRCs spike, interleaving is applied, engineer is called out, line recalced, CRCS spike, interleaving is applied - rinse and repeat. If you'd like to explain to me where in your working practices, that this is considered efficient use of OR's time, then please help me understand so I can interface with them better as an EU as well as appreciating how they are managing my expectations.

@ kitz

Yes, I am to understand from people who know far more than me that REIN is a massively tricky gremlin and even then there's no proof that there is REIN influencing on our lines here. However because there's no other decent explanation, and my symptoms suggest some type of noise interference, then I at least have to pursue my options.

I hear what you are saying about REIN examples, and the time of day and the unfortunate reality that the engineer arrives too early or too late to catch any significant type of noise in the local area. However (and as Paul can attest to), I have had the SNR fluctuation daily, for significant amounts of durations between 8am and 1am, with the heaviest noise 'traffic,' around 15:00 onwards.

What I want to know is, how did the stereo system situation even result in a visit by a true REIN engineer? All these engineers turn up blanks, and talk about the possibility of REIN - but they aren't connecting the dots for me.


Yes I had an RF3 installed on Thursday and the line still behaved the same as it had been. The loss of downstream (and now connection as I mentioned above to Newtron), was what I believe to be a result of the lift and shift performed on Friday. Out of curiosity, can a EU remove RF3 fairly easily if it's determine to be ineffective?

In regards to ES/hour/day, well I average 300-500 an hour, so I can't imagine that's good.


I'm happy to move the modem and give it a try downstairs for example, where the original socket was - however that's where he installed the RF3 filter. And additionally, can I plug it in the same way it is now via the RJ11 cable or do I need to use the old ADSL style with a filter?

FYI, currently I run all stats 24/7 via a laptop on battery.

[kitz]

Yes I had an RF3 installed on Thursday and the line still behaved the same as it had been

I was just warning you that they are known to decrease sync speeds on adsl2+, so I should imagine they do similar for vdsl.   They filter out EMI, but also cause tend to cause less bit-loading to occur in certain frequencies.  (Less bit loading = less throughput speed).

What I want to know is, how did the stereo system situation even result in a visit by a true REIN engineer?

Probably because it affected two streets and knocked out adsl lines to the point whereby they were unable to connect at all.    The OPs line was about to be declared unfit for broadband and BT was about to remove the service completely.

Even then you can see he had to go to the top to get a REIN investigation.

Took me a while to find it, but the thread is here.
http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php?topic=350.15

Another 4 Engineers, another 2 plus weekends and a whole new cable and guess what  ...Yep, SNR still at 4 to 6 db.....

Hmmmmm I wonder if its that Hi Fi unit in the corner.   Hang on a minute , I will just unplug the Sony micro system and see what happens..................Oh look ! My SNR is now 34 db............plug the Sony back in..........6 db..............unplug........34 db

Well, all there fancy test equipment said no noise was on the line ?

Hmmmmm my poor little Sony Micro System knocked out two streets and 8 ADSL lines for the past year. YET the flash, expensive Spectral anaylis machines that cost a fortune did not detect AIRBOURN inteferance from a faulty Switch Mode PSU on a micro hi fi system

---
* I recalled wrong about the engineers being there when he found it - not read that thread for over 7yrs.

[kitz]

Admin Note

Ive split off the discussions re BT Openreach visits and merged into another thread, as things started to go off-topic and detracted from the OPs issue. 

Any of the posts about Openreach visits, which dont contain line data,  have been moved to a new thread here where the conversation can be continued without detracting from fault information.