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[toulouse]

Hi gang,

As some of you may recall, I joined the Plusnet ADSL2+ trial at the beginning of May. Initially for the first six or seven weeks I saw connection rates between 11920 and 12739. Something happened towards the end of June, which led to the involvement of much testing of my line by my ISP and also the involvement of 2 separate BT Openreach engineers. No problems found by either of them.

Now, reading through the support ticket, which is currently still open, I noticed that my MSR = 7392 and FTR = 5913. Would I be correct in thinking that these may well have been set when I first joined Plusnet some 2 years ago. Having read the info on this excellent site, those kind of figures suggest to me that they may well have been applicable to the service I was using prior to joining the current trial, i.e. Plusnets Up to 8Mb MaxDSL product.

Secondly, when moving to a potentially higher speed service (ADSL2+), would or should these figures be recalculated ?

TTFN


toulouse

[orainsear]

The MSR and FTR figures do seem to be a great deal lower than your current connection rates which would certainly suggest that they are based on your old line profile.

When you first switched to ADSL2+ did you go through the 10 day line training?  It's during this period that the line data is collected and your MSR/FTR etc are calculated.

[toulouse]

@orainsear

It was during the first 6-7 weeks that I was achieving the kind of connection rate figures that I mentioned initially. Since that time, along with several other Plusnet users, my connection rates have been steadily going downhill.

I wonder if those figures for MSR and FTR have been recalculated. How could I find out ?

[orainsear]

Can you give a rough figure for the connection rates you are getting now?

As for help - I'd have thought that PlusNet technical support should be able to give you some answers.  In addition it may also be worthwhile posting on their community forum to see if any other users have experienced anything similar.

[toulouse]

@orainsear

Yesterday my connection had been up for the previous 4 days at a rate of 8765. Due to overnight maintenance by BT I decided to shut everything down last night and restart afresh this morning. Today I've got 8355(d)/1096(u) with SNR of 14, and a minor, possibly insignificant change in my downstream attenuation from 35.0 yesterday to 35.5 today.

These figures are for the last few days. I've had a ticket running with Plusnet Support since this problem reared it's ugly head way back towards the end of June, and since then have had 2 BT Openreach engineer appointments, neither of which found anything wrong. I just don't get it.


TTFN


toulouse

[kitz]

>> would or should these figures be recalculated ?

I was under the impression that they were when moving over to adsl2+

Do I recall that you had some weirdness with your  speeds when you first went on the trial?  Apologies if I recall wrongly

[toulouse]

@kitz

There was a minor problem concerning the profiles as reported by the BT Performance tester and the Plusnet Member Centre, but that was cleared after a couple of days on the trial. Well done for picking that up.

For the first 6 - 7 weeks I was seeing download syncs of in excess of 11920 up to 12739, then on 23/24 June it all went pear shaped and has been there ever since, and I'm now back to speeds of a little over 8M. There have been a LOT of people on the Plusnet forums reporting similar problems starting around the same time as mine. Am I right in thinking that you also have experienced reduced sync problems recently ?

Thanks for your response about my enquiry. Just a quick further question...would you say that those figures that I reported would indicate that they were recalculated when I switched to ADSL2+, bearing in mind that for the period 1 May - 23/24 June I had been connecting at something in excess of 11920 ?


TTFN


toulouse
 

[orainsear]

There have been a LOT of people on the Plusnet forums reporting similar problems starting around the same time as mine.

I wonder if they started to experience some problems during the trial and so throttled the speeds back somehow, or perhaps there were near end cross talk problems.

Did you notice any instability of your line at all?

A bit unlikely but perhaps it's all part of their testing procedures?

[toulouse]

Hi orainsear,

Well, they've certainly done something and it's upset a LOT of people on the trial.

Prior to the night of 23/24 June my line had been rock solid. I saw sync speeds from 11920 to 12739 during the 6 - 7 weeks before that evil night. Prior to joining the trial my line had always synched at 8128 / 448kbps, with no dropouts since July 2007.

There is now talk on their community forums about BT applying what they refer to as 'Banded Profiles', and I think I may well have become a victim of said evil doing. The Plusnet Support people have offered me the loan of an approved modem, but when I accepted that offer, everything has gone quiet. Also a suggestion was recently made by them to reduce my SNR figure, but again when I asked them to go ahead with that, everything has gone quiet. I'm wondering if they have more problems than they can actually deal with.


TTFN


toulouse

[kitz]

IIRC there were quite a lot of problems during about that period.. experienced by several ISPs..  there hasnt been any real answer what was going wrong although there was some rumours about incompatible MSANs.

If toulouse was one of those caught up in this.. and his was one of those in the lower than anticpated syncs.. then that could well account for a lower than expected FTR.  If this is the case then IMHO BT should be retraining those lines to get the proper FTR and MSR recorded.

>> I'm wondering if they have more problems than they can actually deal with.

You may be right...  and why its classed as a trial..  I recall the days when max first came in and how max teething problems caused problems for most ISPs.  I know that Plusnet CS was swamped with enquiries and things practically ground to a halt for several months 

[orainsear]

Hmmmm looking at it cynically, could these 'banded profiles' be something akin to traffic shaping, except rather than throttling throughput they are capping connection rates.

[toulouse]

@orainsear

I'm not really sure. I submitted an additional question to my outstanding ticket 3 days ago, but am still awaiting a response. If I ever get a response, I'd be happy to let you know. But please, don't hold your breath.

From what I understand at the moment, there are I think 3 different 'banded profiles', one of which is referred to as 'Super Stable', and it is this little b*st*rd which I think they've put me (and maybe others) on. There's a lot of not very happy bunnies on the Plusnet trial at the moment.


TTFN


toulouse

[jeffbb]

Hi
Many many years ago some wise old soldier told me NEVER volunteer for anything 

Regards Jeff

[kitz]

Hmmmm looking at it cynically, could these 'banded profiles' be something akin to traffic shaping, except rather than throttling throughput they are capping connection rates.

The banded profiles are BTw's equivalent of Be*s profiles...
Only unlike Be where the user/ISP controls them.. with BTw its the DLM that does it.

I do believe though that in the future there is talk that the ISP will have much more control and be able to over-ride it themselves rather than having to go to BTw. 
Also... and Im speaking very tentatively here, because it will depend on the interface and the ISP being able to build something into their portal..and if BTw/ISP decide to proceed...  but it may be possible to allow user control.  Dont hold your breath just yet though.

[orainsear]

Ahh I see! So what are the bands?  I'm guessing 3 - 6 dB, 6 - 9 dB and 9 - 12 dB.

Being placed in the 'super stable' band would suggest that the line was previously experiencing instability.

Do you move down a band if your line maintains stability?  Max DLM can still a be a bit of a mystery.... is this going to be any clearer