BT Business Broadband

I have been thinking recently of moving from BT Business Broadband, organised by my employer to Virgin or Sky partly because of the TV bundles but more increasingly because of the poor performance and customer service of BT.

Just looking at my current BBand performance of my last three speed tests on this site my best was: 1.8M up and 0.44M down. This is poor when BT themselves actually say I could be getting over 4.0 M up when I put my post code in on their sites.

I have a Netgear DG834GT router and the performance figures on it are

2.27 M down 0.448 M up
line att down 44db line att up 26db
noise M down 11.3db noise M up 17 db

When I look at this sites perfomance map for my local post code area I can see that I am as close to the nearest exchanges as other people but my performance is 50% or more down on most of the other neighbours.

Do the figures above from the router tell anyone about the potential of my line for good or bad?

A BT engineer recently visited my house (while I was out) when I complained about the reliability of the BBand and he blaimed us for moving around phone extensions. This was rubbish as we have not touched the extensions for over 5 years or more.

Will appreciate any help or guidance!

rgds

Colin

With those stats you should really be seeing sync speeds of 6.5Mbps down and 1Mbps up. You say that the estimator suggests 4Mbps and your neighbour are getting twice your speed.

You may not have moved the phone extensions around but they could be the cause of your low speeds. Changing provider will not sort those problems out. I don't think the BT Tech would have made that comment unless he had good reason and most of them can just look at a socket or two and intuitively know if the wiring is good or bad.

Please do a daytime reconnection and read the line stats immediately afterwards. The high downstream noise margin is at least part of the cause, but without knowing what it is at connection time we don't know the next step to take.

Have a read of my Troubleshooting section, particularly the High Noise Margin and Miscellaneous Nasties pages, and see if anything looks likely.

have been thinking recently of moving from BT Business Broadband, organised by my employer to Virgin or Sky partly because of the TV bundles but more increasingly because of the poor performance and customer service of BT.

Two things to watch for here.

1) If this is arranged by your employer you should not be changing provider without their approval from both the business and IT sides.

I remember a while back when a major ISP blocked VPN clients from working on their cheap domestic service, and when users called to complain were told that as VPN was a business application they woiuld not be allowed to use it.

2) Changing ISP will probably not solve the problem for you. Every ISP will be using the same copper back to the exchange*, and any faults on this or on your internal wiring will remain, regardless of ISP.

*Unless in a cable TV area.

3) If your employer-arranged line is faulty, pass it to your employer to sort out. Let them do the shouting if they pay the bill...

4) Anyway, the downstream noise margin is high, we need to try and find out why. Follow the advice given by others here and report back.

5) Blind guess, but with a username of Beechgrove, are you Aberdonian?


Edit. That's more than two, isn't it?

Edited by deleted (Thu 13-Jan-11 10:05:24)

In reply to a post by MHC:

With those stats you should really be seeing sync speeds of 6.5Mbps down and 1Mbps up. You say that the estimator suggests 4Mbps and your neighbour are getting twice your speed.

You may not have moved the phone extensions around but they could be the cause of your low speeds. Changing provider will not sort those problems out. I don't think the BT Tech would have made that comment unless he had good reason and most of them can just look at a socket or two and intuitively know if the wiring is good or bad.

thank you so much for the last sentence, put a smile on my face that did. i have always known i was psychic lol

Thanks to MHC, RobertoS , shtu and Andyboygsi for the comments so far.

I will check out the T/S guide and the house extensions, some of them installed before I moved here more than 10 years ago! Will also try a reconnection and post back.

The name Beechgrove comes from the street I live on but just so you know I am an Ulsterman from Belfast!

Thanks for all your helpl

rgds

Colin

In reply to a post by andyboygsi:

In reply to a post by MHC:

With those stats you should really be seeing sync speeds of 6.5Mbps down and 1Mbps up. You say that the estimator suggests 4Mbps and your neighbour are getting twice your speed.

You may not have moved the phone extensions around but they could be the cause of your low speeds. Changing provider will not sort those problems out. I don't think the BT Tech would have made that comment unless he had good reason and most of them can just look at a socket or two and intuitively know if the wiring is good or bad.

thank you so much for the last sentence, put a smile on my face that did. i have always known i was psychic lol

Seriously though, after a few years you do get the gut feel about a customers wiring and whether it is good or bad. Certainly my TOs, S.Techs &c had that intuitive feeling about customer installations and even my L1s & 2s retained it.

Have done some more testing

I don't believe the reconnection of the router in daytime made any real difference to any of the previous figures.
I power everything off after I am finished with it...PC, router , everything is powered down. I have always done this. Is it better to keep the router permanently on?

I have looked through the T/S guide, and made some changes.
I rearranged all phone cables at the back of my computer so that they were as far away from mains and PS cables as possible and also made sure there are no neat loops.
I have also went around the house and unplugged a couple of unused phone extensions.

I then checked the speed again around 2pm today.
2.624 UP 448K down
line att 43 db down, 26 db up
NM 12.5 db down, 17db up
This did not seem to make much of a difference?

I also went to the master socket and may have found a problem!?
I removed the cover to reveal the inner test socket. I plugged a filter in to the test socket but was unable to get the router to sync on that filter position.
A phone also plugged into that filter position would not work.
But in this configuration I also found a hardwired extension from the master socket still working when a phone was plugged in, through a filter.
If I am understanding the T/S guide that is a no no??

I did not wire in this connection ( so it has been there over 18 yrs) and I am not sure if I can undo it, but I am willing to give it a try if possible.
This extension also happens to be the one upstairs that eventually feeds the study were my router normally lives!

Any ideas what I should do now?

rgds

Colin

Get a picture or two of the master socket especially the wires connected to te back - colours of wires and pins connected to are what is needed.

When you unplugged the small front plate, did you think to plug the phone into that to check for dial tone ? It has been known to be incorrectly wired that way !!!

That would be an interesting set up .... wired from the main incoming connection, out to an extension socket or two and then back to the front plate ...

The problem I found was that an engineer terminated the wire from the extensions to the backplate and then the wire from the lead in to the removable frontplate. I guess he/she got confused due to the pressure... probably coffee and no biscuits...! Confused me for 5 mins as well !

Engineer or a bodged DIY job!

Hello

I have taken some pictures of the face plate so please follow the links:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/45995832@N08/5360360858...

The link above shows a picture of the back of the front part of the master socket, with the connections.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/45995832@N08/5360360696...

the second picture above shows front cover removed with phone plugged in to the front cover via a filter. In this configuration there is a dial tone!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/45995832@N08/5359745799...
The picture above shows the back of the master socket with no connections here at all!

Judging from the comments here am I correct in saying this is wired incorrectly?

On a bright note my speed has improved slightly:
right after taking these pictures today my speed test showed
1.882Mbps Down and 0.375 Mbps Up
the Netgear router showed
3146 kbps down 448 kbps up
line att down 43db, line att up 26db
NM 12.1 db down, 13db up

Yesterday at one point the NM was 8.6 db down, 15 db up.

Is there hope then for improving my speed in some way?

regards

Colin

Ouch!

That looks like a DIY installation of that "master" socket, but there is probably a true master socket elsewhere, perhaps an old one. It is certain that the incoming BT cable is connected to either a junction box or a true master socket.

There is also an incidental wiring error evident in the first pic.

One pair coming in looks to be correctly wired to T2 and T5 using Blu/white and White/Blue. The other is incorrectly wired using Blue/white and Orange.

You need to look inside every extension. We need to know which has an incoming cable from outside and which has the incorrect wiring as above.

I also expect one of them to look like an LJ2/1A and one like an LJ2/3A, as in these pics. The one with the cylindrical capacitor is the master.

The wire to the right of the socket ... is that the incoming feed? And is that the cable the solid orange and solid green wires are from? Is there anything further back on that wire or does it go straight to the junction on the eaves?

?
The green goes to T3?

Correct ...

And given that T3 and T5 are connected by a resistor and T2 and T5 coonected capacitively it is still possible the installation will work to some degree giving a high attenuation on the DSL signal. your picking on teh Green is actually irrelavent - all I want to know is where those two actaully go to. I could have picked on the blue and orange, or blue and green, or all three.

Edited by MHC (Sun 16-Jan-11 18:24:16)

What did I say ! Am I good or just Telepathic !
I hope I can do as well at work this week !!!!

I have had another look around and three more pictures.

I have found were the BT cables come in from the Eaves and through the front door frame and into a junction box. Check out the picture.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/45995832@N08/5361541080...

There are then two telephone type mulitcore cables twinned in parallel off the other side of the junction box.

The connections on this junction box look dodgy to me and could probably do with a clean and a retighten.

One of the two multicores I believe feeds an LJ2/3A downstairs:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/45995832@N08/5360926577...

The wire colours to here appear to be:
1 Green white 2 Blue white 3 Orange white 4 White orange 5 White blue 6 White green
with the dominant colour of the wire first in each case above.

The other multicore from the junction box I believe feeds the master socket, coming in low on the RHS of the Master socket picture.

The Master socket colour connections are all to the front removable part:
1 nothing
2 Blue cable and a second Blue white cable
3 Green cable and a second Orange white cable
4 nothing
5 Orange cable and a second White blue cable
6 nothing

Then a hardwired extension cable from the Master leaves out the LHS direction and feeds a BT extension box upstairs as pictured:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/45995832@N08/5360926259...

The connections on this are:
1 nothing
2 blue
3 green
4 nothing
5 orange
6 nothing

My router plugs onto the end of an extension cord off this upstairs extension.

Regards

Colin