Poor quality ADSL and BRAS profile

My sister has a new house which has one of these new fangled OpenReach (grey) master sockets on the outside of the house which seems to split into 3 and feed a further 6 extensions. I had wanted to fit a converted master socket (ADSLnation etc) so that I could get the maximum out of the line but can't find anyway of making it work with this new style external master socket.

When I first plugged in the router it managed 3Mb/s which I thought was pretty good but over the following 10 days BT reduced this to 1Mb/s. Now I've been stuck at 1Mb/s or below for about 3 months. Samknows says that BT think my sisters line is capable of 512Kb/s. It also seems that BT's equipment has pushed the SNR up to 12.

These are the line stats. The modem says that it has managed to keep the line up since Saturday morning (5 days ago). I have a Draytek 2820 currently connected to the line and don't get any better when using other kit... apart from a BT Business modem which managed 1.7M/b/s. But I've had the Draytek do 3Mb/s on the same line at 6db!

> show adsl
--------------------------- ATU-R Info (hw: annex A, f/w: annex A) -----------
Running Mode : G.DMT State : SHOWTIME
DS Actual Rate : 1152000 bps US Actual Rate : 448000 bps
DS Attainable Rate : 1632000 bps US Attainable Rate : 808000 bps
DS Path Mode : Interleave US Path Mode : Interleave
DS Interleave Depth : 4 US Interleave Depth : 2
NE Current Attenuation : 49 dB Cur SNR Margin : 11 dB
DS actual PSD : 17. 9 dB US actual PSD : 11. 9 dB
ADSL Firmware Version : 232201_A
-------------------------------- ATU-C Info ---------------------------------
Far Current Attenuation : 31 dB Far SNR Margin : 14 dB
CO ITU Version[0] : 0000414c CO ITU Version[1] : 00004342
DSLAM CHIPSET VENDOR : < ALA >
> Connection closed by foreign host.

ADSL Information ( ADSL Firmware Version: 232201_A)
ATM Statistics TX Cells RX Cells TX CRC errs RX CRC errs
11513307 68363552 76 2385
ADSL Status Mode State Up Speed Down Speed SNR Margin Loop Att.
G.DMT SHOWTIME 448000 1152000 11 49

Does anyone have a way of getting this line to perform better? Or how to get better stats... or reset the BRAS profile!

Regards
Tim

To install a master filter, then run one wire from the external master, to a NTE5 which you can buy online, and then run the 6 extensions from there.

The line speed is poor for the attenuation which looks to be 49dB, 4Meg roughly is what I would expect. To get an idea of what difference the master socket change would make then plug the ADSL into the external NTE5 when all the extensions are disconnected.

If the extensions were builder installed I would also check the wiring, i.e. that it is using twisted pair, and each extension is on a pair, rather than a leg from different pairs.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

To get an idea of what difference the master socket change would make then plug the ADSL into the external NTE5 when all the extensions are disconnected.

It is builder fitted. Brilliant number of extensions but they obviously don't expect people to get a good ADSL signal!

I had thought that installing my own NTE 5 would be illegal but of course BT stops at the external socket so I could replace it and put in my own filtered internal master socket... My sister was confident that the electrician/builder who installed it would be able to get it sorted out but he's blaming BT... right yeah...

And I wondered what that yellow bit of plastic was... a master socket. Once I've fitted this new master socket will the profile get reset by BT automatically or does my sister need to contact BT Broadband.

Regards
Tim

New External NTE Test socket

Very helpful site for the socket I'm talking about... External OpenReach Master Socket

Can't test the external NTE box then... wrong type of connector! Looks like do the wiring first and hope!

Regards
Tim

Edited by timl (Wed 25-Nov-09 10:12:07)

Sync should improve and IP profile follow automatically.

The drop to a 6dB target margin may happen, but often does not, but don't panic on that until 3 weeks after you've got it working better

Brilliant BT!

Of course, nobody is going to produce a converter for that socket, presenting a test socket.

Obviously.

As an update... I had a look at the connections at the extensions and they look a mess. Without a meter I can't test to see which wires are the ones coming in from the external NTE and so my brother wants to get someone professional to do it.

I called BT and spoke to a gentleman who did a line test and passed it through to some other department. He told me this would take 48 hours. They called back today to say that the line is working fine (which is what I kept telling the original man) and they say they are going to send an engineer around on Monday morning to investigate.

My brother is more than willing to pay for BT to install an internal master socket. Do you think they'll do that? Is there anything else I can do to help?

Ok. Just had a very nice Openreach engineer who got out the fancy kit and tested our internal extensions and the line to BT. He said the internal wiring was pretty good and we were only getting a drop of about 250k from the internal wiring.

He went off to the exchange and he seems to have improved the quality of the line slightly and he's reset the noise margin to 6db (it was at 12db) so now we're syncing at 2.2Mb/sec actual rate 1.8Mb/sec.

The BT man told us to wait for the DLM to catch up but that this was about the best he could do. He said that the line seemed to be ok... that are internal wiring is ok too. He suspects there's a fault in the exchange but said he wasn't high up enough to get BT to do anything which seems odd!

I've seen faulty linecards be the problem before and it seems to be a nightmare to fix them! Oh well we'll do as he said... wait a couple of days and re-report it.

Any (constructive) advice

Regards
Tim

> show adsl
--------------------------- ATU-R Info (hw: annex A, f/w: annex A) -----------
Running Mode : G.DMT State : SHOWTIME
DS Actual Rate : 1888000 bps US Actual Rate : 448000 bps
DS Attainable Rate : 2304000 bps US Attainable Rate : 820000 bps
DS Path Mode : Interleave US Path Mode : Interleave
DS Interleave Depth : 8 US Interleave Depth : 2
NE Current Attenuation : 48 dB Cur SNR Margin : 7 dB
DS actual PSD : 18. 9 dB US actual PSD : 11. 9 dB
ADSL Firmware Version : 232201_A
-------------------------------- ATU-C Info ---------------------------------
Far Current Attenuation : 31 dB Far SNR Margin : 15 dB
CO ITU Version[0] : 0000414c CO ITU Version[1] : 00004342
DSLAM CHIPSET VENDOR : < ALA >

Edited by timl (Mon 25-Jan-10 14:34:48)

You are not sync'ing at 2.2Mbps, you are sync'ing at 1888Kbps. Your IP profile for that will be 1500Kbps and your actual download below that.

As MrSaffron says, that is a very poor speed for the attenuation. See for example this graph, although things aren't quite as clearcut as that implies.

Whatever the nice engineer says, the prime suspect is, in my opinion, the internal wiring. It would be interesting to know what colours are on which terminal numbers at a couple of extensions.

On the other hand it's odd he didn't tell you what speed he was able to sync at with his equipment.

The official view when an end user has an External NTE and a line fault is that they are supposed to remove the yellow isolator plug and use another phone to call for a line test. This is a silly idea as the line test would not find some faults in the unit itself.
In this case I would disconnect the internal wiring at the end user terminals ( they are non-tool idcs, you just pull up a plastic clip to release the wires) and hang in a phone socket and check the stats from there.

Edited by deleted (Tue 26-Jan-10 02:15:29)