Speed Drop - is this acceptable ?

Hi

Just wondered what others thought. I'm a PlusNet business customer.

My speeds have always been constant at 70 Mb/s, now depending with I check I get anywhere from 54 Mb/s to 60 Mb/s, this doesn't seem an acceptable amount to lose.

I'm being told that it's within spec and there is nothing that can be done.

Any advise ?

According to the BTW speedtest further diagnostics, my acceptable range for download is between max and -30%. If the same criteria apply to business accounts that would put your minimum around 49Mbps I guess.

What I can never understand is that there is no acceptable range for uploads which for me are almost as important as download speeds sometimes.

What speeds is the router reporting it is connected at? What does https://www.btwholesale.com/includes/adsl/main.html list as the FTTC speed range for you, then what are speed tests looking like i.e. post link to result from http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest

Hi there, I am a residential customer and I'm experiencing exactly the same issue with Plusnet, my conncetion was running fine at 73Mbps and now I get reports of between 54Mbps and 60Mbps. It would seem that BT have moved the goalposts and lowered the acceptable specs for my connection. One thing I did notice is that my connection used to be Fastpath but has been moved to Interleaved without there being any evidence of high CRCs at all on download and only 835 on upload. Given my router has been on for 3 days 23 hours and 23 minutes that equates to 1 error per 411.23 seconds or 1 error per 6.85 minutes, hardly enough to warrant being on Interleaved. I also noticed that my router reports my data rate as being 66437 kbps which is down from the 79999 that was reported when my service first went live in March. I have had nothing but bother since Plusnet moved me to their new back end back in June where they screwed up my profile. I am still arguing today with Plusnet over this as I feel cheated and have been lied to on multiple occasions by Plusnet's very inept staff.
I would welcome any input that forum members may have as I find Plusnet's attitude to be very lacking, I feel that im not asking for much, just the speeds that my line is capable of and I have received in the past with the speed test proof to back me up.

DLM runs on all fibre lines and the ISP has very little control over it. For whatever reason DLM has enabled interleaving which will shave off a large chunk of speed as you are seeing.

DLM would only do this if the line was building up errors or unstable at some point.

Plusnet cannot just go and turn off interleaving, DLM just runs on fibre connections, the only way they could do anything is to send out a BT engineer to your property who could "reset" DLM but if the line conditions remain the same DLM will re apply interleaving with time and you'll likely be back to square one. This is why ISPs are very reluctant to send out engineers over issues such as this one as it generally is not a long term fix.

The good news is if the line truly is stable, eventually DLM will turn off interleaving and the speeds should increase. It can take a few months before DLM makes adjustments upwards.

Trouble is performance does change. Could be increased cross talk causing the data rate drops. Could be small changes in the cable joints. Could be any number of things. The price we pay for broadband does not provide enough money to provide a service that has BT going chasing these "faults" to provide that level of service. Broadband is provided on a very tight budget and finding causes of speed drops like this would, across the network, cost far more than is being made.

Plus there are a lot of people paying the same as you for a connection that may never have gone faster than 20Mb (for instance). You still get quite a bit higher speeds than I do but I have no option to go to the ISP and ask them to increase my speeds as it is physics that is driving the speed.

If you want guaranteed service then I'm afraid you have to pay a lot more than the small amounts of money we pay for broadband in this country.

Connecting directly to the master socket and removing all internal cabling, the modem connects at 62/18.

BT wholesale test matches these figures. BT have been out reset the line and that was it.
They claim I should get around 64.

This has only just started happening in the last couple of weeks, until then I always getting around 70.

Looks like the service speed can drop, I stillI pay the same and there is nothing I can do!

I've been with Plusnet for many years now and the last 3 months ( since I paid my 12 months up-front line rental) have been by far the worst.

I am on their unlimited fibre, and have been pretty much since it was introduced and had seen pretty constant speeds of 70-Md down 20Mb up.

However, since October my line has been running at 20Mb down and up.

I eventually got through to someone at Plusnet who would log the issue ( some 3 weeks after it had first started ). I had to wait a week for Openreach to do something 'at the exchange'. Strangely enough 2 days before the (monday) morning of the appointed time the speed of the line returned to 70Mb down / 20Mb up. All was well until the Monday morning at 08:00 when I lost both my dial tine and BB connection for 2 hours.

Once it was restored my line speed was 20Mb up and 48Mb down, it's been like that for 3 weeks now and the Openreach engineer is due here tomorrow morning.


I have become increasingly disenchanted with Plusnet, and asked to leave them - only to be told that as I'd paid my line rental up front I'd lose that ( over £150 ) and no, they don't do line rental only - it's LR + BB or nothing.

I have to wait over 40 minutes ( at best) and often in excess of an hour to get through to Plusnet only to be connected to unknowledgeable staff who freely lie, fail to record conversation or log tickets, have no empathy with the client and do nothing - I'll repeat that - do nothing to reassure the client or address the problem being reported.

I'm now stuck with Plusnet until next October, when I'l be joing another ISP who care about their clients and have real technicians offering responsive technical support and an SLA for their line speeds....

Can't wait, but it is a HUGE shame to see Plusnet failing to meet clients requirement's all the more so given their past exemplary performance. They've deteriorated into a couldn't-care-less conglomerate from the ISP of choice.

You can pay less if you drop to the slower speed tier which is capped at 38 Mbps

When you say BT wholesale test do you mean the site I linked to or their speed test? Two different things, and the range from the website usually gives some idea of the impact that might be expected from crosstalk.

Sorry Andrew I'd missed that link.

These are the results for my line..

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Downstream Line Rate(Mbps)

Upstream Line Rate(Mbps)

Downstream Range(Mbps)

WBC FTTC Availability Date

WBC SOGEA Availability Date

WBC FTTC 18x2 Provide Availability

WBC FTTC 18x2 Sim Availability

Left in Jumper

High Low High Low
VDSL Range A (Clean) 80 67.2 20 20 -- Available -- Yes Yes --
VDSL Range B (Impacted) 79.2 50.2 20 16.2 -- Available -- Yes Yes --

I am tempted to move ISPs, but my static IP Address is tied into so many systems it would make it hard work moving. Shame you can't port IP addresses!