Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[maybecrazy]

Hello all, after being with Virgin for the best part of 15 years I'm finally dumping them as my 152Mbps connection drops to below 10Mbps peak times,  'utilisation fault' as they call it  As I can see from other posts on their forums that these 'faults' can take months and even years to resolve.

Long story short, I now have FTTC through an Entanet ISP and generally I'm happy with it.  Approx 1 week after installation there was a fault on the line and my inet speed dropped to approx half and there was no dial tone on voice.  OR guy said he had to change my line to a different card on the fibre side of things (note my technical explanation there) 

I notice that occasionally the SNRM will suddenly  drop by around 4db, at the same time the attainable sync rate drops below the actual sync and also I get a little burst of ES. This doesn't seem to affect speed or performance.

This drop will recover after maybe 1-3 hours, can someone please take a look at my my stats  and perhaps provide an explanation for these sudden drops. The latest drop happened today at 15:34.  User name same as here.

Some background info:-

I have an unlocked HG612 and monitoring the stats with MDWS and trying to learn and understand, so much more complicated at user level than docsis.

There is approx 300m of copper between the cab and my NTE5 mk3.   Initially the the sync was higher but now seems to of settled at the current rate.

Thanks for looking.

[jid]

Hello all, after being with Virgin for the best part of 15 years I'm finally dumping them as my 152Mbps connection drops to below 10Mbps peak times,  'utilisation fault' as they call it  As I can see from other posts on their forums that these 'faults' can take months and even years to resolve.

Long story short, I now have FTTC through an Entanet ISP and generally I'm happy with it.  Approx 1 week after installation there was a fault on the line and my inet speed dropped to approx half and there was no dial tone on voice.  OR guy said he had to change my line to a different card on the fibre side of things (note my technical explanation there) 

I notice that occasionally the SNRM will suddenly  drop by around 4db, at the same time the attainable sync rate drops below the actual sync and also I get a little burst of ES. This doesn't seem to affect speed or performance.

This drop will recover after maybe 1-3 hours, can someone please take a look at my my stats  and perhaps provide an explanation for these sudden drops. The latest drop happened today at 15:34.  User name same as here.

Some background info:-

I have an unlocked HG612 and monitoring the stats with MDWS and trying to learn and understand, so much more complicated at user level than docsis.

There is approx 300m of copper between the cab and my NTE5 mk3.   Initially the the sync was higher but now seems to of settled at the current rate.

Thanks for looking.

Welcome to the forum!

OK I've had a look over your stats, those dips are quite a concern. They're happening it seems for the same interval of time each day. Unlike Docsis FTTC I'd susceptible to noise or interference from electrical devices.

Is there anything in the house that is on at this time, heating or hot water boiler, etc?

If not, it's not necessarily something in your property causing it, but it can be good to check.

Currently it isn't affecting your connection too much, but as take up and crosstalk increasing at your cab, then the SNR Margin (the volume of the signal if you like) will decrease. 6dB is the target and currently you have some spare, so you're not getting issues. The ES rate is fine, hence you still aren't interleaved, DLM isn't seeing a high error rate to need to do anything.

However, that drop may affect things in future. SNR Margin is important for Cooper broadband, if it dips there's something affecting it and yours seems something is interfering somewhere.

More experienced kitizens I'm sure will be around to further look over your stats, but try and work out if anything in your property could be switching on and off at those times

[maybecrazy]

Thanks for the welcome and thanks for looking jid.

I'm reasonably sure there is nothing in my house that could cause interference on a timed basis, how close does something have to be be to cause interference ? Is it the copper itself that picks up the interference ? All the copper is underground with the copper from the pavement chamber right to the NTE5 being all new and the cable between faceplate and modem is a short cat5e. I have I live in a row of semis so could be a neighbour I guess.

How does one track down interference like this ?

Thanks again

[jid]

No problem.

Yes the copper picks up the interference, regardless if it overhead or above. A neighbour could also be the source, as can roadside electric substations, pumping stations along the route of the cable to the cab.

Also, any aluminium on your line will play havoc. There are experienced members than me who can identify this sort of thing, but interesting how it's a very set interval, sounds like REIN: http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/rein.htm#REIN

Although, I may be wrong. This is very unlikely to be a line fault of any sort, and getting REIN or any sort of noise issue fixed is difficult. Read over that page I've linked above and hopefully you'll more of an understanding how nose affects DSL.

Hopefully someone more experienced will be able to make a further diagnosis

[WWWombat]

Looking back over 10 days, the line seems to be in a bad state - with DLM intervention early on, and a sync at under 30Mbps for a while (with reasonable SNRMs to match). When did the engineer attend?

Looking at just the last 5 days, I see a strange effect - there are dips in the SNRM graph (as you describe), but there aren't the same dips in the SNRM/Band graphs. It is hard to diagnose something when the stats aren't consistent.

Remember too that the biggest source of noise on a VDSL2 line can be ... crosstalk from other VDSL2 lines. A straight-edge alteration in noise like this *could* be from another user turning their modem on and off.

[maybecrazy]

Thanks for looking

Best not to go back 10 days as there was fault in the cab that gave me the DLM, OR traced the fault and had to move my line to a different fibre card or something in turn getting rid of the DLM.

Then Saturday just gone I had to reflash the modem so it all went backup around noon Saturday so I'm omly looking at stats from then really.

There was another SNRM drop this afternoon for about 1.5 hours.  I'm 100% sure any interference is not coming from my house.

So one person turning on their modem can really cause a 4db drop. Do people really turn off modems and routers ?

Further comments and advice welcome.

[burakkucat]

So one person turning on their modem can really cause a 4db drop. Do people really turn off modems and routers ?

I would not expect a drop of 4 dB to be caused by just one person turning on a modem or modem/router. 

As to your question, yes there are people who (contrary to all advice) will turn off their modem and router or modem/router! 

[maybecrazy]

Thanks

I don't expect anyone to diagnose my problem but what sort of circumstances could cause a sudden 4db drop like I have ?

Just trying to understand 

[burakkucat]

At the moment it is rather difficult to say. (Many of us will say that our tentative diagnosis' are based on "feeling" and past experience.) It certainly is a pretty much vertical drop and recovery.

[NewtronStar]

It looks like and engineer was doing his/her stuff at the PCP cabinet and used a bad pair then decided to put things back to the way it was.

[Bald_Eagle1]

At the moment it is rather difficult to say. (Many of us will say that our tentative diagnosis' are based on "feeling" and past experience.) It certainly is a pretty much vertical drop and recovery.

I have attached an example caused at exactly the same time EVERY NIGHT by a pumping station motor.

It apparently affects more than one user.

[maybecrazy]

Thanks @ all

All very interesting.

So would the interference be picked by the copper between the cab and my house or could it be anywhere on the copper all the way back to the exchange ?

[jid]

So would the interference be picked by the copper between the cab and my house or could it be anywhere on the copper all the way back to the exchange ?

Most likely anywhere along the route of your copper line, it's very difficult to say really.

Google Maps can be a good way to try and work it

[captainkirk]

As we have been watching our stats carefully since unlocking the 612 modem I was very surprised to see a drop in snrm when I turned a lamp on.  The lamp has a halogen bulb with a dimmer option and it causes a drop of at least 1.5 db when switched on - daughter has the same type of lamp and from two room away it still causes a drop of nearly 1 db.  Only found this because I happened to be watching a lovely straight snrm line (unusual for us) when I turned the light on.

[maybecrazy]

Thanks again to everyone who has offered input.

I will keep monitoring and see if there is any pattern to this sudden drop of SNRM.

What makes it worse is...

I've given 30 days notice to Virgin because of the appalling slow down at peak times but last night peak time slow down completely disappeared and I was getting more or less headline speeds and I'm at a loss as to understand why

It's been confirmed by Virgin that there is a 'utilisation' problem in my area and that the review date isn't until April let alone a fix date.

I do question though why I obsess so much about my internet connection