Speed issues and dodgy CS reponses

For those who have not been following my internet problem, basic gist of it is that on New Years Day my internet went really crappy and slow because of either: a) my router, or b) my local exchange. Anyway, i've been doing a bit of too-ing and fro-ing with PN CS by raising a ticket asking them to get to the bottom of the issue, and i've had two replies.

The first reply, which was yesterday morning, informed me, among other things, that "Once the equipment at the exchange sees an ongoing connection for a minimum of 3 days it will then increase the speed automatically as it can see that the connection has stabilised. If you could please remain connected for 3 days, and then test the speed of the connection and let us know if there is any improvement to the speed."

While the second reply, which I received this morning after I asked them if it was my problem or the exchange's problem, informed me, among other things, that "With regards to your speed, providing you ensure that you disconnect your router at least once a day if you experience an issue of this nature to allow the exchange to reset your profile, this should then return to normal."

Two completely different answers, which one is right? I'd ask them in the ticket but they take hours getting back to me.

Hi Matt,

Firstly, I've written what I would like to think is a comprehensive guide to troubleshooting speed faults, which you can find here:

http://community.plus.net/comms/2007/07/02/broadband-speed-faults-how-to-diagnose/

In a way, I'd say that both of the responses that you have received are correct to a fashion. there's two different trains of thought here. some believe that if you get a higher sync rate, don't disconnect and your IP Profile will then amend itself to a higher level. Alternatively, there's the line of thought that if you do a daily reboot, this can cause the BT system to pick up the change in profile morwe quickly.

Personally, I don't believe that it makes that much difference and I'd generally recommend the former, if you get a high sync rate, stay connected for as long as you can

Cheers for the info

As I was told it'd take 3 days, is that set in stone - i.e. 72 hours? I'm coming up on the 70 hour mark of my router being connected at 8192kbps and desperately need the speed back because i've security updates to perform (recently reinstalled OS X).

It's more a case of "roughly" 3 days

Matt, what's the ticket number you're referring to?

23768308

Hi Matt,

I've just had a quick look and there hasn't been an update to the IP Profile as of yet.

Hopefully we should get some movement in the next 24 hours.

Cheers. I hope so, or I may just go nuts!

Hope it doesn't happen to you, but I've just had a BT related problem clear after 13 days. It's just unfortunately a wait and see situation. There's nothing the ISP can do to hurry things along.

72 and a half hours since the router has been synced at 8192kbps and still no change in speed

EDIT - mybroadbandspeed.co.uk speed tests put me at around 1.2MB at the moment

Edited by fetler (Fri 04-Jan-08 20:24:23)

Have you run http://www.speedtester.bt.com/ ? What does it say your profile is?

I hope to NEVER see that website again, three days of trying and I can't get it to run the damn test!

Currently downloading a massive load of Apple system updates that i've been waiting to do since New Years Day, and it's nice and quick

Hi Matt,

There's been a flurry of updates on your line over the last couple of days.

You're currently showing as having an IP Profile of 4000Kbps with a sync speed of 8192Kbps. You did briefly manage an IP Profile of 6000Kbps, but subsequently had a resync event at 4544Kbps about 36 hours ago. Again, if you maintain your current sync speeds for at least *roughly* three days, then you should see a subsequent speed increase.

Hi James

Yeah it's been a bit up and down. I noticed it hit 7000kbps (or so the Plusnet Member Centre informed me), and then dropped to 4000kbps on it. My router is currently showing a connection speed of 7104kbps.

At least it's faster than it was, and i've got all the updates done that I needed to do. Any idea what could be causing the IP profile to fluctuate? My router has been plugged in and connected permanently since the problem first occurred on New Year's Day and since the speed increased from the dire speeds I had up to around the 4th no cables have been connected to or disconnected from the router.

Unfotunately it can be a multitude of things - tracking it down is the hard part.

Over the xmas period the most likely suspect would have been xmas lights.. or some ones new xmas toy. Treadmills are a frequent culprit.

dslreports.com provide some useful check to your system that can be
run online. Worth a go if only to eliminate the obvious.

Meldrew

It's all over the flippin' show, now it's fluctuating several times a day between 3000kbps and 7000kbps, or at least it seems to be

Nobody has any Christmas lights up now, and I don't think my neighbour has a treadmill (they're quite noisy aren't they? The walls ain't too thick here), and it's odd that it only started on New Year's Day.

I still maintain it could be the exchange as the congestion status is red. Nothing has changed at my end, I don't think anyone has anything interfering with it, etc. This is the first time in over six years of having broadband that i've had a problem like this. Usually it's little niggles caused by either myself or by the ISP.

IF it doesn't get sorted reckon LLU would solve my problems?

Exchange contention should never affect your sync rate, only the throughput so that won't be the cause.

I can't see any obviously dropped connections on your logs, but there are some very short ones that suggest there is an intermittent connection issue somewhere and that will be causing the fluctuating profile.

Best thing to do is to test in the master socket with all non ADSL items removed and if the connection still drops then raise it to us as a fault at http://faults.plus.net

I can see you've raised a fault before (though that one was closed), so it's likely all the tests have been done already though it's best to check again if possible. Drop a post in here or PM me when it's raised and I'll pick it up - I'm working till 9 tonight so I can make sure it's with BT and under investigation before I finish.

Hope that helps, sorry for the hassle.

Wish I had those fluctuating high speeds. Down to 150K here again.
I'm going to raise another ticket but guess what PN CS response will be,
do this test, do that test, i.e. pass the problem back to the customer.