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[karmie]

Hi guys - I am having some pretty 'annoying' problems with my broadband and would love to get some advice on what you think my best 'play' is.  I was previously on Be* Annex-M and had 21mb down / 2mb up and ~12ms latency to BBC (for the whole 4 years I had them). Obviously Sky bought BE* and swapped us over, my speeds have been pretty terrible, 13mb down / 1mb up and ~45ms to BBC. I got Sky to turn down the interleave depth to the minimum and had pings of ~15ms or so for a while until the DLM kicked in and put it back to 45ms.

Here are my line stats from the Thomson TG585v7: http://pastebin.com/LPxY90JP
A dump from Routerstats summary page: http://pastebin.com/RdAQR7De

Excuse my lack of knowledge but from what I have gathered at 5pm every day my downstream FEC errors go crazy and as a result I think Sky sets my SN Margin and interleave depth ridiculously high to compensate to allow the connection to stay alive? As you can see with 1week uptime the connection is stable but the latency is just poor.. never have below 50ms within the UK which isn't so much of a problem but when you start hitting Sweden/Germany etc we are talking ~80ms solid which is a huge problem for me.

I have isolated the problem to what I BELIEVE is my internal wiring, when plugged in to the master socket the sync goes up and the line doesn't error. Obviously new filters, new RJ11 cable and tried multiple routers and at every extension point in my house we get huge erroring (and sometimes increased attenuation) - in the master socket the downstream attenuation is 15db and I didn't spot hardly any errors and I managed to sync much higher.

Ok so heres where I need the advice - if it is my internal wiring (which I believe it is) -  do I need to get a phone engineer to come and rewire every socket in my home? I believe the cabling is all running through walls so are we talking huge amounts of money for this? Hypothetically I could use a long RJ11 extension from the master socket (this is at my front door) to the centre of the house but its not really a permanent solution.

I am just really confused - I was with Be* for 4 years and had a downstream attenuation of 9.5db and never had any problems in that whole period. I move to Sky and I gain 7db attenuation and apparently at the exact same time my internal wiring has all failed on me. I would gladly take 5mb down if I could have <20ms latency as before. Fibre is unfortunately not available here and my only option is to buy out my contract and move to another LLU provider but whether or not that will do any good remains to be seen.

I am so sorry for rambling - any advice is greatly appreciated. I am not worried about stability, downstream speeds (within reason) and purely looking to get the latency I used to have.

[JGO]

Rather than rewiring I suggest you first consider a filtered faceplate say £7, plus 60p for insert tool   This includes a single "micro filter" for the whole system and is usually wired so that data is only available at the master socket  which now has  phone and  modem sockets . 
 This will see off any interference picked up on the extensions and also "there and back" delays  to data  l  It also means no dangly filters.

This will put the system in better shape, not sure about latency I thought this was down to the ISP's system but no doubt someone will correct me !!

Best of Luck

[Black Sheep]

Welcome to the forum, Karnie. 

Further to JGO's great advice, I would simply ring your ISP and explain you have slow speeds at your extension socket, but it's OK in the test port at the Master Socket.

I've literally worked on thousands of this very same scenario. The ISP should build an SFI Broadband engineering task for Openreach to visit and 'normalise' your internal wiring set-up.
Most, if not all ISP's tend to foot the bill for this kind of visit, by way of a gesture of goodwill in the hope you'll remain with them when out of contract ?. 

[karmie]

Hi guys thanks for your valued input - I was put off with phoning Sky again as the agent had simply told me to phone BT and report a voice fault on the line yet when I phoned BT they did a line test and told me nothing was wrong with the line (at least the voice side of it) and told me I could have an engineer but if it worked when he got here it would cost me £150. I didn't really want to spend £150 when I knew the phone was working fine.. so I just assumed I would have to hire a telephone engineer myself and get them to rewire my entire house.

The filtered faceplate or SFI engineer sounds good - I am not averse to spending money to fix the problem but if we are talking upwards of >£200 I would want to be sure it would fix the problem.. Genuinely encourages me to move property when we are nearly in 2015 and I upload at 1mb a second and have >50ms to BBC. What is ironic is back in 2001~ on Blueyonder prior to congestion I had <5ms pings to the Blueyonder CS Servers (if anyone played Counter-Strike back in the day may remember =d) Obviously the older we get the more latency advantage we need on these young guns.. ;-)

[burakkucat]

One thing which is not obvious from your initial post is whether your "master socket" is an NTE5/A (first image below) or an old LJU2/1A (second image below).

If it is the latter then your ISP needs to book an Openreach engineering visit to "normalise" the wiring and to fit an NTE5/A. That service is provided FOC by Openreach, as it is in everyone's interest -- Openreach, your ISP and yourself. 

[JGO]

Good point B'kat. 
Am I correct in thinking the older version doesn't have a Test Socket inside ?

[karmie]

Its interesting because my 'master socket' at my front door has the openreach logo at the top like the NTE5 faceplate (the bit at the top anyway) and the bottom half of the panel I can remove has absolutely no input on it its just a blank white plastic panel and behind it I have the only test socket in the house.

Is this normal?

[JGO]

Karmie, The  faceplate is full height with a kink so it fits over the top half-plate after the bottom half has been removed, plugging into the Test socket.  This gives you a Filtered Master socket with Modem and Phone sockets on the front.

The point is that then the modem can't be plugged in elsewhere, well not without loosing most of the faceplates advantages.  If you MUST have the modem elsewhere then think you need BT to extend the wiring and move the test socket - NOT a DIY job..

[roseway]

Good point B'kat. 
Am I correct in thinking the older version doesn't have a Test Socket inside ?

That's right. Only the NTE5 type of master socket has a test socket inside. With the older type of socket, there was no demarcation point where BT's wiring responsibility ended - all the telephone wiring was BT's responsibility.

[benji09]

  Going back to Karmie's first post, I was on the BE/O2 network until Sky took over the broadband. Over the last week my sync rate has dropped from about 5Mbs down to 4Mbs, with a noise margin of 6.9dB. I did some tests with a Sky chap last night, and have a BT engineer due to call tomorrow. I don't think the BT chap will get anywhere as I think my broadband tranmit level has been reduced at the exchange, or my line has suddenly been hit with increased cross talk. I suspect I have been fortunate that I  have had the line speed I have had for years, as most my neighbours broadband lines have had slower speeds than mine.........   

[JGO]

Thanks Roseway.

[atkinsong]

Its interesting because my 'master socket' at my front door has the openreach logo at the top like the NTE5 faceplate (the bit at the top anyway) and the bottom half of the panel I can remove has absolutely no input on it its just a blank white plastic panel and behind it I have the only test socket in the house.

Is this normal?

So it sounds like you do have an NTE5 master socket, along with other extensions in the property.
But from what you say, these extensions are not wired from the lower removable section of the NTE5. If so then this is wrong and would be worth having corrected.

[Black Sheep]

Yup, it should all be covered under the 'normalisation' process. You have what is technically termed as a 'Bridged Tap', more commonly termed ..... 'Star Wiring'.
As I've said before, ring your ISP back and request an SFI BB Engineering visit. Tell them not to be so damned stupid if they ask you to ring BT to raise a 'Voice' fault ??

[burakkucat]

Its interesting because my 'master socket' at my front door has the openreach logo at the top like the NTE5 faceplate (the bit at the top anyway) and the bottom half of the panel I can remove has absolutely no input on it its just a blank white plastic panel and behind it I have the only test socket in the house.

Is this normal?

In my absence, I see that you have been given the best possible advice. 

However in answer to your question, above, I would probably have to say "Hmm . . . uncertain."    Perhaps I am "seeing" something different to what you have described but I am wondering if your demarcation point is actually an NTE5/B. If you have the means to take a photograph (with the lower front plate in place and then with it removed), that would be the simplest way for us to understand exactly what is fitted.

[karmie]

Once again I want to thank you all so much for your valued input! First thing tomorrow I will phone and request an SFI BB Engineering visit and regardless of the cost hopefully get the problem sorted.

Interesting to hear about the other Be->Sky forced migrant - is it possible the signal is weaker or something? When I got swapped over from Be* - Sky my attenuation went from 9.5db downstream to 15db in Test socket and 16.5db at my 'extension'. It coincided with about a 2 hour downtime when a BT Openreach van was at my cabinet (which is a stones throw from my house.)


EDIT:: Included photos as per Burakkucat request! One thing to note is the dial tone on all my extensions dropped and obviously the Internet when the plastic panel is removed it unplugs the thing from the test socket and it all goes down

Front:

http://i.imgur.com/MyvIORp.jpg
Inside:

http://i.imgur.com/MQVarAe.jpg

Sorry for the blurry picture, have a terrible old iphone camera :p Hopefully someone can make out what that is!

It is worth mentioning that we have 4 sockets in the home, this one is in the fuse box cupboard at the front door, one in kitchen, living room and bedroom. None of the other sockets have any test sockets inside of them.