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[Black Sheep]

Haha,

Nicely worded Walter.

You have to laugh though, otherwise......................

Let's see what happens when BT engineers connect up an extra bit of black underground cabling that has recently been coiled up, ready for connection at the DP at the top of the pole where my drop wire starts.

I have no idea what the cable is for, but it is around 12mm in diameter & it appears to come from a joint chamber a little further away from the cabinet than the pole (maybe 30m or so).


Paul.

There's a couple of reasons that new cable is there Paul.

1) The original 'feed' cable has been diagnosed as faulty in length, and needs replacing. (God, I hope it's that and your issue gets resolved).

2) The DP needs 'Relief' ( Plenty of 'Carry-on' puns allowed at this point), whereby there aren't enough 'pairs' at the DP for the ammount of EU's demand. This will mean another 'DP Block' will be mounted on the pole. Have any new properties gone up that could be 'fed' from this DP ?? That would usually indicate that 'DP elief' is in progress. 

[Bald_Eagle1]

Update 27/02/12:

Well, On arriving home I noticed the cable had been connected whilst I was at work this afternoon.

In my hope/excitement that maybe a new feed cable had been installed, I rushed inside to check my connection's stats.

Imagine my dismay when I saw that sync speeds were only 19932 kbps DS & 5818 kbps US.

I checked my logs & saw that there had been 4 re-syncs between 15:11 & 15:29 this afternoon (at varying lower speeds than of late).

Thinking that DLM may have been a bit confused by these re-syncs in quick succession, believing there was a general connection problem, I rebooted the modem at 17:05.

The result was rather disappointing sync speeds of 20126 kbps DS & 5844 kbps US.
SNRM was 6.2dB DS & 6.0dB US.

A short while later, I noticed that SNRM had suddenly shot up to 11.8dB DS & 6.2dB US.

That looked promising (plenty of spare DS margin), so I rebooted the modem again.

The result was 26590 kbps DS & 5877 kbps US with SNRM of 6.3dB DS & 6.1dB US.

1 Hour later SNRM is fluctuating up & down a little, currently at 5.4dB, but as evening is now drawing in a drop is expected.

Attenuation levels are more or less unchanged.


I will see how it all pans out over the next few days, but all-in-all, it doesn't look too promising at the moment 




I know that Alex from Plusnet looks in on this thread from time to time, so I won't mither him too much again (not just yet anyway) 


@ Black Sheep:-

Wouldn't the above qualify as "engineering works" that may now require a BT sync/profile reset back to 40Mb, just to see what DLM will make of it?

There are no new properties in the area that could be fed from this DP, but it may be possible that some dwellings have been split into flats, or just require additional lines.


Paul.

[waltergmw]

@ Paul,

Does the new cable replace the existing one into the same DP box or even into a new one?
If so that would explain some drops as your pair would need to be re-connected both in the u/g joint and at the DP.
If not, then there should not have been any disturbance of your connection unless (unlikely) your feed cable or DP are badly damaged and any movement disturbs everything.

Kind regards,
Walter

[Bald_Eagle1]

Hi Walter,

I can't say at the moment.
I'll try to have a look in the daylight tomorrow.


My connection does appear to be easily disturbed though.
Do you recall a couple of weeks ago that I mentioned 2 separate engineers causing re-syncs at lower speeds & both denying they had touched my connection?


Paul.

[burakkucat]

Just a comment. If possible, power down and disconnect the HG612 modem from the line for as long as you can leave it.

That will allow the DSLAM line-card's port "plenty of time" to do "whatever it fancies" with the line, without having an active CPE providing any loading / termination. I would aim for 24 hours but if that is too long, try 12 hours.

[Bald_Eagle1]

@ b*cat,

That might be worth a shot.

I might try it at weekend as I really need the internet during the week to access the office servers from home.

[Bald_Eagle1]

@ Walter,

Does the new cable replace the existing one into the same DP box or even into a new one?
If so that would explain some drops as your pair would need to be re-connected both in the u/g joint and at the DP.
If not, then there should not have been any disturbance of your connection unless (unlikely) your feed cable or DP are badly damaged and any movement disturbs everything.

Well, while I was peering up at the various boxes at the top of the pole this morning, more or less confirming that my drop wire is still connected to the original quite old looking cable & that the new cable feeds someone else's connection an engineer arrived carrying his ladders.

I told him what had been going on & he said that none of it should have affected my own connection.
He may well have been/probably was the same engineer from yesterday.

He did say he would have a look for any dodgy connections & after I suggested he may wish to check my connection with a TDR meter after he had completed his work, just to make sure everything was still O.K. I left him to it.

I have to congratulate him for his efforts as when I returned a few hours later, my sync speed had gone down to 18884 kbps!



Seeing that SNRM was a shade over 15dB, I rebooted the modem just before 2:00 pm, achieving a sync speed of 27400 kbps, with SNRM of 7.8dB.



The connection had also re-synced at 22:15 last night at 26574 kbps, just a few kbps down from the 26590 kbs from yesterday afternoon.

The connection re-synced itself again at 19:23 this evening at 23670 kbps, SNRM at 9.9dB.
A sudden burst of over 100,000 CRC/RSUnCorr errors in the preceding minute may have been the trigger, along with SNRM dropping the minute earlier.




To say I am getting thoroughly fed up with all this is now rather an understatement.


Paul.

[waltergmw]

Hi Paul,

Poor you - what a chapter of difficulties !

However there is at least an opportunity now to get your service transferred to the new cable.

Kind regards,
Walter

[Bald_Eagle1]

Some good news & a slight glimmer of hope............

Plusnet are about to arrange another engineer's visit to check my line, based upon the most recent evidence of my connection's performance.

I won't dust off the invitations for the 33Mb party just yet though.

[burakkucat]

I think you should threaten PlusNet with a good pecking, unless they arrange for Black Sheep to be assigned the job . . . 

[Bald_Eagle1]

I think you should threaten PlusNet with a good pecking, unless they arrange for Black Sheep to be assigned the job . . . 

If only...........................

BS would certainly have a massive head start as he has already seen & contributed to the extensive case notes.

Altogether now............"He achieved 33Mb actual download speeds during the first month"

[Black Sheep]

Ha ha ha ..... thanks for the vote of confidence lads. There has to be somebody capable of peforming full tests on BE's patch !! 

[Bald_Eagle1]

Ha ha ha ..... thanks for the vote of confidence lads. There has to be somebody capable of peforming full tests on BE's patch !! 

There is, but he must always be on leave when it is my turn 

[Black Sheep]

It may be a deliberate ploy to go on Annual Leave, when your job starts to crop up on our systems, BE. He he he .....

[Bald_Eagle1]

Quick update Folks:-

Feedback from Plusnet

"An appointment has been booked for:
03/03/12 between 08:00 and 13:00."

Then:-

"we have received an update from Openreach diagnostics stating "Dropping connection and errors recorded in history. Passed to field eng to investigate."  Because an engineer has already been assigned it may cause the appointment for 03/03/12 AM to fail to book correctly."

&:-

"All I can say is that the errors and retraining must be fairly high as BT have booked an engineer to go out and look at your line without any consultation with us.  This usually only happens when line testers locate a definite issue on your line.  Let's see what the engineer notes state before reading in to that too much."


It all looks rather promising, but I won't build my hopes too high just yet 

I can just imagine the queue in the Oldham exchange, of all the engineers trying to book some leave, starting 3rd March 

Some poor soul will end up drawing the short straw.

They may even need to call in an engineer who has read the case notes from another patch