Print

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

[silversurfer44]

Apparently this is part of their service level agreement, so it was almost a case of, it doesnt matter whether we advertise our service as being suitable for online gaming, provided we maintain that minimum connection, it doesnt matter how high the ping and jitter are.

Unfortunately that is exactly the policy of BT regardless of what package you are on. My experience was of being upto 8meg. I had a rock steady 4+ meg connection for a couple of years unitl a disaster struck somewhere and the phone line went down. It went down a total of three times in as many minutes. That shot the ip profile or what ever and resulted in a 2meg connection. After 6 months of calls and visits the same answer as you got came back to me. The minimum connection rate for my line was 2meg and as long as that was being maintained that was the end of the story as far as BT was concerned. Needless to say I jumped ship as soon as possible. I wish you good luck in your quest but I won't hold by breath at a favourable result unless you have rectifiable fault on your line.

[UKBoy]

Silversurfer,

Thanks for the reply.

Being in a quite poorly served area, ie the ONLY other choice of BB from my exchange is Talk Talk, I dont know whether that would simply be a case of "more of the same" ?.

I have had the sense for some time that BT think they can just serve me scraps simply as I have little to no choice about jumping ship.

[waltergmw]

@ UKBoy,

There is always the option of obtaining a second line for connection to TT, although that would probably be far too much expenditure unless a business was attached.

More generally here, we have one of the major UK Telcos relying absolutely on a system with no Universal Service Obligation and yet depending upon this same service, albeit for the last miles, for the deployment of FTTC which must surely represent many millions of Pounds of investment. Have I missed something or how can this possibly be a justified expense as far as the shareholders are concerned from a management which is expected to operate with due dilligence?

There is possisbly a greater commercial risk, at least in the areas where cable companies compete with their superior infrastructure. That commercial risk would be reduced if areas without cable competition were selected.

Kind regards,
Walter

[UKBoy]

Funnily enough, in the last week or so, I understand that fibre optic cables have been laid in the road where I live and the fitters have apparently been into the local exchange and have confirmed that it was being installed on behalf of BT.

Unfortunately, when I ask BT about this they say they know nothing about any date by which my local exchange will be up and running.

Probably shouldnt be too surprised that BT either wont tell me, or dont even know themselves, seeming instead to suggest they dont even know any work has started.

[UKBoy]

Whilst dozing for the last hour or so, had been running RouterStats lite and noticed some of the "breaks" in the ping plotter.

Are these simply pings in excess of 50 ms ? or are they requests that "timed out" ? or something worse ?.I had assumed that if they were slow pings then the program would have rescaled the graph to accomodate them ?.

*** Have now read the Routerstats info and it seems these red lines were pings of over 1000ms so are presumably times when the site pinged, discarded the request due to other traffic.

In other news, since my email complaint and having had the case taken over by high line complaints, they have passed a request for a lift and shift which has been accepted by Wholesale and will apparently be undertaken Tues 20/4 so hopefully we are now getting somewhere.



[attachment deleted by admin]

[UKBoy]

Anyone with technical knowledge of Local exchanges/equipment care to comment .........

Had a call earlier from BT who state that they have now identified that "the VP is running hot" which I essentially told them weeks ago.

As a result, another more complicated lift and shift is about to be organised, but the guy blarted it all out so fast I couldnt catch what he said.

I asked him to email me with specifics of what they are going to be doing but as of yet, no email (not really surprised but still disappointed).

Sounded as though it was a complete change of how/where I was connected at the exchange, rather than just shifting me to another line card, though as you can tell, no way an expert in such things.

Does it sound like BT are simply firefighting/smokescreening me in an already overcrowded exchange ? Bizarrely I noticed that the Plusnet exchange info site that had been showing VP's as RED at my exchange all the way through to last week, has now been updated and now shows GREEN for all weeks post the 5th of March.

I know for a fact that several weeks were shown as RED after the anticipated fix date of 5 March yet all of a sudden these have been amended to GREEN.

Is it normal for these posted results to be amended weeks after being posted ?.

Thanks.

 

[UKBoy]

Hmmm ..........

BT have not done what they said they were going to.

Instead they say they have changed my VP by "different means".

Having tested the speed since the phonecall, seems instead of 7 Meg downstream I am now getting less than 2 !.

Is this because I am now in a "re-training" period or because I am now on the equivalent of a fixed 2 Meg connection I wonder ?.

I didnt agree to them doing this and will not be impressed if I have to wait a number of days to see a return to my previous downstream, especially as, having tested the connection with the usual online games, its every bit as bad as it ever was.

[orainsear]

Is this because I am now in a "re-training" period or because I am now on the equivalent of a fixed 2 Meg connection I wonder ?.

Post your stats so we can see what your sync speed is.

[UKBoy]

Router gives :-

Current DSL Connection:
 Down Up
Rate: 8128 kbs 832 kbs
Max Rate: 9840 kbs 1080 kbs  
Noise Margin: 11.0 dB 14.0 dB  
Attenuation: 19.8 dB 12.0 dB  
Output Power: 19.7 dBm  11.9 dBm

Per BT Speedtester site :-

Your DSL Connection Rate :8128 Kbps
Configured throughput speed 2000k

Actual result  1821 Kbps
 
From previous experience of retraining periods, the downstream is usually much higher than this.I think BT changed my VP about 10 this morning but I did notice a first ever red light on the Internet on the 2wire router at 5.40 pm yesterday, which meant I had to reset the router.

It seems entirely possible that it was at this time that they changed my VP (without telling me) as I had previously been told I might lose my connection for a day or two, to which I told them that if that was likely they would have to inform me beforehand.

[roseway]

I don't think there's a problem here. Your IP profile ("Configured throughput speed") is still at 2000 as a result of previous slow connection speeds, and it should automatically rise to 7150 within a day or two. If it doesn't rise within 5 days, then you probably have a stuck profile, and will need to contact your ISP to get it unstuck.

[UKBoy]

Roseway,

Thanks for the reply.

I didnt previously have any slow connection speeds.I have solidly had essentially a 7 meg downstream.

The changes BT keep making are as a result of my connection suffering increased ping, but for me, more worryingly, high jitter levels, especially in the mid to late evening periods.

I wouldnt have thought the increased jitter would be as a result of evening peak periods so thats why I was enquiring both here and with BT about possible REIN interference, but with all the recent, filters, changes of VP etc, seems I still have some, what I would consider excessive jitter.

As you say, hopefully the connections downstream will "recover" within a day or two.

Just added a Routerstats graph of Connection speed and SNR, interesting drop off/total loss at about 7.07 pm.

Also added another graph, showing another drop off at about 7.58.

Not sure but I wouldnt expect to see these massive drop offs even during "retraining" ?.



[attachment deleted by admin]

[roseway]

Those drop-offs are almost certainly not real drops. They are the result of Routerstats failing to get some samples because the router is tied up doing something else at the time. When it can't get a sample from the router it records zeroes in the graphs.

If your connection hasn't had any low speed connections recently, then it looks as though you've been put on a maximum 2000 profile for some reason, and I'm afraid that you have to go back to your ISP to get it corrected.

[UKBoy]

Roseway,

You mentioned Routerstats failing to get samples.

Theres nothing else using my connection and no other traffic as such going through the router.

At no time previously, have I seen any Routerstats graphs that I have captured, that have had any fluctuations from either a static 11 or 12 SNR and the same with the connection rate, as you would expect.

As regards the fixed 2 meg, thats what I thought as soon as I saw the downstream speed earlier.

Due another phone call from BT in the morning, safe to say I will be wanting some answers from them.

[UKBoy]

Another Routerstats plot below.

Again there seems to be a drop off.

Looking at the timeline, seems to have been more than a temporary failure to record or receive stats.

Anyone any thoughts ?.

BTW, speaking to BT, seems the change of VP has resulted in some setting locking my connection to 2 Meg, gent mentioned something possibly to do with BT Vision (which I dont use and never have).They are supposed to be speaking to BTW again today and promise me a callback (not something they are good at doing).

Cheers.



[attachment deleted by admin]

[roseway]

That certainly looks as though your connection dropped for a few minutes. Is there anything about it in the router log?