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[faqinel]

My quick question is: Who controls the IP Profile on a BTW line?

I live 800 meters from my local exchange, have good line stats and have up untill now enjoyed download speeds of 6.5 - 7 Mbps.  For the past week I have been getting less than .5 Mpbs on an evening, despite my router achieving the following stats:

Type : Interleave
Noise margin (dB) : 6.2
Attenuation (dB) : 12.0
Attainable download rate (kbps) : 8768
ADSL status : Connected

Downstream Upstream
Rate (kbps) 8064 448

The BT Speedtester site showed my IP profile to be locked down to 500 Kbps on an evening and 2000 Kbps after midnight.  When my IP profile is at 2000 Kbps I have achieved download rates of up to 3.5 Mbps.  Unfortunately I do not know what my profile was prior to this week as I never had reason to check.

I did receive a FUP letter from Orange in September complaining of excesive usage in June but have heard nothing since.  I have asked Orange several times if they are restricting my profile but they have denied that they are and just blame contention.  At the moment I am stuck in a technical support loop of line test followed by denial.  I'd appreciate any advice that would shed some light on who/what might be the root cause of my problem.  In my unprofessional opinion it would not appear to be line quality or contention.

Thanks in advance.

[roseway]

The IP profile doesn't really dance around like that. It's set automatically by the BT DLM process. If something happens to your connection to cause a low-speed resync, then the IP profile will fall to a level below that speed almost immediately. If your connection then recovers to its previous speed, the IP profile will be restored after a period which can be up to five days. Large changes are supposed to happen more quickly than small changes.

What seems to have happened in your case is that some temporary event caused your connection speed to drop to a low value, which would have triggered the fall in the IP profile. After that the connection speed recovered (maybe in a couple of stages) and DLM responded as it's supposed to do.

If that event was a one-off, then your IP profile should be restored quite soon. But if there's an ongoing problem with sporadic bursts of interference or something like that, then more investigation will be needed. I suggest that you monitor the connection for a few days and see what happens to the IP profile. The best tool for continuous monitoring of your connection is Routerstats.

[faqinel]

Thanks for the program link, I'll get that installed this evening.

I've noticed the change in profile for the past three evenings and it does flip bang on midnight, hence my suspicion that it is traffic management by Orange as it coincides with the end of their peak period.  Whenever I've reset my router it does appear to initially sync at a good speed but 'Routerstats' should give a clearer picture.

Orange have agreed to reset my profile, so I'll see what happens over the next 10 days and post the results.

Thanks again.

[kitz]

Just a quick thought (due to something spotted by one of the mods)...  are you using a wireless connection on your router and is it secure?

You seem to be connecting via different ISPs - none of them Orange.
Is it possible that you could be connecting via someone elses wireless connection.?

That could well explain this

When my IP profile is at 2000 Kbps I have achieved download rates of up to 3.5 Mbps.

It would also explain why other speeds dont seem to tie up with your IP profile...  and it could be why you are sometimes appearing to be throttled when you shouldnt be.

[jeffbb]

Hi
quote : Is it possible that you could be connecting via someone elses wireless connection.?

@Kitz   would that imply that the Other connection was not secure ?.

quote  :When my IP profile is at 2000 Kbps I have achieved download rates of up to 3.5 Mbps

@ faqinel  was the DL rate and the profile reading  in the same BT report ? or did you have a profile of 2000Kbps and sometime later had a speedtest result of 3500Kbps ?

Regards Jeff

[faqinel]

Hi

quote : Is it possible that you could be connecting via someone elses wireless connection.?

The download speed through btspeedtester is never more than the ip profile,  but via generic sites like bbmax (run straight afterwards) it does exceed the profile speed.

Just a quick thought (due to something spotted by one of the mods)...  are you using a wireless connection on your router and is it secure?

I am connected via ethernet to a Livebox.  I have pairing enabled, use the default password that ships with the Livebox and I did clear my associated device list when this started.  The only associated devices are mine.  The only time I change the connection string is when I log in as speedtest@startup_domain to run further tests on the speedtester website.  When you say I seem to be connecting via different ISP's; do you mean connecting to this forum?  My work BB goes through the same exchange, one via BT Business the other via a local provider Selcom, and I have probably used both to check and post replies.

I've had Routerstats running for the past 24 hrs and it has been rock solid at 6.1 db, 8064 kbps. during that time my ip profile lifted to 2000 kbps at midnight and remained there throughout the day.  I think it dropped back down around 18:00, as I noticed a big drop in speed around that time (couldn't run a test as 3 hours hadn't elapsed from the previous one).  Did a bt speedtest at 19:35 and I'm back down to 500 kbps.

[jeffbb]

Hi

quote
The download speed through btspeedtester is never more than the ip profile,  but via generic sites like bbmax (run straight afterwards) it does exceed the profile speed.

I have never experienced that myself .I have seen small differences between BT reported speed and other speed testers .

quote  Did a bt speedtest at 19:35 and I'm back down to 500 kbps.  what was your profile ?

Regards Jeff

[faqinel]

Hi

quote  Did a bt speedtest at 19:35 and I'm back down to 500 kbps.  what was your profile ?

Sorry, I meant that the profile was 500 kbps.  Again it has flipped to 2000 kbps at midnight and again my line stats are rock solid 6.1/8064

I'm certainly not unique:
http://www.orangeproblems.co.uk/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=35117
http://www.orangeproblems.co.uk/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=35217
http://www.beta.bt.com/bta/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=13064&tstart=0

I think that despite their assurances I am being artificially capped.

[faqinel]

Hi,

Just got off the phone to Orange.  After much grumpiness from myself I managed to get escalated within the customer services department, where they did confirm the existance of a cap on my account.  They said that it would remain in place for 3 months during which time my useage would be monitored before a decision could be made on restoring me to full speed.

Pointed out that:

• I had recieved only one FUP letter from them; that made no mention of any capping, nor any figures on what they considered to be fair useage.
• There FUP makes no mention what constitutes fair/excesive use when you sign up.
• There is no mention of a capping policy on there website or in the T&C's.
• They were in breach of contract for not being upfront about their policies.  A service artificially capped at 500/2000 kbps is not ADSL Max.
  

I asked for the cap to be removed or to release me from my contract early without incuring any charges.  So I am now the proud owner of a shiny new MAC code.

Thinks its time to stop rumaging round the bargain basement for an ISP.  Does anyone have any recomendations?  AAISP look good, plus I need someone to sort out what ever mess Orange leave behind.

[UncleUB]

Hi faqinel,

do you have any LLU enabled ISP's in your exchange....?

If you have O2/Be they are both very good and very knowledgeable.

If not,as you say AAISP

or Zen,IDnet,Newnet,or Fast.co.uk are all very competent ISP's with first class UK based support.

[tuftedduck]

Hi, faginel.

In addition to the good advice from unkyUb above, if you have a look at http://www.kitz.co.uk/isp/caps.htm you will find guidance as to the state of the parties with regard to capping/throttling/fups etc as well as linkies to various ISP.

[faqinel]

Hi,

No LLU I'm afraid, us bumpkins are stuck with BTw.  I'm not too bothered about traffic shaping, capping policies, etc. as long as it is upfront and can therefore be managed.  UK tech support from tech's that understand the product and up front T&C's would be my priorities.

Just one point that I am not clear on.  A lot of replies to this and other posts say that the setting of the IP profile is a fully automated process, suggesting that it cannot be manually fixed.  If that is the case then how do Orange do it?

Thanks

[roseway]

The setting of the BT IP profile is automatic, and can't be overridden by ISPs. BT can set a speed cap on a connection, effectively converting it to a fixed-speed connection, but this would be a semi-permanent change, not something which they would swap about every day.

What the ISP can do is apply their own equivalent to the IP profile as part of their traffic management policies, but this wouldn't show up as a change of IP profile when using the BT speed tester.

If your IP profile as seen in the BT speedtester changes between day and night every day, then I'm afraid I can't explain it other than by Kitz' suggestion that you are accidentally picking up someone else's network. Is it possible that the PC has a wireless dongle connected, and you're somehow switching over to using this from time to time?

[kitz]

What I was trying to mention as a possibility is that despite you saying you are on orange.. the IP ranges that you have been posting from according to RIPE lookup belong to:

Cable&Wireless
BT Openworld
Cable&Wireless - Energis

which is why I wondered if you were perhaps picking up and connecting via someone elses wireless connection.


-----
As regards to the IPprofile - this is under the control of BTw and depends on your actual line rate (sync) performance.   Even though ISPs can have their own profiling, because the BTw is done at the RAS then you should never ever be able to download at a speed that is more than your IPprofile.

[faqinel]

Hi,
Just to reiterate, I am connected via ethernet to my Livebox, from the only network interface in my PC.  There are no other wireless enabled PC's on my network.  I have posted replies from work but otherwise when I'm at home I dont see that I can be connected via someone elses BB.

How quickly does the IP profile react to changes in sync speed?  Could the Live box present one set of stats to the user but report another when negotiating with BTw equipment?  As mentioned I have been monitoring with RouterStats Lite, which parses the Live box web frontend, and the results have been rock solid,  Is this normal or would you expect to see fluctuation?

Whatever, here are my speed tester results covering 22nd to 24th.  The picture titles show the date and time and whether I was logged in with the bt_test_user login.  I've also attached the RouterStat results as a CSV.



[ Download all those pictures on a zip-archive ]

Thanks for all the help and suggestions so far. 

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