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[burakkucat]

Thank you for those photographs. Yes you do, indeed, have an NTE5/B. And that is the demarcation point between Openreach's wiring and your wiring.

The removable, lower, front plate and all the wiring connected to its rear via the IDCs are actually your responsibility. Unfortunately, as you do have a valid demarcation point, any work that Openreach perform will be chargeable. 

In view of the above, it might be worthwhile waiting to see what Black Sheep has to say before you contact your ISP.

[Black Sheep]

Yup, B*Cat has gotten to the bottom of the issue. I thought from your previous post you had star-wiring before the faceplate, but now you have posted the photo's, it shows this not to be the case. NTE5B's are quite uncommon in residential premises.

TBH, you still have star-wiring on the front-plate (ie- 2 cables attached), and the bell-wire is also connected on both these circuits. You could either chance your arm with your ISP and say you have greater speeds in the test socket than at the extension socket, and hope they pick up the engineering tab ?
Or, completely disconnect the extension wire that doesn't feed your Hub/Router on the front-plate, then pull off the wire connected to terminal 3 of the wire that does feed your router at the same front-plate, and see how much speed increase you obtain ??

Hope this kinda makes sense, got to be a quick reply as working.

[burakkucat]

From what I can see of the IDCs on the back of the lower front face-plate of the NTE5/B, it looks as if there are wires to all six of the IDCs, twice over.

If willing to do so, an appropriate experiment would be to remove both wires (originating from each of the two cables) from IDCs 1, 3, 4 & 6, just leaving the two at IDCs 2 & 5 connected. Then go to every extension socket and carefully remove all the wires that may be connected to IDCs 1, 3, 4 & 6, just leaving wires to IDCs 2 & 5 (as before).

(Of course, if you are located in the county of Surrey then it should be possible to arrange for our Walter's Wheelbarrow to trundle around to your address and to perform a wiring optimisation.    )

[karmie]

Hi guys - sorry I have been MIA from this thread but just want to update as to what went on.

Once again I am backed into a corner and the main issue is that I have a BT landline and Sky ADSL (Fibre is unfortunately unavailable in my area.) I had a local phone engineer come out to fix our internal wiring which I thought was at fault and he said there was nothing wrong with our internal wiring from his point of view and left (without charge, I might add.)

I spoke with Sky who have said: Your line is getting 13mb down and 1mb up which is more than your line should be capable of and that they are within their outlined 'speed estimation' and as such can't help and told me to contact BT. I contact BT who says because I can make and recieve landline calls that nothing is wrong with the line. Where on earth do I turn to now?

I started running ROUTERSTATS on my line and EVERY day only between the hours of 5pm - 11pm the line is dropping sync (once an hour on average), frequent CRC/HEC Downstream errors in these periods only (100 crc /minute and 20 hec/minute downstream) and the downstream margin jumps from 7db to between 9 and 13db between these periods and the sync drops from 16500 to ~13000. I unfortunately have lost my routerstats for the day as I rebooted and it doesn't log automatically but I turned on logging now and will monitor. I will post routerstats from now (the bad period) and then later after 11 to show the difference.

I am considering just purchasing a second line to be installed and new broadband install - would that solve the problem? I don't see where Sky get off telling me the line isn't capable of 13mb down / 1mb up when I had 22mb down and 2.5mb up with Be* Annex M for 4.5 years with router uptimes of 6months on 3db profile and fastpath.

Here is my current router stats (during bad period): http://pastebin.com/GiV4Lffq

What would you guys do? Who do I turn to?  I just want stability on a fastpath line.

[kitz]

Hi karmie

I note you say you have a TG585v7.   Can you download DSLstats please and set that running.  You can get a bit more info from DSLstats and I prefer it to routerstats.

I don't see where Sky get off telling me the line isn't capable of 13mb down / 1mb up when I had 22mb down and 2.5mb up with Be* Annex M for 4.5 years with router uptimes of 6months on 3db profile and fastpath

From your attenuation you should be getting a lot more speed than you are doing, but I would like to see a DSLstats/Routerstats graph just to see how much your SNRm is varying.. and to see if there any pattern.

I contact BT who says because I can make and recieve landline calls that nothing is wrong with the line.

I think I'd leave that avenue for now, because its likely you will get charged.   The fault appears to be with your DSL, and therefore its your ISPs responsibility.

I don't see where Sky get off telling me the line isn't capable of 13mb down / 1mb up when I had 22mb down and 2.5mb up with Be* Annex M for 4.5 years

It is possible that you have developed a line fault, but it does seem rather odd that it occured at the time of migration over to SKY.

Im not a fan of SKYs DLM, it works backwards.. in otherwords you have to prove that the line is stable at 'a' before it will move you to 'b'.  Other DLM's will try you at say e and if the line is unstable move you down to 'd'.   

The reason Im not a fan is I put my parents on Sky thinking it was cheap for them as they had Sky TV. They never ever got more than 2.6 Mbps on that line if they were lucky and the latency was appaulling - something like 70+ms to my server.   After several months SKy did nothing to help and fobbed my dad off numerous times..  and in the end I moved them to Plusnet in March this year.  The line immediately synced in the 8Mbps region with latency of 16ms.   The line is/was a tad unstable and I expected the BT DLM to cut in quite soon, but in actual fact it held at 8Mbps for a few months before the BT DLM applied Interleaving.  Ive not checked their stats for a while, but last time I looked about 6wks or so ago and it was syncing at around 7Mbps and with a latency of 22ms. As far as my parents are concerned it now works and they are more than happy because at least now they can stream TV and do their weekly Skype video chats to my relatives in Oz without jitter, stutter and lag that they got when on Sky. I moved 3 people away from Sky in March/April - all 3 are much happier. 

My daughter will spit at the name Sky and still blames her b/f for being conned into going over to Sky by signing up with one of those guys who had a stand in the centre of the shopping mall.  She'd been used to an Annex_M 24/2.6 Mbps BE* so going to Sky was a bit a of a culture shock especially after the way they dealt with a genuine line fault at the beginning of the year. 

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.

Dont let them lead you to believe that.  You moved over from BE, you are NOT subject to a new contract.  This is something Ive seen them try with several BE and O2 users.  Be firm about it.  Unless you took out a new sky package and changed what you got from BE then there is no new contract.  They tried the same with my daughter, I think I mentioned it on here and I threatened them with OFCOM when they started stalling and messing my daughter about after she requested a MAC key.  It took a several week but we got there in the end without penalty.  A friend of mine had similar issues with O2 -> PN.  He too lost speed (and static IP) gaining only additional latency after his line go moved over to Sky.  Once he firmly said he wasnt in contract they relented, hes also much happier now with PN (No hes not one of the 3 I moved).

Anyhow me moaning about Sky isnt going to get you anywhere.   The first step is seeing some line monitoring to see if we can see any pattern on DSLstats.     

[karmie]

Hi Kitz

Thanks very much for your detailed reply. I am aware Sky get a lot of heat from everyone and I just assumed it was due to their reach/customer base being so large and aimed at casual use that the service was always going to be poorer (ie much stricter DLM to present least possible problems and tech support load.)

I have installed DSLstats and will let it run for 24 hours from now. If I reboot the router now (after midnight) I will sync at 16,000+ but I will just leave it as it is. Sky have turned off DLM on my line at my request to allow me to run fastpath (against their advice as the line is instable between 6pm-11pm but I only had 1 disconnect this evening.)

Will post back in 24h with results to see if anyone can suggest anything and mainly who I should turn to SKY or BT. I am assuming it is Sky based on what you have said Kitz and I don't doubt your judgement. Is it possible when swapped from Sky -> Be I got put in a different 'line card'  or something at the exchange that is broken? Is crosstalk possible on ADSL? Only between 6pm-11pm does the line show ANY problems - it is worth mentioning my line attenuation went from 9db downstream to 16db upon moving to Sky? Does that mean anything?

Thanks again!

[kitz]

Is it possible when swapped from Sky -> Be I got put in a different 'line card'

Yes, you will have been.  Customers were moved from the BE* MSAN on to the Sky MSAN. You can tell that you are now on a Sky SVBN from this:

Code: [Select]

Vendor ID (Local/Remote):       TMMB / GSPNSky use Globespan.  The BE* MSAN's were Alcatel which would show up as blank or ----

Is crosstalk possible on ADSL?

Yes.  I used to see it when I was on adsl2+ with Be. It is harder to spot though and the losses arent anywhere near like they are with VDSL.
I was one of the first on the new Be MSAN, first day it went live.  Several years later I'd lost about 3 Mbps to crosstalk.  It was a very gradual thing though as more users come onboard.  However, that said, remember its the very short lines that suffer with crosstalk the most.

I feel the loss in attenuation may be more telling.  Your attenuation should not have changed by that much.    At 9dB, your attenuation is slightly less than mine was and although I started on the full 24/2.6, by the time crosstalk finished with me, I was down to about 21Mbps... so your Be stats seem about right and you will likely had a good dose of crosstalk already, so I would not attribute the further loss down to 13Mbps as crosstalk.


The fact that Sky doesnt do Annex_M means that your downstream speed should have been more than when on Be, not than less, so I think you have every right to be mighty fed up at only getting 13Mbps

Only between 6pm-11pm does the line show ANY problems

This could be REIN, but I think we need to see more info from DSLstats before jumping to conclusions...  and it shouldnt really affect your attenuation either. 

[kitz]

Ummm  Ive just had a look at your first set of stats and this jumped straight out at me

Code: [Select]

Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]:   10.5 / 1.5
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]:        8.0 / 16.5
Downstream Ouput power on adsl2+ should be circa 18-20 dBm for a line to achieve its full potential.   If that figure is correct, then you are not getting full power and its no wonder your attenuation has dropped.

Are you still using the same router as when you were on Be?   Do you have some old Be stats to check what output power was?  I want to eliminate that its not the router misreporting.   

[tickmike]

Try turning the power off to your Modem/Router over night and re-connect it in the morning.

[karmie]

Hi again guys

@Kitz - I believe the Thomson TG585v7 is known to misreport output power - i tend to see the figure at 0 or 25.5db for the downstream output power.

@Tickmike - What would turning the router off overnight do if you don't mind me asking? It would be a pain to do as the internet is almost constantly in use by someone in my household but if it has a chance at helping it will most certainly be done!

Have had DSLstats running for over 24h now and the stats basically reflect what Routerstats shows - interestingly 7:20PM 3 nights in a row was when the drops began and the line becomes stable at 11pm. I am going to try to figure out how to convey all the DSLstats information in readable format.. please note the router was power cycled at like 4am at the start of the graph when the sync jumps to 16200kbps and hasn't been touched since.

Link to DSLstats album: http://imgur.com/a/MXSvr#0
Other hopefully relevant info: http://pastebin.com/prrkeeBB

It is the 3rd night in a row that the connection goes haywire at 7:20pm and I can't for the life of me figure out why - nothing is turned on at our end no phone calls made/received at that time. Can any of you clever folk make anything of this?

Thank you again so much for all the help - even if I know who I have to pay to fix it that would be a start because right now Sky doesn't want to know and neither do BT. Its this rotation =
SKY: Does your broadband work and are you getting the speeds we quote? "yes" - Sky not interested.
BT: Does your telephone line make and receive telephone calls? "yes" - BT not interested.

 


EDIT: On reading back my post I wanted to make sure you guys know what we have 'tried' to eliminate the problem:

1) Tried with the SKY SR102 and Thomson TG585v7 with equal results, Thomson chipset seems to hold sync better during bad period.

2) Replaced RJ11 cable and filter between router and phone socket. The only equipment on the line is a singular phone plugged into said new filter. The exact same issues occur with the telephone unplugged.

3) We are using an extension socket which was 'tested' and deemed to be perfectly fine - unfortunately with the 'master' socket at our front door (which has no regular socket, just a test behind a plastic faceplate) if we use the 'Test' socket it disconnects every other socket in the house as the faceplate that plugs into the socket is what the extensions are run from(?) This is an issue because we need a phone in the office and it would be an absolute nightmare to run 50metres of RJ11 extension up the stairs to then have ONE landline phone in the household.

[JGO]

Going haywire at 7.20 PM could be someone near by switching on say, a new plasma TV for the evening.  I get something similar but it is only 0.5 dB or so.

First line of defence - do you have a filtered faceplate correctly connected  ?   These plug into the test socket and have both a modem- and a phone socket on the front. All the extensions are wired to the faceplate and are phone only. 

 With the simplification of wiring suggested by Bkat/BS this should see off the extensions acting as an aerial picking up interference and unbalance due to the bell wire making it worse.   It also eliminates the need for individual microfilters.

IF you don't have one maybe Bkat can advise - would BT modernise the connection free ?

[HPsauce]

with the 'master' socket at our front door (which has no regular socket, just a test behind a plastic faceplate) if we use the 'Test' socket it disconnects every other socket in the house as the faceplate that plugs into the socket is what the extensions are run from(?)

A photo would help explain this, but wouldn't the new iPlate solve the problem as it can be "slipped in" without disconnecting anything and provides a nice clean ADSL socket filtered from all the extension wiring.

Here's how it's installed. Note this sequence uses the now-defunct Mk1, but the principle is the same with the Mk2.

[JGO]

NO ! not the I plate, a filtered faceplate eg :=

http://www.run-it-direct.co.uk/btvdslfaceplate.html

For ADSL you don't have to worry which version, only applies to FFTC.

[karmie]

Hi guys

I included photos of the socket in an earlier post on Page 1 but it was a while ago so here they are again:
Front:

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

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

With FTTC anticipated here within the next 3-6 months (according to the checker my cabinet is ready but not accepting orders yet) if I got this plate fitted would it cause problems with that in future?

Regarding the bell wire it is certainly something I could do as I wouldn't need a crimping tool, is this correct? I am just cutting 2 wires from one of the IDC's at the master? Would BT scold me for this? Is the face plate fitted at my extension (in my living room) or at the master at the front door? If I fit it to the master at the front door does that mean I then have to plug my router in to the DSL socket on it at my front door and run a long RJ11 cable to the center of my house (really don't want to do that.)

Sorry for all the questions as this advanced stuff is extremely new to me. Thanks again!

[HPsauce]

I included photos of the socket in an earlier post on Page 1

Sorry, missed those. 
So an iPlate looks ideal......... (JGO do explain why not)

With the router plugged in locally to that you can use wireless or LAN cable to extend elsewhere.
Or to relocate the router use the unfiltered terminators on the iPlate and run a twisted-pair cable (ordinary 4-core CW1308 phone cable is fine) to a new socket solely for the router; that could be an RJ11 outlet to prevent use by BT-plug phones.