Plusnet FTTC speed

Hi all,

I recently had Plusnet Unlimited FTTC installed. The Openreach engineer did a line test at install time which reported 40/8 - he suggested that my line would be capable of around 60Mbps downstream, but 40/10 was 'all I had ordered'.

Didn't seem right to me. Speed tests were showing around 36/7. Contacted Plusnet about this and, sure enough, I had been wrongly provisioned on 40/10 instead of 80/20 and was assured I'd be switched over to the higher profile.

However, after the supposed switchover and a further update from Plusnet (to change my IP profile at their end) my speed tests were not showing any improvement. BT Wholesale diagnostic showed my downstream IP profile was 38.45Mb and upstream was 20Mb, with speed tests showing around 37.5 / 7.04.

Plusnet now insist that my line is provisioned correctly and simply operating at its maximum rate, and within BT's estimations. However, the figure of ~38 downstream makes me a little suspicious since it's roughly what I'd expect to see on a 40/10 line, and was no different to when I was supposedly on 40/10.

Does this tally with anyone else's experience - i.e. switching from 40/10 to 80/20 resulting in no discernible speed change? Is there a chance that something is still not right with BT Wholesale or Plusnet?

(To make matters worse I had to power off my modem a couple of times yesterday and my downstream profile immediately switched to 33.73 - I'm hoping DLM will eventually restore it...)

There have been issues with switching between 40/10 and 80/20 or people being provisioned on the wrong one, sometimes for just one direction too. So not unheard of

I had a similar experience to you in that when I was first connected to FTTC Plusnet ordered 40/10 to BT Openreach even though I brought the 80/20 service. After contacting them and a couple of days later my line increased into estimated levels.

I dont know what the speed of you line is currently doing but one thing I found is if you log into the Member Centre on the Plusnet website and on the left nav bar under 'My Account' if you click on 'Connection Settings' and on that screen if you select 'High-speed Broadband' it displays what Plusnet estimates you should get and what the current line speed is.

This is what I get:

Telephone number:
***********
Phone exchange:
FLEET
Estimated line speed:
72Mb (Download speed could vary depending on line conditions. Estimates are the maximum speeds that your phone line can support. These speeds are dependent on the package you choose.) - Checked on 2014-02-14 18:15:32
Current line speed:
77.4 Mb

I dont know how accurate it is but for me once my line was released from 40/10 it increased to what I was expecting.

Craig.

Thanks for the reply. I was aware of that and at the moment it more or less matches the BT Wholesale diagnostic:
--
Estimated line speed:
29Mb (Download speed could vary depending on line conditions. Estimates are the maximum speeds that your phone line can support. These speeds are dependent on the package you choose.) - Checked on 2014-03-05 20:32:42
Current line speed:
33.6 Mb
--
I don't recall what this page said before the supposed switchover, but the BT Wholesale diagnostic page was showing ~38Mb downstream at the time. My cabinet isn't terribly close - about 400-500m I think - but I would hope to get a better speed than this.

I also have a slightly unusual internal wiring setup. My old (non-NTE5) master socket was in the loft, with two extensions running down to different rooms. The BTO engineer fitted a new NTE5 master socket in the place of one of the extensions and rewired the old master socket to act as a junction box. The cable to the NTE5 now carries both the unfiltered VDSL signal on one twisted pair, and a filtered signal to my other phone extension via the loft.

Was wondering if this setup could be degrading the signal somewhat? I've tried disconnecting the second extension (so the cable to the NTE5 only carries the unfiltered signal) but it doesn't seem to have made a difference. I don't want to touch the old master socket in the loft since it's on the 'wrong' side of the NTE5...

Done by a pukka Openreach engineer that wiring should be fine. Possibly a small drop in speed, but nothing dramatic.

OK, thanks for the info. The engineer seemed quite switched-on and helpful, and arrived in a BTO van, so I'm hoping the wiring job wasn't dodgy.

Not sure if there's anything more I can try really. Currently waiting to receive an unlocked VDSL modem so I can see line stats etc - might help me understand what's going on with my line.

Yes. That's what we need you to have in order to go much further .

The "telnet" xdslcmd info --pbParams are needed, and with the xdslcmd info --stats would be ideal.

Edited by RobertoS (Fri 21-Mar-14 23:14:35)

Cool... I'll post back in a few days then. Thanks for the help

Hello,

I've now got my unlocked modem set up. It's an ECI rev B unfortunately - it seems the commands you refer to are for the Huawei modem.

Do you know of an equivalent command I can run on it to give the stats you need? FWIW the status page shows the following (after being up for ~15 mins with moderate usage - sorry for the bad formatting):

Channel Status Upstream Downstream
Actual Net Data Rate 6916000 kbps 33112000 kbps
Actual Interleave Delay 0 ms 975 ms
Actual INP 0 Symbols 30 Symbols
Attainable Net Data Rate 6905000 kbps 38260288 kbps
Transmit Power 117 dBm 49 dBm
Current 15 mins Near End Far End
CRC 0 0
FEC 5139 0
ES 0 0
SES 0 0
UAS 32 0
24 hours Near End Far End
CRC 0 0
FEC 5139 0
ES 0 0
SES 0 0
UAS 32 0

Looks like my downstream IP profile has dropped again (33.73 to 32.05) - looks like the brief power outage as I swapped modems was enough to knock it down

I'm afraid I don't, but maybe others do. I'll make a post in the Fibre forum when I've posted this, and ask if anyone can help.

However, those stats are showing connection speeds of 33.1/6.9Mbps, with maximum possibles of 38.3/6.9, so it looks as though your line is pretty well flat out.

In reply to a post by funchnugget:

Channel Status	Upstream	Downstream
Actual Net Data Rate	6916000 kbps	33112000 kbps
Actual Interleave Delay	0 ms	975 ms
Actual INP	0 Symbols	30 Symbols
Attainable Net Data Rate	6905000 kbps	38260288 kbps
Transmit Power	117 dBm	49 dBm

I haven't seen any ECI output before, only stuff from the Huawei. Your output numbers look a little strange, so this will take a little guesswork.

First, it looks like DLM has intervened on your downstream: non-zero values for delay and INP indicate this.

"Delay" is the maximum amount of additional latency that DLM is allowing the modems to add for interleaving. "INP" stands for "impulse noise correction", and indicates the maximum length of noise bursts that the modem's error correction procedure has to cope with.

On the Huawei, the standard "first choice" of delay is 8ms, while the standard choice of INP is 3 symbols.

For the ECI, we should assume that the delay isn't really 975ms; a value of 9.75ms seems a better bet. The INP probably isn't 30 symbols, so perhaps it means 3.0 symbols.

Taken together, if I'm right, then DLM has intervened to cope with errors, and found that it has had to adjust on at least one occasion.

That will probably explain why you have less speed now than when you first posted. And because your line looks to have a maximum attainable of 38Mbps, it looks like the result from the 80/20 upgrade was correct - it happened, but your line couldn't cope with more. I'm sure the regrade happened, at least partially, because you saw your BT IP profile upstream value set to 20Mbps.

However, one thing looks a little suspect: The TX Power. Your values are probably best read as 11.7dBm upstream and 4.9 dBm downstream.

On my current line, the equivalent numbers read as 7.0 dBm upstream and 13.1dBm downstream.

My figures are the other way around in magnitude (downstream larger than upstream), and both are larger.

Perhaps this is a real issue, or perhaps the line is working fine and your display is confused (eg displaying figures the wrong way around). This happens on the Huawei, where the GUI mixes up data compared to the command-line.

Current 15 mins Near End Far End
CRC 0 0
FEC 5139 0
ES 0 0
SES 0 0
UAS 32 0

The fact you are seeing FEC errors indicates that the FEC process has been turned on, confirming that DLM has been triggered.

Over 5,000 errors (even though corrected) sounds like a fairly high number for 15 minutes of operation, but it would map to a smaller number of CRC errors if FEC were turned off.

But right now you are getting zero CRC errors, which means FEC is catching everything. With figures like that, DLM wouldn't want to slow you down more.

Looks like my downstream IP profile has dropped again (33.73 to 32.05) - looks like the brief power outage as I swapped modems was enough to knock it down

It is probably just the fact that you re-synced it at the worst time of day. Choose to re-sync mid-morning, and things will likely improve.