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[Flareon]

Hello!

I've been using ADSLMax with BT for almost a year now.
Over the past few months, the homehub has been randomly disconnecting and then reconnecting with 228 down and 488 up. The connection doesn't noticeably go down, I just obviously notice a considerable loss of bandwidth, ask the router what the hell it's doing and then reset it. After the reset it works fine until it does it again. It's annoying but not annoying enough for me to spend hours on the phone to BT.
On a normal day I'll be getting a Sync of about 4512, perhaps over 5mb if I'm lucky.

About a day ago, bandwidth dropped to just about nothing. The homehub, unsurprisingly, was connected at 228 down again. After a restart it resynced at 4512, but still bandwidth was in the trough.
The BT Speedchecker tool has told me that I have an IP profile of 135kbps.... yes, 135kbps  Oh, and a throughput of 119kbps...... which dropped to 75 kbps when I was using the hubphone to our BT friends in India at 1am.
The router has had multiple restarts etc etc, and the nice Indian lady asked me to connect it directly to the master socket (Oh, by the way, my master socket is a British Telecom socket, not a BT one - yes there's a difference - and as such doesn't have the test socket). It's been connected and currently still running like a dog. It's syncing fine at 4.5-5mb after each restart.

Now, after reading around (yes mostly Kitz's site ) I'm gonna bet that I'm getting this poor bandwidth because of my IP profile being in the pot. Right?
My question is why or how did it get there, and how do I make sure IT NEVER EVER EVER EVER happens again? I'm going to assume that it's got something to do with the ShitHub.... sorry, HomeHub, syncing at 228kbps? In which case, why the heck does it decide to do that, and what should I hack to stop it?

Some info:
The Homehub has always been connected through the same 15m extension cord, from the master socket, and then through a filter into the hub. I don't have any other telephony devices or connected sockets -anywhere-.
Any viruses or anything else I don't really want on my network won't get anywhere near it with the security I employ, so I'm not gonna be losing any bandwidth.

Cheers!
Rob

[roseway]

Hi Rob, and welcome.

A large drop in sync speed like this must be caused by some fairly drastic repetitive event, and yes, the result will be a big drop in your IP profile which can take three days or more to recover. The cause could be faulty hardware, a line fault, or a major interference source (nearby electrical equipment).

I suggest that you try a different ADSL filter first, to eliminate this as the cause.

Try the quiet line test (dial 17070 and pick the quiet line test from the menu of options). You shouldn't hear anything apart from a voice saying 'Quiet line test' from time to time. Crackly noises would suggest a line fault, which you can report to BT as a voice fault (dial 150).

Do you or any of your neighbours have electrical equipment which might cause interference? My own favourite villain is exercise treadmills, but anything with an electric motor in it could be a cause.

If you can beg, borrow or steal a different router it might be worth trying, but I would think that this is a less likely cause.

[Flareon]

Hmmmmmm.

Well right now I've got it running minus the extension. Most of the extension was sitting in a crate with a load of in-use mains leads for various equipment and a high current speaker cable (hmm) so I suppose that may not have helped. It's also fairly near to a UPS, although I imagine that has legal limits on interference emission rather like computers do.

The hub is also next to a relatively large amplifier and the line runs adjacent to a skysat cable... although I believe that is shielded.

Do you think any of these factors are likely to be the cause?

I'll need to get into the loft to find a new filter , and to find a line phone (the hubphone won't let me dial 17070...) so I'm hoping I don't have to.

Of course I could just plug in the trusty DG834  but that doesn't have VoIP or the hubphone 

[Pwiggler]

hi flareon

all the things you mentioned could have a detrimental effect on the signal in the phone cable.

is it possible you can plug the hub directly into the incoming phone socket using the phone cable which came with the hub just as a diagnostic step??  even if you have to run a mains cable to it for power??


you wont be able to ring the quiet line test on ya home hub phone coz its voip.  if you do have a 'traditional' phone, plug it directly into the phone socket and give it a go.

[Flareon]

A little more info:

Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 27.0 / 50.0
 
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 20.0 / 6.5

the router is plugged directly into the master socket with 1 filter.


Oh, and I just got off the phone with BT. They have told me that they had a lot of customers so there was a lot of contention. They have turned off "interleaving" and things should be back to normal soon. Sounds like bollocks?

[Astral]

They have turned off "interleaving"

They don't know what interleaving is, in my experience. They certainly didn't switch mine off when I requested it.

[Chris P Duck]

sounds like you could be doing this already, but take the cover of the master socket and plug a microfilter directly into the test socket. While your trying this it will only give use of the one phone plugged into the phone socket on the filter, but at least if it stays stable you know its your wiring in the house picking up noise. If it is stable after doing this you will need a filtered faceplate so you can use the internal house wiring again.


BTW dont waste your time talking to the BT "support"

[Flareon]

sounds like you could be doing this already, but take the cover of the master socket and plug a microfilter directly into the test socket. While your trying this it will only give use of the one phone plugged into the phone socket on the filter, but at least if it stays stable you know its your wiring in the house picking up noise. If it is stable after doing this you will need a filtered faceplate so you can use the internal house wiring again.


BTW dont waste your time talking to the BT "support"

The master socket I have is an extremely old style one, and doesn't have the two parts. It's infact just a mini 60mm phone socket with a British Telecom logo on it, and has the components inside.
Regardless, the only telephone device I have is the hub anyway, which has always been connected directly to the master socket via an extension and microfilter.

The problem is that usually the connection syncs stably, but sometimes the router reconnects at 228k downstream. I only notice it when I try to do bandwidth intensive activities. I think as a result of this low syncing, the IP profile has dropped into oblivion.
I'm leaving the hub connected directly to the master socket for now incase it's some of my kit causing the problem. It's too early to say whether that solves it yet as the 228 sync only occurs once or twice a week usually.

[Chris P Duck]

are you leaving the hub on all the time or do you switch it off when you finish with the pc?

[Flareon]

are you leaving the hub on all the time or do you switch it off when you finish with the pc?

The hub stays on 24/7 as my webserver runs through it.

[Chris P Duck]

You have similar line stats to me, I run a BT hub and have a 4meg IP profile. it does drop ocassionally but usually synchs up at about 4700kbps. I had a similar problem to you and eventually when I got through to the elusive BTTBB uk support they raised my target SNR which made my line more stable but  have less drop outs at the sacrifice of some synch speed. maybe you should look at that? either way, the fault threshold for adsl max is speeds less than 2 meg (thats what I was told by BTTBB anyway) so they should be able to log a fault with them and get an engineer to look at your line