FTTC speeds on full sync

What sort of speeds are people connecting at the full 40/2 on fibre getting please? 2/2/12s apart .

I think you already know mine but sig gives results of test just done (just over 33 meg). Other testers (except BT) give from 1-2Mb higher. It should be higher, and has been in the past, I used to get over 36 on TBB and I don't know where the missing megs have gone! I'm still on maximum sync/profile and the maximum Plusnet profile of "37Mb"

I'm averaging 34.7 Mbps down, 1.68 Mbps up (Speedtest.net).

Not sure what the 2/2/12s part means, still...

I have a 40/10 sync. That's the easy part...

On downstream I get speeds (at speedtest.net) of either 35Mbps or 37.5Mbps, depending on the PPP session. After connecting, either a new PPP session because of a new sync (possibly forced by DLM) at the modem OR a new session at the router only, speeds are one or the other - until the next session. This is very consistent (bar traffic management impact). Plusnet know, and are semi-interested, but don't know why. The fast sessions are, predictably, rarer.

We moved from Surrey to Yorkshire recently, and have experienced the same thing in both locations.

Downstream slows to 22-24Mbps during the TM control period of 1800-2300. This is the same whether I have a fast session or a slow session.

On upstream, I used to get speeds (at speedtest.net) of 8.2Mbps, but once I switched off the QoS queue in the modem, i get 8.8Mbps or so. No slowdowns.

Best speedtest server (picked off the map) seems to be Vodafone in Newbury.

The '2/2/12s ' refers to those affected by the Plusnet problems of said date.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

On downstream I get speeds (at speedtest.net) of either 35Mbps or 37.5Mbps, depending on the PPP session. After connecting, either a new PPP session because of a new sync (possibly forced by DLM) at the modem OR a new session at the router only, speeds are one or the other - until the next session. This is very consistent (bar traffic management impact). Plusnet know, and are semi-interested, but don't know why. The fast sessions are, predictably, rarer.

I've seen you write this before - I haven't had 37Mb+ for many months. I had a quick look in the Community Forum for any recent reports of this phenomenon but couldn't find any. What kind of "semi-interested" response have you had?

Thanks .

I gather that's the 40/10 trial. Can you remember if download was as good on 40/2? I'm wondering if something in the settings for your line could be giving a "Line speed" of the full 38717, (maybe 38700 there), sometimes reverting to the 40/2 setting of 37Mbps after the re-syncs/new seessions you mention. That would account for the difference, and the new PPP going back to the trial settings.

In reply to a post by kasg:

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

I've seen you write this before - I haven't had 37Mb+ for many months. I had a quick look in the Community Forum for any recent reports of this phenomenon but couldn't find any. What kind of "semi-interested" response have you had?

See my suggestion in my reply just now to WWWombat.

Were you possibly on the 40/2 trial before main rollout, and the 37Mbps line speed wasn't in force? That could account for it falling for you. Or are you on 40/10 as well?

I wonder if the 37Mbps setting started as a simple typo by someone and should be 38Mbps, or even (to work the same as the ADSL2+ one) 38700kbps, and no-one has tracked back to the reason for the setting and sorted it out.

They must be able to support the speed if you used to get it, and so far as I know all other ISPs do.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Were you possibly on the 40/2 trial before main rollout, and the 37Mbps line speed wasn't in force? That could account for it falling for you. Or are you on 40/10 as well?

No, I've always been on 40/2 and was not on any trials.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I wonder if the 37Mbps setting started as a simple typo by someone and should be 38Mbps, or even (to work the same as the ADSL2+ one) 38700kbps, and no-one has tracked back to the reason for the setting and sorted it out.

Plusnet explained the 37Mb as "corresponding" to the full 40Mb, implying that it would not restrict speed, but it is a strange number to use. They even set mine to 99Mb briefly when I first got connected, I've got the correspondence somewhere, but it didn't stick. I did wonder whether 37Mb was really 37*1024*1024 bps, i.e. 38797312 but that's probably clutching at straws.

Well we all know that the IP Profile is 38717, and that on ADSL2+ with the new WBC DLM PN now set the line speed to the "100" below, so I think it's a simple error and no-one in the system has the clout to challenge it.

Your suggestion is plausible, but gives a figure above the BT one, which would be incorrect. Pointless even.

OK, I feel a Community Forum thread coming on! I'll start one later if no one else has.

IDNet 40/10 Mainly wireless, some wired.

12/7/2011 1:02 PM GMT 37.50 Mb/s 8.10 Mb/s 15 ms Maidenhead
12/7/2011 12:22 AM GMT 37.42 Mb/s 8.10 Mb/s 15 ms London
12/7/2011 12:21 AM GMT 37.41 Mb/s 8.10 Mb/s 15 ms London
12/7/2011 12:20 AM GMT 37.44 Mb/s 8.25 Mb/s 15 ms Newbury
12/7/2011 12:18 AM GMT 37.33 Mb/s 8.07 Mb/s 15 ms Maidenhead
11/5/2011 12:28 AM GMT 37.45 Mb/s 7.17 Mb/s 32 ms Skipton
10/28/2011 8:36 PM GMT 37.77 Mb/s 8.25 Mb/s 19 ms Manchester
10/28/2011 8:36 PM GMT 37.72 Mb/s 8.20 Mb/s 25 ms Lancaster
10/28/2011 8:35 PM GMT 37.45 Mb/s 6.70 Mb/s 17 ms Liverpool
10/28/2011 8:34 PM GMT 37.40 Mb/s 8.34 Mb/s 19 ms Manchester

In reply to a post by kasg:

I think you already know mine but sig gives results of test just done (just over 33 meg). Other testers (except BT) give from 1-2Mb higher. It should be higher, and has been in the past, I used to get over 36 on TBB and I don't know where the missing megs have gone! I'm still on maximum sync/profile and the maximum Plusnet profile of "37Mb"

If you want to see missing megabits in action...take a look at my speedtest tracking in my signature

But that's on Infinity, and you haven't got a full sync . Nice of you to have let me have them on IDNet though.

In reply to a post by kasg:

OK, I feel a Community Forum thread coming on! I'll start one later if no one else has.

Done - http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,1022...

Re Adam Walker's "I can also see we've raised this with our suppliers. I'll chase it up now". I assume he means BT Wholesale, in which case they are almost certainly nothing to do with it. Their profile is set at 38717. It has to be that Plusnet have got it wrong internally.

Edited by RobertoS (Mon 06-Feb-12 11:48:09)

In reply to a post by camieabz:

The '2/2/12s ' refers to those affected by the Plusnet problems of said date.

It's a date? Doh!

In reply to a post by kasg:

What kind of "semi-interested" response have you had?

It got mentioned quite a while ago, with a response that showed they'd checked their traffic management profiles, and all was well. But that was about it.

However, my latest reports got some response - they were passed up to the main networking & FTTC trial guy, who is handling it. It isn't a high priority, I suspect.

And TBH, once I get a fast session, I don't particularly want to lose it... so I stop testing things at that point.

Take a look at this thread

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I gather that's the 40/10 trial.

Well, yes - but the original FTTC trial nearly a year ago, not the "mini" one that appears to be happening right now.

Can you remember if download was as good on 40/2? I'm wondering if something in the settings for your line could be giving a "Line speed" of the full 38717, (maybe 38700 there), sometimes reverting to the 40/2 setting of 37Mbps after the re-syncs/new seessions you mention. That would account for the difference, and the new PPP going back to the trial settings.

Back at the start, I was on 40/2 for 3 days - but the line was suffering from packet loss at the time, so wasn't easy to tell until DLM slowed it down - at which point I can't give you the answer.

What I can say is that when sync was 36Mbps-ish, profile 34800, I didn't see these kind of 2Mbps jumps/dips in speedtest results: Then it was a very consistent 33.6Mbps result.

But maybe I didn't connect enough times?

The *only* reason that I detected the problem was when the modem auto-synced on 31st October to pick up 17a (and DLM started afresh). I was back at 40Mbps, without interleaving and without packet loss. Download speeds were the fast 37.5Mbps... which lasted 2 days until I caused my own resync. I was then on a slow connection, and couldn't budge it....

Then 2 weeks later came another auto-sync, as DLM put in interleaving, but left the speed at 40. Again, I ended up on a fast connection... and then I knew something was up.

Subsequently, I've been able to trigger fast connections through router re-connections and through modem re-syncs, but it is still rarer than hen's teeth.

And, obviously, carried through the behaviour onto an entirely new line.

I don't think it is anything to do with the original 40/2 setting though.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Well we all know that the IP Profile is 38717, and that on ADSL2+ with the new WBC DLM PN now set the line speed to the "100" below, so I think it's a simple error and no-one in the system has the clout to challenge it.

Your suggestion is plausible, but gives a figure above the BT one, which would be incorrect. Pointless even.

The PN profile setting for my line has been at "37Mb" since the day I swapped to fibre - and has stayed at that even when DLM slowed the line down. Both of those predate the recent ADSL2+ profile changes.

And, obviously, it has stayed at 37Mb whether I get a fast session or a slow one.

While the profile is named "37Mb", I don't think it is limited to that, or wrongly limits things to "35Mbps". Indeed there is an old setting of "20Mb" on the same page that really means "unlimited" (I guess it was, in ADSL2+ days) - this setting was used on the original FTTC trial (and FTTP trial) before a better-named profile could be set up on the management system.

I also think the setting is static: once set manually(as part of the fibre install process), it stays there. The reason I believe this is that, for 2 weeks of the house move, we reverted to an ADSL2+ connection while waiting for OR to come out. The setting stayed at 37Mb throughout, no matter what sync the ADSL modem got.

I think the name of "37Mb" was chosen for the same reason that they chose "up to 20Mb" for ADSL2+ lines: management of expectations. It gives people a better idea of the speed they can realistically get after the most-hidden overheads are removed.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

While the profile is named "37Mb", I don't think it is limited to that, or wrongly limits things to "35Mbps". Indeed there is an old setting of "20Mb" on the same page that really means "unlimited" (I guess it was, in ADSL2+ days) - this setting was used on the original FTTC trial (and FTTP trial) before a better-named profile could be set up on the management system.

Well, that's interesting, see my latest post on the Plusnet forum. Adam has changed my Plusnet line speed to 20Mb (there may have been other changes made behind the scenes) and I'm now getting 37.5Mbps on speedtest.net.

Unlike you, my PN line speed has dropped from 37Mb a couple of times and on both occasions it did affect my speeds.

Edited by kasg (Mon 06-Feb-12 13:11:52)

And my latest TBB speed test in my sig - best for ages! TBB use binary megabytes, so this 36202k

OK, I don't know what's going on now. I've dropped to 17M on speedtest.net and mybroadbandspeed.co.uk (fully repeatable) but still 35+ on TBB! Maybe Adam's still playing,

Here's the snapshot of my Speedtest.net results: Rather square-wave!

The graph starts just before the switch to the 17a profile.

Interesting! I'll go have a look...

Still getting 37.5 this morning consistently on speedtest.net, same after rebooting router, so looking very promising.

http://speedtest.net/result/1757239371.png

Edited by kasg (Tue 07-Feb-12 09:49:11)

Adam has just tweaked mine - it's gone up 2M!

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1757777112.png

That's good, but we'll have to see if it holds. I assume it is still 37 in the Member Centre.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I assume it is still 37 in the Member Centre.

No - it's 20M now!

Plusnet - with the magic number speed controller .

It does seem that 20 is the magic number, not 37!

It could be a "no cap" figure and therefore works on FTTC as well as ADSL2+. Whereas 37 is really odd, as discussed.

By the way, in one of the Community threads about it I saw someone say the BT 38717 allows for ATM overheads out of the 40000 sync.

There is no ATM in FTTC connections. I don't think there is any in the backhaul either for any WBC/WBMC service. Possibly IPSC.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

It could be a "no cap" figure and therefore works on FTTC as well as ADSL2+. Whereas 37 is really odd, as discussed.

That was my theory, but Adam's latest reply on the community forum suggests it's not that simple (or that he doesn't want to admit that it is!)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

By the way, in one of the Community threads about it I saw someone say the BT 38717 allows for ATM overheads out of the 40000 sync.

There is no ATM in FTTC connections. I don't think there is any in the backhaul either for any WBC/WBMC service. Possibly IPSC.

This is all a bit over my head, but if true it makes me wonder why we can't have the full 40 meg.

In reply to a post by kasg:

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

It could be a "no cap" figure and therefore works on FTTC as well as ADSL2+. Whereas 37 is really odd, as discussed.

That was my theory, but Adam's latest reply on the community forum suggests it's not that simple (or that he doesn't want to admit that it is!)

Before FTTC, 20M was the "no-cap" profile figure for ADSL2+, which (of course) almost no-one ever got anyway.

During the FTTC trials, PN set the 20Mb profile manually for everyone involved - and it may well still be being used that way for people in the FTTP trials still.

I suspect that PN have since built a proper "37M" profile for the live service of FTTC, and put people on there. The question remaining is whether they've built the right thing. Or worse - they've built what they think is the right thing, extrapolated from the old profiles, and now find that every profile is ever so slightly off. Or simply not applied it properly to some subscribers.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Whereas 37 is really odd, as discussed.

Plusnet was an ISP that chose to label ADSL2+ as "up to 20Mb", as a deference to truth over marketing hype (rather than just follow the "up to 8" that was almost purely based on the technology numbers, and not reality).

That would also explain why the "20Mb" profile was the previous top, "no-cap" profile.

Given the attitude they applied there, a "37Mb" profile is merely consistent.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

By the way, in one of the Community threads about it I saw someone say the BT 38717 allows for ATM overheads out of the 40000 sync.

There is no ATM in FTTC connections. I don't think there is any in the backhaul either for any WBC/WBMC service. Possibly IPSC.

This is all a bit over my head, but if true it makes me wonder why we can't have the full 40 meg.

Definitely no ATM, but there is still overhead. IIRC it is just the overhead of ethernet and PPPoE, rather than ATM and PPPoA.

Given the attitude they applied there, a "37Mb" profile is merely consistent.

Possibly yes, but not really logical given that the majority of FTTC users seem to be on 38700+ IP Profile it doesn't seem appropriate. We've already seen that, on speedtest.net at least, many get 37.5Mbps or more.

On ADSL2+ it was fair enough as extremely few would get 20Mbps IP Profile, never mind throughput.

If it is an "uncapped" setting all they need to do is alter the text displayed to say 38Mbps, or better still 38.7Mbps, in line with their new WBC "Profile copy" rounding. Then everyone understands.

Re ATM, I agree there are overheads involved. I was just pointing out the error, as it only takes half-a-dozen repeats/quotes of that sort of thing and it becomes a facttruism.

Meanwhile, over on the community forum, the latest mystery is why from time to time, I now get a "17Mb" session!