Where's the good old plusnet gone?

Hello

Returning customer, originally signed up to PN back in 2005 before moving in with the (now) Mrs. I�m currently struggling with bandwidth and would greatly appreciate some advice if possible.

In a nutshell: moved house early 2012, our ISP was BT. Really struggled with bandwidth, generally less than 2mbps. Tried to resolve through BT for months and gave up. Sacked BT and switched to PN in July this year (yeah I know PN are owned by BT..) and generally achieving better speeds, but still lots of fluctuation and poor speed ~3mbps. Been testing the speed most days I�m at home with the ThinkBB test.

Estimated line speed for the house is 6-8mbps. Nearest exchange is less than 200m from the house, hence I�m struggling to understand why we�re getting such poor speeds. Even if the line from the exchange does come literally round the houses, it�s still 1100m tops distance-wise.

Test machine is connected to the router with Ethernet. Router is on 24/7. Connection is generally stable, but just sluggish. Speed doesn�t seem to be too badly affected at peak times. Just constantly rubbish! 20CN capacity at the exchange is flagged as amber. No other faults/outages being flagged.

Have tried to resolve through PN a couple of times now and had the line reset. Here�s the thing: during the training period speed is great � more than 6mbps. Then as soon as the training period ends it drops to ~3mbps. I�ve asked PN a straight question: Is our line speed being throttled/controlled? No straight answer.

PN insist that they need to send and engineer out to test the line. I�m concerned that there�s nothing wrong with the line � as proven with the training periods � and that I�ll be charged £60 for the engineer call out.

Here are test figures from the question thread:
Loop Loss: Up 11 / Down 18
SNR Margin: Up 24 / Down 23
Errored Seconds: 0 both
HEC errors: 0 both
Cell Count: Up 471659471 / Down 1512277412
Speed: Up 448 / Down 3808

Maximum Stable Rate (kbps): 8128
Mean time between retrains: 21553
Indicative line quality: A
Fault threshold rate: 6502
Mean time between errors upstream (seconds): 43106
Mean time between errors downstream: 86

WP profile: Generic speed 7150 No Time Out (estimate 7-8)
CLT: Pass
NIC: Pass
TAM: Pass
Next action: LTB but SNR far too high. Will reset and get customer to monitor

In reply to a post by PKL:

I�ve asked PN a straight question: Is our line speed being throttled/controlled? No straight answer.

By Plusnet? Absolutely not.

Your speed is being restricted because your router has synced with the exchange at a low speed and that is down to the exchange and/or your router.

Can you post your full statistics reported by the router immediately after a resync please.

If the exchange has 21CN (ADSL2+ from BT Wholesale) then you can ask PlusNet to upcap the upload speeds to make uploading a bit faster for a start.

As for the line, without seeing the sequence of router steps from new and in particular how the line and modem is handling the line difficult to say much beyond you are going slow because of the high SNR margin. Restarting modem to show if this was a short blip or you have been banded will help.

Knowing which exchange will help a lot, as the advice needs to be tweaked accordingly.

Thanks for the feedback, reset late this evening and stats below.

Exchange is Churchill - SSCHU. 21CN is due to go live at some point in October.

Speed test post-reset: 2.9mbps (same as it has been for the last four days)

Uptime: 0 days, 0:07:28
DSL Type: ITU-T G.992.1
Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 448 / 7.392
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [MB/MB]: 2,13 / 13,07
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 11,9 / 19,9
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 12,0 / 18,5
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 25,0 / 8,9
System Vendor ID (Local/Remote): TMMB / ----
Chipset Vendor ID (Local/Remote): BDCM / ALCB
Loss of Framing (Local/Remote): 0 / -
Loss of Signal (Local/Remote): 0 / -
Loss of Power (Local/Remote): 0 / -
Loss of Link (Remote): -
Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 0 / -
FEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 18
CRC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 0
HEC Errors (Up/Down): - / 0 / 0

Now the Further Diagnostics (text only) from BT Wholesale Broadband Performance Test?

Then when the IP Profile returns to a sensible value check the current line speed shown at https://portal.plus.net/my.html?action=data_transfer...

Okay you are on the old system currently, where if you modem connects slowly the speed drops immediately, but once it connects again at a higher speed (and will usually need you to do that, as modems do not drop connection to reconnect faster automatically) the IP Profile setting can take up to 5 days to improve.

More often it is a period of 1 to 3 days, but might be as fast as an hour.

Once 21CN appears and PlusNet have migrated you to the new service (the move is not automatic) then this issue will go away

Just to add that Plusnet of course have their own "IP Profile" that is set for a line and sometimes even when the BT one goes up the Plusnet one gets stuck. The Plusnet profile can be checked within the member centre on the Plusnet website.

Although the reason for it syncing lower in the first place will presumably not go away.

Is that something the ISP should investigate?

Looks to be interleaved (there are some FEC) so a lower sync than 8128 is not unusual in that case, even based on the low attenuation.

Nope I mean this

Here are test figures from the question thread:
Loop Loss: Up 11 / Down 18
SNR Margin: Up 24 / Down 23
Errored Seconds: 0 both
HEC errors: 0 both
Cell Count: Up 471659471 / Down 1512277412
Speed: Up 448 / Down 3808

Presumably this sync speed of 3808 lowered the profile. Surely the fact that the lines syncing randomly at this speed vs almost 8 Mbps at other times warrants investigation by the ISP? I just wondered if it was significant enough that the ISP should investigate.

As it stands whenever the line syncs this low the profile will drop and for a while they will be stuck at slower speeds until they resync manually & the profile picks up. What's causing the slower sync in the first place is my concern.

Thanks all for your messages. Much appreciated to be getting some useful practical advice in comparison to the rather indolent tech support PN have put forward.

Have tried the BT Wholesale Performance Test four times throughout the day. Positive signs on the speed test since the manual reset, now clocking 6.29mbps. Further diagnostics however is coming up short of any additional detail: "Your speed test has completed and the results are shown above, however during the test an error occurred while trying to retrieve additional details regarding your service. As a result we are unable to determine if the speed you received during the test is acceptable for your service. Please re-run the test if you require this additional information."

Reference MrSaffron's earlier comment about migrating to 21CN once it goes live at the local exchange, is this relatively straightforward? Will PN contact me or will I have to contact them? Are there any typical hurdles or pitfalls to avoid?

On plusnet specific hurdles over to the plusnet users