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[Black Sheep]

No, no - absolutely you weren't.

Likewise, my own text may be being read in the style of some heartless & pompous you-know-what. Not the case at all, I genuinely feel for Weavers predicament but am also trying to see it from the other side of the fence, too.

No point us all patting the poor geezer on the head, saying how monstrous they're all being. That time might be better spent trying to understand why they've come to their decision .... IMHO, of course. 

[Weaver]

To reiterate what I said before, it has always been AA’s choice not mine as to whether or not they get on to BTW/OR. And if you want to know about other lines then you can ask me. My lines 1 and 3 have always been fine, in fact line 3 is perfect. The third point is that sometimes even with HCD faults, OR engineers have found a fault out on the moor and fixed it by repairing a joint. So it’s not the case that there are non-problems reported. There most certainly have been problems that have vanished between the time I report them and the time when OR arrives but I can’t help that and in every case I have objective proof of the extent of the HCD fault and as I have said before have always left it to get incredibly bad before calling for help, so that an engineer will have something obvious and really bad to see. There was a fault that was a no-show when the OR engineer arrived, no problem seen, and that could have been because AA understandably called OR out too early, trying to get it fixed quickly, but it was too soon and hadn’t developed as much as I would have liked to give OR the best chance. But once again, AA makes the decisions as to whether or not to call OR out, not me.

I do not order AA to fix non-problems and you can believe that or not, unfortunately I can’t easily prove it. But you could look back at all the old threads.

As for the ‘problem of scrutiny’ I’ll just have to ask you to believe me that I did not ever do this. I’m sufficiently clued up to know what is a problem and what is not, and since anything bad gets handed over to AA it is they who make the decisions not me. My emails to AA always contain a ‘what do you think?’ or ‘would you take a look at x?’. I don’t nag AA into fixing faults, or non-faults for that matter. You don’t really know me, and I could be one of the OR time wasters that you have encountered and like certain persons I can think of, but I just ask you to believe that I’m not and in any case, there is always AA there who would act as a filter.

I haven’t tweaked anything to run at 3 dB SNRM downstream. It’s an option on AA’s control panel, and I discussed it with AA first, and monitored the results to see if there were any errors. If there had been any downstream errors then I would have put the SNRM up to 6 dB. I’ve been very happily running at 3 dB downstream SNRM for well over five years and the only reason that I can do it is because of my Broadcom PhyR software in the modems and that in the exchange which fortunately matches it. It’s easily worth about 4 dB. Unfortunately it’s only available for downstream.

AA is understandably saying that they simply can’t diagnose HCD after trying for many many months.

Recap: ultimately this leads to very high downstream SNR and extremely low downstream sync rates, say 288 kbps - 400 kbps instead of 2.0 - 3.1 Mbps often with high packet loss too. In anyone’s book those sync rates are unusable, no?

We’re not talking about a minor whinge or a request for optimisation. Occasionally bad joints have been found, fixed and that cured it. So it’s possible that all HCD is caused by bad joints.

[Black Sheep]

OK Weaver - what is your own personal opinon of why faulting service has been withdrawn ?? Do you think it's AA, or OR ??

I'd humbly suggest from what you've said about never pushing the issue yourself, that it is AA that have taken the stance to stop service ??

[Wilt]

I do not order AA to fix non-problems and you can believe that or not, unfortunately I can’t easily prove it. But you could look back at all the old threads.

As for the ‘problem of scrutiny’ I’ll just have to ask you to believe me that I did not ever do this. I’m sufficiently clued up to know what is a problem and what is not, and since anything bad gets handed over to AA it is they who make the decisions not me. My emails to AA always contain a ‘what do you think?’ or ‘would you take a look at x?’. I don’t nag AA into fixing faults, or non-faults for that matter. You don’t really know me, and I could be one of the OR time wasters that you have encountered and like certain persons I can think of, but I just ask you to believe that I’m not and in any case, there is always AA there who would act as a filter.

I believe you, for what it's worth. But I can certainly see that for an outfit like AA who basically trade off of their reputation for excellent support and fault-fixing prowess (and yes, they charge appropriately for that too) they may feel the need to push for resolution of a more marginal fault even if the fault ticket was only opened to get their view on something.

I suspect if your ISP was a bog-standard mass market ISP there would have been a lot fewer faults raised with Openreach even if you raised the same number of faults with the ISP, simply because they would have been happier to say that some of the more marginal errors are just due to line length and there's nothing that can be done, than AA will have been.

[Weaver]

I’m just completely confused and haven’t been able to form an opinion. There was the mention of deadlock so that might indicate that there has been some barney between AA, BTW or OR. Or it’s just as likely that this is coming from AA, and thinking on that side, I’m quite with you.

Because it has all been so vague, I asked them straight out, what will happen if I do what I’ve done before successfully, order an additional line and then cease the bad one and they said explicitly that I was allowed to order a new line according to the plan. I was given quite proper and helpful warnings that the plan probably wouldn’t work. Later on I said to them that I had taken heed of their advice and decided not to go ahead with the plan, ie not to order an additional line.

Mind you, I’m starting to change my mind, thinking about ordering a new line, my reasoning being what’s the worst that can happen - well I end up with a new bad line and have wasted a bit of money, but apart from that I’m not any worse off.

Actually now I stop to think about it the worst that can happen is that I order a new line, it all looks good and then AA completely refuses to support it, that’s probably ‘the worst’. And paying for AA with support refused from the start, well that’s quite crazy.

I’ve been a loyal customer for well over 30 line-years and have paid AA a decent amount of money, so you can understand why I might not be too happy.

[dee.jay]

For the record I didn’t think or have ever thought you were pushy or demanding.

I always assumed AA took this on for you in good faith because they seem the sort that would care enough when you make them 3 x the business and they sell themselves as sorting out OR with no BS.

[Weaver]

Thanks dee.jay, you’re the best.

[dee.jay]

Thanks dee.jay, you’re the best.

Haha no problem.

Just wish I could do more for you.

[Alex Atkin UK]

This is what I don't understand from what BS was saying, I never got the impression you were nit-picking little issues.  You are paying AAISP for a bonded service and that inherently means that issues which would be minor for someone with a single line DO need dealing with, or that line is useless.  That's not not-picking or overly scrutinising your lines IMO, you only brought up issues when that actually impacted your use of the service.

[craigski]

Looking at this in a slightly different way, more mathematically. If you have 4 lines into your property ( I think its 4?), and the MTBF is consistent with similar lines to neighbours properties, in total you are going to have 4 times the amount of faults to your property as a neighbour with only one line. ie having more lines increases the probability of a fault to the property.

[Weaver]

@craigski  - quite so.

Irrationally, I might feel an abuser just because I’ve got more lines and hence more faults, as you say. And just because one of my lines has a fault doesn’t mean that it is any more likely that my others will be faulty, not in this case, because faults can be fixed and I’ve never had any RF interference related problems which - you would expect - would affect all if they affect one.

I need to get on and try sorting out the 4G kit that meritez has helped me with. My health is better now, finally after months, triggered by me catching the ordinary for fir the first time in recorded memory. Although I never see anyone, Janet caught it off someone and gave it to me. I just need Janet to be available to help me with it, which is difficult to arrange.

[tubaman]

@Weaver, I really do think you'd be best going the 4G and/or satellite route as it's starting to look like your landlines are becoming unsustainable from a DSL perspective. Openreach only have a certain level of obligation when it comes to providing an internet service and if you have access to 4G I'm not sure they have any obligation to provide at all - https://www.bt.com/broadband/USO

[Chrysalis]

Been honest Weaver I am amazed you have managed to get all the call outs you have done so far.  Your line is very long so I expect Openreach will have the point of view its just the nature of the service, and that you run them on an aggressively low 3db margin as well.

Openreach I expect are looking to the future and see copper as dead tech now.

AAISP been stuck in the middle are probably trying to do the best by you.  However I dont think you been unreasonable either, they do sell themselves as dee jay said as been a master of dealing with BT line faults, I did indeed even post in my own thread not long ago I was disappointed with a response I got back from them on single threaded speeds which I felt was a mass market type response.

Did you look into your 4G L2TP idea?  I think thats your stop gap solution until the FTTP is done in your area.  More and more people use 4G at home now, and you can keep your static IP addressing.

Going away from DSL felt risky for me as I have been used to it for so long, but I absolutely do not regret it and L2TP allows you to keep your AAISP network stuff.  Also would be no more stress of monitoring fragile DSL lines, DLM etc. things are more of a "just works".

--edit

I have seen some of the points I mentioned have been raised in the thread, my suggestion Weaver is to treat the 4G migration as a priority, I think it will be something you wont regret.  The DSL problems you have, have just been dragging on.  If needed I dont mind in DMs giving you my experience of setting up my L2TP, the MTU etc.

[Weaver]

Well 3 dB doesn’t ‘break the lines’, despite what some superstitious folk have said to me. I run at 3dB downstream where I can do so with zero ES. If I do get any errors, then I increase to 6 dB. And that has nothing at all to do with the bad joint faults that have been reported and fixed. I have absolutely zero sympathy for Openreach as the knowledge of the engineers who have come out to me has been truly shocking, but they can’t find faults that aren’t there. The faults have gone into hiding before the engineer arrives or else some mysterious action by the engineer has fixed them. I don’t understand why Openreach doesn’t escalate the issues given that there have been so many repeat faults mended again and again. Look back in the old posts, everything is documented. And as for the ‘copper is dead technology - don’t support it’ philosophy, that’s pretty callous - what they should be doing is replacing the worst copper with FTTP first, which they have done in some extremely remote parts of Skye. We’re still BT customers and they aren’t allowed to just forget us. It is a complete waste of time re-fixing the same faults again and again, so why don’t they fix it properly, for good or far far better get rid of the copper right now. `they must know how bad some of the lines are in reliability terms.

I have already been looking into 4G hardware with Meritez’s help, but illness over the past few months has meant endless delay. Since my own health is now picking up and so is that of my wife hopefully, maybe we will get something done before xmas.

AA has been just totally confused by HCD. I suspect they’ve never seen it before. No kitizens have come back saying it’s familiar. And I wouldn’t be surprised if BT has not issued all kinds of threats to AA - complete speculation, based on nothing, and we’ll never know,

Offers of help greatly appreciated. AA has also offered to help me set up L2TP in the Firebrick. But I’m nowhere near that stage yet. I haven’t even managed to gain access to the modem-router yet, that’s been my awkward problem. It all depends on health or rather lack of it.

I wonder if I can bond DSL/PPPoE with L2TP/4G ? Would MTU problems make that a nightmare, or do I just reduce the MTU to the lowest common value?

[Alex Atkin UK]

I just hope you have better luck with L2TP than I do, mine went down for a while recently because pfSense has a nasy habit of not reconnecting when there is a momentary glitch with 5G and I get fed up of manually forcing it.  Its supposed to be my backup into the home network if I'm ever away from home and the main connection goes down, kinda useless if it can't be relied upon to stay connected.

Mobile is great for speed, but I'm very dubious about using it for reliability as I'm in an area with plenty of cell density, decent broadband, and its still not exactly reliable.  Somewhere remote where there will be few cells and people hammering it, I'm just not sure its going to be an improvement.  Hopefully the Firebricks down have to take down the main connection every time the backup goes wonky, pfSense does and it sucks.  I've had more downtime due to 5G dropping causing the main connection to briefly go offline, than I ever had with the main connection dropping itself.