Utpo 8meg speed query

Hi

I live in the sticks and am connected to a rural exchange that only offers the basic upto 8meg adsl.
The BT speed estimate says I should be able to recieve between 1 - 3.5 meg and thankfully I seem to have a decent line that gives me a sync speed of 5760kbps and it has been connected rock solid at this for the past 9 days.
What seems to happen is if my line disconnects during the night etc it might reconnect at slightly lower than this putting me in the 4.5 meg bracket instead of 5 meg.
My connection with Plusnet seems to stick every time this happens and I have had to call them to get them to alter the speed.

I raised a ticket with support at the end of last week because this scenario had happened again and the reply I got seem odd.
I was told that seeing that my line estimate from BT is 1 - 3.5 meg my line was operating above what Plusnet could guarantee me ?
I thought I was upto 8 meg and if my line was solid at 5 meg then that is roughly what I would be getting ?

Is my idea on this wrong ?

Cheers

You are basically right but it gets a little more complicated.

The simple bit is that this latest time you spoke to someone who sounds relatively inexperienced and needs a nudge from one of the reps that come here. I suppose you know they've recruited a lot of new support staff. That sort of reply in your situation is in my opinion unacceptable.

However - the BT Wholesale system is designed to handle this sort of thing automatically, and given a few days does. In theory no ISP needs to take any action.

In practice here are two considerations. The first one is the IP Profile, which I assume is what you mean by the "bracket". From what you've said your line is running under the old DLM system. Note what I say on that page about how long it takes for the IP Profile to update when it's only a small jump up the table.

The WBC (21CN) IP Profile system reacts immediately. They (BT Wholesale) really ought to make the old one do so as well.

The second one is that Plusnet holds a similar figure called your Current line speed. You can view that in your Member Centre in the Connection details.

This is a copy of the IP Profile, set a small amount lower. It should adjust within a few hours of the IP Profile changing. The system that does that automatically is prone to failure . That's when ringing them is almost your only option.

Before the faster IP Profile updating on WBC was introduced, (at first it was slow just like the one you are on), the normal response from all ISPs was that's the way the system works, and you will have to wait. For the same reasons as it was designed that way in the first place.

I think that's covered most of the subject. What I think we should be doing once you've got that under your belt is seeing if we can help you stop your line doing those occasional (very annoying - been there, done that) night-time drops. The starting point is you telling us what router you use .

Thanks for the indepth post Robertos, glad to see that it appears there is a bit of an issue here.
To give you some extra info I got the following below that might help matters.

Router is a Billion 7800dxl that I bought due to the Billion routers having a decent reputation on longlines.
At present the router is showing a connection of 5760 and this has been running for 9 days and 12 hours.

I just ran a BT Wholesale speedtest and it returned the figures below.

Download speedachieved during the test was - 4.24 Mbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 0.6 Mbps-7.15 Mbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :5.76 Mbps(DOWN-STREAM), 0.45 Mbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 5 Mbps

Cheers

So the IP Profile is correct. Now you need to go to your Plusnet Member Centre and find the Current line speed in the Connection details, then tell us that .

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

So the IP Profile is correct. Now you need to go to your Plusnet Member Centre and find the Current line speed in the Connection details, then tell us that .

Sorry for missing that bit !!


Estimated line speed:
There's no speed estimate currently held on your account.
Current line speed:
5.7 Mb

Looks like they have the right info on their systems ?

Umm . Not really, but it probably doesn't matter.

The Current line speed looks as though whoever you spoke to has set it to 5.7Mbps because of your 5760kbps sync speed. That is not what it should be.

It should be just below the (correct) 5Mbps IP Profile, possibly 4.9Mbps. It could cause minor problems, but I wouldn't worry for now.

We still have two/three things to look at.

Again, there's an easy one. When you are checking the real speed, are you connected wired or wireless to the router? Wireless speeds are nearly always well below what a wired test would be taken immediately before or after it. They also vary a lot more because the wireless interference at your premises is highly variable.

Then we come back to the drops in the first place, and why they are occurring.

I don't know the Billion routers, but as well as the sync speed, can you see the Attenuation and Noise Margin/SNR(M) values? If so, please could you post both the up and down figures.

Speed test was being run via wireless so the results below have been done using a ethernet cable.

Download speedachieved during the test was - 4.25 Mbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 0.6 Mbps-7.15 Mbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :5.76 Mbps(DOWN-STREAM), 0.45 Mbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 5 Mbps

snr down - 4.0 snr up 9.0
att down - 50.5 att up 29.5

The above stats taken at 11pm

So at the moment, am I right in thinking you are happy with the speed? Or do you sometimes get more than that? It all looks about right.

Have you any idea how much the SNR down varies over 24 hours? At the moment it should be at about its lowest point. Have you ever kept an eye on it?

In reply to a post by drphibes:

snr down - 4.0 snr up 9.0
att down - 50.5 att up 29.5

Just glancing quickly, so apologies if this has been said. When I was on ADSLmax, I had two speeds. The first was fast, or so I thought at the time. The second was 0.2 to 0.4 slower and it occurred if the connection was made at a busy time.

In essence if you connect at quiet times, you get a faster line, but it's less stable during the more busy times of the day (or that was my experience). The solution was to lose the little extra speed and get a more solid line with no disconnections.

So connect at the more busy times of the day and your SNR will be at 6.0 during busy times, and will probably rise to 8.0 when quiet, rather than 6.0 during quiet times, and 4.0 when busy.

He has been stable for over 9 days though, don't forget. I think we need to look for a specific intermittent cause first and see if it can be eliminated, rather than take the BTW view and permanently slug the speed.

He's only got 64kbps to play with.