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[GunJack]

squim - I would say stick with the tiscali tech support forum guys, and keep providing the info (i.e. your routerstats graphs showing the issue. Eventually I got to have my pair replaced from exchange to enrty point, and my line's been sooo much better since.

Out of interest, the second tiscali-contracted eng bod who came out knew his stuff (unlike the first), and when he plugged his 585v7 into my line (pre-fix, obviously) it wouldn't sync at all !! Never had that problem with my D-Link 2640B. Anyhoo...after he'd done what he could (including getting me on a high-upstream profile from tiscali's Milton Keynes tech support - bonus !!) they got OP LAN eng out next day, who confirmed I needed a replacement line.

Full story here:-
http://www.tiscali.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=168871

Also, after reading through other threads on there, if you show you know what you're talking about, you get better support from them

Good Luck

[sqwim]

I would love to have the pair replaced exchange to master socket as I think that is where the problem is but think I'm onto a loser at the moment.  The REIN engineer is coming out this evening but I'm not expecting him to find much and then tomorrow I'll have a follow-up chat with Tiscali and, from earlier conversations, since it's connecting at over 2Mb they are unwilling / can't ask BTOR to fix as 2Mb is supposedly deemed fine (and unless my MSR was higher than it would be if taken over the last 10 days, 2.1 Mb may actually be my MSR anyway!).  Thus I'm concerned this 'issue' will be closed and consigned to the Tiscali 'we didn't fix it / it was not our problem' bin.

Just seems daft considering that when behaving itself the line can run at 5-6000kbps no problem.  Has to be said, recently the issue seems to be occurring pretty much all the time rather than mainly in the evenings as it did previously.  I'm wondering whether the weather (v wet recently) is having a negative effect... which of course would indicate (to me at least) that the problem is definitely with the line.  I just need some argument to convince Tiscali to consider this and somehow find the evidence they apparently need to get a BTOR engineer out to investigate / replace the pair rather than use this getout clause they seem to have of 2Mb is OK.  Ideally by Tuesday or I may find the case closed on me...!

[sqwim]

OK, REIN engineer has been round and confirmed it does not appear to be a REIN issue.  He did ask for more of my RouterStats examples by email though so that he could ask his really technical people tomorrow.

One thing he did spot, that I hadn't (possibly stupidly) considered before is that when I performed a manual restart of the router at 18:48 (see attached pics) after the SNR had been sat at 2db / 5375 ish kbps pretty much all day, it reconnected at about 5250 ish kbps (so only negligibly lower) but rather than with the same SNR of 2db I had a fluctuating SNR of between 0-9 db.

I'd be interested to know what you knowledgeable peeps might interpret this to mean.  Is it normal that such a minuscule drop in speed could result in such an unstable SNR compared to the (stupidly low but stable at the time) 2 db SNR that I had beforehand?

Cheers
Sqwim


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[jeffbb]

Hi

I have seen a similar problem .Where the noise  level on the trace  increases or decreases after a wan reconnection or reboot . It seems to be independent of the current SNR margin or synch speed . I have been trying to bottom this out for quite awhile . For me its only an irritant as the difference between the NOISY and quiet trace is from +- 0.1 db for the quiet line to +- 0.5db for the noisy line  . The other thing is that it does NOT always change. see attach 1 for an example of noise dropping after tweak , and attach 2 where there was no change . I have other examples where its gone the other way, that is where its gone quiet from been noisy.Your line obviously has very much more severe problem. problems  

Regards Jeff
edit to remove IP address

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[sqwim]

Well I heard from Tiscali today.  Apparently they're going to try a Tie Pair change.  Seems to me from research on this site that this is likely to be the pair between the MDF and the DSLAM.

Is my understanding correct?
Is it likely to fix the problem?!

Here's hoping...

[sqwim]

Well apparently the Tie Pair change happened yesterday.  I didn't notice it as it hasn't made a jot of difference!  Tiscali are trying quite hard to wash their hands of me now, talking about there being nothing more they can do.  I stuck to my guns a little and they came back to me saying they would try shifting me to a completely different bit of equipment in a different part of the exchange 'at some point'.  What might this mean (it was their complaints chap rather than technical chap talking to me!)?

I did mention that their might be a spare pair in the BT hatch near my NTE5 socket but he went on about rewiring costing thousands.  I'd have thought that changing the pair near my NTE5 socket would be fairly painless and would result in a different physical connection all the way to the exchange thus testing that theory?

Is there any way I can:
a) find out which route my cable takes from the exchange to the house?
b) find out of there are any 'spare pairs' available in the BT hatch next to my NTE5 socket (external)?  I think the the BTOR chap who came out said there was a spare pair available (but found a problem and fixed it so we didn't go down that route any further).

Finally (I know, all these questions), how do these errors look for 3hrs uptime?
Many thanks
A disheartened Sqwim

[sqwim]

Hi, I don't suppose anyone can offer advice regarding the red bits in my last post can they?

Also, who or what would store my MSR as they appear only to have provided my current line stats when asked (admittedly via complaints and not technical support).  They seem willing to help but I'd like to be furnished with this info so I sound like I know what I'm talking about!

I spoke with Tiscali today who are definitely warming up for the 'this is it, we've done what we can, take it or leave it' conversation at the moment.  I'm due to speak with their technical team (as oppose to high level complaints department) tomorrow but suspect if I can't convince them to ask BT to try another pair or inspect various joints (or whatever) then I've hit a dead end...

Many thanks
Sqwim

[jeffbb]

Hi
@squim
quote Finally (I know, all these questions), how do these errors look for 3hrs uptime?

I do not see any stats ?

Regards Jeff

[GunJack]

squim, how/where have you been dealing with tiscali - on the phone to overseas or via the tech support forum on the web ?? As I mentioned above, I personally think you'd be better dealing with the 'net team in Milton Keynes than Brian in Bangalore on the phone......

[sqwim]

Jeffbb - sorry, thought I had attached pic, now I can't find it!  Will try to find it / get another one.  Interestingly, no errors at all on the line at the moment!

GunJack - dealing with UK tech support (I don't know if they are the same people as the net team in MK) via High Level Complaints - they do seem to be trying, and appear to have done as much as possible in the exchange as they can (tie pair change, different DSLAM, 'jiggery pokery'!).  Problem seems to be, therefore, the line between home & exchange I guess.  Getting them to consider calling BTOR out for that is proving somewhat difficult.  I'll be speaking to the tech support people myself tomorrow (cut out the 'complaint' guy who says himself he doesn't know / understand what he's talking about to me).  I'd love to be able to persuade them to consider the line, but they seem reluctant.

[GunJack]

The UK lot you're dealing with should be the MK crowd - did you get a name at all ??

you really need to be showing them the routerstats traces when the fault is apparent, so when you talk to them get an e-mail address and if you've got a support ticket already suggest setting up a thread on the forums to run in parallel, coz it's easier to keep posting your graphs etc. up on there and it also provides a written record of what's been done to date and the like. Mine was handled pertty much exclusively in this way with them phoning me on occasion (and noted on the thread to keep the record intact).

persistence is a good thing, especially when you can prove there's a fault

...and good luck !!

[sqwim]

Just spoken with Tech Support (seems they are not the net team, they said that raising would be downgrading rather than escalating the issue!) - they are pretty adamant that it is a REIN issue outside of our control and that there is nothing more they can do.  They said that an environmental issue (water etc) would cause a big change in line attenuation which I am not having.  He did at least concede that if the issue clears up in summer and returns next autumn that it might indicate I'm right with regard the line being the issue.  I may also try asking my neighbours if I could check their line statistics as we live in a new build close of 10 houses and all the line will have been put in at the same time so should take the same route to the exchange and any REIN would therefore affect their line also.

When asked about the MSR (70% threshold etc) he said that it doesn't work like that with datastream/IPStream or lines that are not fully BT (?!).

Any thoughts?  At the moment it looks liek I just need to hope it eaither gets better, or worse to the extent that a fault can reliably be found!

Thanks

[GunJack]

funny old thing, I'm in a new build also...don't know 'bout yours, but on my estate OR had put a spare pair in from my entry point to the street cab (think they did this on all of them on here) - this was used in my recent line swap, along with a spare pair in the cable bunch from cab to exchange...

[jeffbb]

Hi
quote
When asked about the MSR (70% threshold etc) he said that it doesn't work like that with datastream/IPStream or lines that are not fully BT (?!)

Not sure about datastream but if you are on IPstream (ie not LLU) then it should be the same as any other IPStream users . Perhaps someone else can shed light on this .

Regards Jeff

[sqwim]

I'm back!  I'd given up on this for a bit, as per my earlier post, waiting for dryer & warmer weather to see if that improves the problem on the line so I can take that 'evidence' back to Tiscali to convince them it is not REIN somewhere between house and exchange.  However...

A few days ago the missus tells me that the neighbours have had big phone problems - turns out they've had intermittent crackling line for a while and have never got round to doing anything about it (if the phone works and they can connect their laptop up via their USB modem, they're happy!).  Recently (very wet weather, possibly relevant, possibly not) it has been getting worse and very recently they've had occasions where the phone did not work at all.

Not had a chance to speak to them yet but a couple of days ago I note that our router has completely dropped the connection.  Not just a resync or a temporary droppage, it had lost the connection and had no connection / stats at all.  A reboot of the router brought it back up... at about 3500 Kbps and a seemingly fairly stable SNR.  I've since run router stats again on the router and the results confirm this.  Great, you may think, BUT I used to be able to connect between 5-6000 Kbps and now get nothing nothing more than 3.5-4000 Kbps.  I also noted that my bits/tone results are VERY different.

I'm guessing some work has been done to fix the neighbours problem which has caused this.  Do you knowledgeable peeps think this might mean something? 

A few 'before and after' stats for you are below (and in the next post as I can only post 4 per post it seems).  Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to have a stable SNR again, but would like my sync rate back!  What do you reckon is going on?

Thanks (again!)
Sqwim

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