Troubleshooting a friend's Sky Broadband remotely

I have a friend with some form of Sky Broadband with dreadful performance and I'm trying to figure out what that problem could be remotely.

I can't go around just yet (will be able to in a few weeks) but want to rule out as many things as possible beforehand.

Facts:

1) the postcode seems to be in a Sky enabled exchange area
2) the phone number is not recognised by the BT line checker
3) the phone number is not recognised by the Sky line checker
4) the router has Sky branding (here's a link to a photo of the router)
5) IP geolocation identifies the line as Sky broadband
6) the line speedtests at 0.61 down and 0.21 up.

So I'd first want to make sure it's on-net Sky BB and not the BT wholesale one, but this seems almost certain if the line is fully signed over to Sky. But if that's the case, why doesn't the Sky checker recognise the line?

If it is on-net Sky BB which I understand has a pretty good reputation, then the most likely scenario is some sort of horrendous technical problem like internal wiring causing it to sync at less than 1mb despite a 530m straight line exchange distance. I won't be able to find that out without going there though (unless anyone has an *extremely* simple method for getting line stats from this router)

Thanks in advance

If it is Sky's own kit, then speed tests should show an increase straight away if having your friend find their NTE and connect the router directly in to the test socket.

The slowest BB I ever saw, was due to Sky having fitted multi-room with no filter on either. 6Kbps downstream ! Unfiltered Sky boxes are THE single most common cause of BB iffiness.

A traceroute may show if it's on-net.

Good point, and they do have Sky TV, I'll take a couple of extra filters when I do finally get to go and have a look at it.

Any way of being absolutely sure that this is on-net Sky BB? I'm still a little bemused by the fact that not a single line checker on the internet understands this phone number.

There's no cable or FTTC in their area, but assuming they ever did want to leave Sky, how would they migrate away with a number like that?

This is me tracing their IP (or what it was three days ago)

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 * * * Request timed out.
4 9 ms 10 ms 9 ms 10.1.4.249
5 11 ms 13 ms 16 ms be1.er11.enslo.isp.sky.com [195.66.237.234]
6 14 ms 9 ms 12 ms ip-89-200-131-239.ov.easynet.net [89.200.131.239
7 * * * Request timed out.
8 66 ms 67 ms 63 ms 02dc6257.bb.sky.com [2.220.98.87]

Easynet implies on-net I guess?

If upstream sync speed is 288 Kbps then can be pretty certain if it is OFFNet and often suffers from poor throughput

First step is to see what the sync speeds, attenuation and noise margins are

Yes, looks like it.

If it is Sky's own kit, then speed tests should show an increase straight away if having your friend find their NTE and connect the router directly in to the test socket.

You are wrong here. Sky DLM sets a physical cap on the sync.

Say you are connected via an extension socket. DLM runs and sets a speed of say 2Mbps. This is a physical upper cap.

If you now plug into the master socket or TEST socket the speed will ALSO be 2 Mbps.

This sync stays at 2Mbps regardless because DLM has set a maximum sync of 2Mbps on the line.
The only way the speed would be better in the test socket is if DLM was disabled, DLM was re run or the sync speed was manually changed by SKY.

If they left it in the TEST socket for several days / weeks eventually DLM will automatically re-run but this takes lots of time. It would then give better speeds.

Speeds will not change straight away purely because Sky DLM sets an upper cap on the sync.

Even manually tweaking SNR via DMT tool or custom firmware etc will not work.

In reply to a post by bezuk:

Any way of being absolutely sure that this is on-net Sky BB? I'm still a little bemused by the fact that not a single line checker on the internet understands this phone number.

Usually once on full LLU via SKY the line checkers don't work. This is because they rely on BT having details which they don't on sky's full LLU.

To switch it would go through the same as a new line install and then number can be taken over with this. This is similar to all full llu operators.

To get statistics is not too hard

Open internet:
type in 192.168.0.1 (type this where you type websites e.g. www.google.co.uk)
Click maintenance
username: admin
password: sky
scroll down
Click show statistics

Some sky routers it's done differently:

Open internet:
type in 192.168.0.1 (type this where you type websites e.g. www.google.co.uk)
username: admin
password: sky
scroll down
Click show statistics

Phoning up and being persistent but polite seems to work