Nothing to do with my face plate or anything else local to me, was an issue in the exchange.

In their infinite wisdom BT Wholesale left a 5.5km line on 3dB fastpath. Packet loss and drops ahoy.

Not that it matters, 6dB interleave has left the packet loss there and failed to stop 70% of the errors from being uncorrectable.

Now it's jumping through Plusnet's hoops to get an SFI to come to the property. Risky given that Plusnet technical support don't even seem to know what the actual issue is, and annoying given the line was loss free until work was done in the exchange, specifically the move to Plusnet, but it strengthens the case to get the year's line rental in advance back.

BT Wholesale are a nightmare, an absolute nightmare that seems to exist purely to ensure faults take longer to get fixed, Plusnet's support is script driven and robotic and they don't pay attention to the fault being reported.

27 days into the Plusnet experience, not a single day of decent service so far. This is the worst experience I have had with an ISP having had broadband at home for over 10 years and will be broadcast far and wide. The measure of any service is how they deal with faults and in the case of Plusnet their support would fail the Turing test if it weren't for the fact that a computer would actually pay attention to what is sent to it, hence I know I'm dealing with humans.

It's tragic when moving from a bargain basement, mass market ISP like Sky who have being an ISP as a value-add and retention tool to their TV product to a Which? recommended provider who apparently pride themselves on offering low prices without compromising on service and for whom their primary business is being an ISP is an unmitigated disaster.

Had they just done the bleeping lift and shift I asked for weeks ago this would be fixed but Plusnet run through their scripts in order to run through the BT Wholesale scripts and the customer suffers.

Name: portal.plus.net
Address: 212.159.9.2

Ping statistics for 212.159.9.2:
Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 96, Lost = 4 (4% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 57ms, Maximum = 418ms, Average = 118ms

Uptime: 0 days, 13:54:59
DSL Type: ITU-T G.992.3
Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 663 / 2.103
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 39,0 / 66,5
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 5,8 / 6,0
Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 18.408 / 3
FEC Errors (Up/Down): 3.507 / 32.610
CRC Errors (Up/Down): 202 / 87.910
HEC Errors (Up/Down): 639 / 21.189

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

can I ask why the change to plusnet?

I was going to say typical HR fault, but given what you said we have to look at whats changed which is going to be the line card.

Everything changed bar a tie cable from the MDF onwards. The move was from LLU to BT Wholesale.

This'll be why VoIP's knackered then.

Upstream Loss: 0.0% (=0/500)
Upstream Order: 100.0% (=249500/249500)
Upstream Jitter: ave=0.59ms, max=36.868ms
Downstream Loss: 11.2% (=56/500)
Downstream Order: 94.18677354709419% (=234996/249500)
Downstream Jitter: ave=78.82ms, max=154.32882882882882ms

Sounds like a bad experience so far, can you PM me your username and I'll get someone to take a look into what's going on and what the next steps are.

3dB and interleaved has been helpful to me in the past - at 9km. Does G992.1 do better ?(unlikely, but always worth a try).

An SFI engineer came today, Chris, did his thing and as expected found nothing wrong with the line.

He was then spun a load of complete nonsense by BT Wholesale.

Here's the post relating to this on your own forums.

This is in no way personal to you Mr Taylor.

Your supplier's incompetence is breathtaking.

As expected the Openreach engineer informed that the line itself is in great shape right back to the MDF, as expected given that this household has been featured on national TV over the quality of broadband provision, has been the centre of a ward-wide superfast broadband campaign, and has had 2 REIN engineers base themselves in it to diagnose a fault.

However he called BT Wholesale and they informed him that the difference between the stability on Sky and Plusnet is apparently because when we were on Sky LLU, and note I said LLU, we were on a 20CN 'up to' 8Mb service, whereas we're now on a 21CN 'up to' 24Mb service.

However it's all fine now. BT Wholesale have fixed the SNR margin at 6dB which means it can't drop any lower and all the issues should apparently now be fixed.

Of course there are a few issues with this.

1) Sky is ADSL2+ / G.992.5
2) We're on ADSL2 / G.992.3, which you'd expect to be more stable.
3) There is absolutely no way that BT Wholesale can fix downstream SNR margin.

So this wonderful, fixed SNR margin, super reliable service has in the time I was writing this forum post already dropped and packet loss has returned.

Ping statistics for 212.159.9.2:
Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 96, Lost = 4 (4% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 37ms, Maximum = 483ms, Average = 144ms

Strangely enough the SNR margin is also still unstable. There I was thinking that BT Wholesale could defy the laws of physics in one direction and control the signal quality my modem reported in the other.

Any other ideas or ready to cut losses, refund the line rental paid in advance, and provide a MAC so that we can take the lesson as learned and return to our obsessive avoidance of BT Wholesale?

Thank you.

Incidentally in the time it's taken me to write this post the line actually dropped twice, as I'm sure will be reflected by your RADIUS logs.

3) There is absolutely no way that BT Wholesale can fix downstream SNR margin.

They can fix the target downstream SNR margin rather than let DLM play with it, that's what the shorthand meant.

A line should be fine running at 0 dB SNR margin as that gives an acceptable error rate, so going to 6 dB gives more headspace. Does your kit have an ATM layer BER test function ?

how did you get 2 rein engineers to stay overnight and get previous issues on tv? O_o

what you seeing now is the sort of rubbish BTw have been doing for years, I used to moan alot in the past about my own adsl line years ago before I moved to ukonline.

The question is what specific task do you think is required to get the area of the fault looked at?

lift and shift
cease and reprovide?
something else.

I would think a cease and reprovide gets the line physically discconected and recconected again so perhaps thats what plusnet should be ordering. If BT still do it a managed cease and reprovide is done all in one day.

Sorry you couldnt say why the line owner jumped to plusnet, to save money? the old rule dont rock the boat.

I'm aware they can fix the target margin. If you could tell me just why they'd do this on a line that's showing errors and proclaim it fixed that'd be great.

I don't need an ATM layer BER test function.

FEC Errors (Up/Down): 188 / 9.692
CRC Errors (Up/Down): 25 / 5.292
HEC Errors (Up/Down): 80 / 1.754

It is perhaps worth my mentioning I've worked for a datastream OLO and an LLU operator to save the teaching grandma to suck eggs thing.