Infinity 2 Installation - From Bad to Worse!

Well I had Infinity installed and it's fast! However I'm not at all impressed by BT at the moment. My original install date was the 4th of April between 8am and 1pm although no engineer showed up, I waited the extra hour and then rang BT who said they'd ring back later that day.

They didn't.

So that was a day of annual leave wasted. I was accepting of this; I know that these things happen but I cannot see why BT then disconnected me from Broadband? Phone line was fine, but couldn't connect over ADSL. Next day at work I check my BT account and lo and behold the appointment has been moved to the 19th of April; two weeks away! This would be fine if I still had Internet, but not when I'm completely disconnected. BT never even rang or texted to confirm this, so had I have not checked my account at work how on earth would I have known? Rather angry, on the Monday I rang BT who said that they'd ring back. They didn't. The next day however, a nice man rang me saying that my order now had high priority and that installation had been moved to today which I was happily surprised at. So, how did the installation go?

Not well.

So the young man rings me at eight, says he's at the cabinet and will be here in half an hour. Based on my findings here and elsewhere, I chosen it to be installed behind my TV using the data extension kit from a socket 10m away so I'd be able to plug my Sky HD box in via Ethernet rather than use the wireless connector. It was also to keep the OR Modem out of sight. With this in mind, I had moved everything out of the way ready, in the process having to vacuum more dust than I thought possible only to be told by the engineer on arrival that it had to be directly next to the master socket and that they don't do extensions. Rather annoyed, I let him get on because there was nothing I could do. He hooked everything up using a three way adapter plugged in next to the master, which I'd wanted the extension from, and replaced the faceplate of the Master as expected. I'm now left with this hideous protruding mass. I also thought they were suppose to wall mount the modem? Mines just been left on the window still with the hub on top. The guy seemed more interested in getting the job done rather than doing it well.

After he'd set everything up, he checked the line using a call to command from my landline then received the results via text on his iPhone. Full sync speed! With that done, he then asked to use my Laptop to check some things so I obliged. First he did a speed test and exclaimed how super fast it was.

Except it wasn't

5mbs down and 8 mbps up isn't impressive, that's actually less than what I was getting on ADSL on the download side. Upload was impressive though and ping was noticeably down at 16ms. The engineer perplexed by the result moved onto the wholesale tester which reported an even lower download and estimated that pages would take 2 seconds to load. To test this, he went onto the iPlayer website which by his count took less than a second, so he said the test was wrong. We then streamed Doctor Who to test the connection and he said look at fast resumes etc etc though this wasn't actually any different then it was before while he told me laggy it would be on ADSL. We then went through all the hardware he'd installed too and he gave me a run through of everything.

All in all, not really impressed by the communications of BT which you'd think they'd be better at though I must praise the man who rang me on the Tuesday who was very helpful. I'm not happy with the installation though, he left me on 5mbs download and refused to use the data extension kit which I'm pretty sure he is suppose to use if asked? Correct me if I'm wrong. I'm disappointed in the way he's left his mass of wires and I'm now going to have move it all myself using an RJ45 lead which he assures cannot be more than 2m long it won't work. Also annoyed he didn't wall mount the modem, though I guess this is a blessing in disguise as the wall won't be marked when I move it away. Unfortunately, I've got to wait 10 days for DLM to finish.

On balance though, I guess I'm happy with my new Infinity connection. It's very slowly rising in speed but I'm not running any more speed tests for now in case I hamper its progress. Bit peeved I dismantled my home theatre for nothing.

You are right ... there are so many things that went wrong. You could spend time getting it resolved by BT or bite the bullet and do it yourself - which will mean you do it when you want and don't have to take time off work.

Do not put the modem behind the television. there is some much electronic noise in that location there is a good chance you will pick up the noise on the incoming line and degrade the performance. I always suggest putting the modem at the earliest point possible which is next to the master, or close by and that reduces the pick up of any electronic noise within the house.

To often I have seen the modem moved back to the first possible location and the speed improved slightly (sometimes a lot) because the noise level has dropped.

The modem can be left flat or wall mounted - the latter gives a better airflow and on early modems reduced the chance of overheating. Choose somewhere that is unobtrusive and then get a decent RJ11 to RJ11 Cat5e (2 pair) cable of a suitable length to replace te provided one and use that to connect socket to modem.

Then, either install an RJ45 socket close to the modem location and cable it with Cat5e to the router location and use two patch leads. The simplest but not necessarily the best way is to get a long RJ45 to RJ45 Cat5e lead (available in colour to match your decor) and run that from modem to router.

The Data Extension Kit needs to be ticked as an option on the order, so down to the retail provider passing this to BT Wholesale and them passing this to Openreach and openreach passing to the engineer.

Was the engineer a contractor by any chance?

On the bundle of wires, if done at the master socket it is just fit the new interstitial face plate, one wire to the Openreach modem and one wire to the HomeHub3 and then power for both.

On speeds, what was your estimate, sounds like you may be 0.6 mile (1km) or more from the cabinet, and your cabinet may be almost outside the exchange, and if that is the case then ADSL2+ might give similar performance over the same line length.

Well I had specifically asked for the data extension kit. I'm not sure whether it was a contractor or not, his van was unmarked though he was wearing Openreach branded clothing. In regards to the speed, we've hit 69.6mbs so its where I would expect now though I'm still not pleased he tried to fob off 5mbs as superfast! It seems I'll have to do it myself, not worth trying to contact BT again and have to go through all that again. I'll take MHC's advice and use an RJ11 Cat5e cable. Just a bit frustrated I guess, he even left the wall mount template! Oh well. time for a bit of DIY

Well I must say infinity is awesome! I've been playing around with it a bit and noticed some interesting things. In the HH3 log, I'm getting this almost twice a minute.

PortMapping Add By UPNP/TR064 Error.

From what I can tell, it's not causing any issues but Netalyser says UPnP is off while the hub says it is on though it could just be a firewall issue. The error leaves a very long log at the very least.

Second thing, my down speed hit a nice stable 73mbs but upload is just over 9mbs. Should this get higher? I see people with considerably lower downs but higher ups than me. Could it be the training period? I'm only on day 2 after all. I would provide stats but the modem is ECI and I cant find any on the Hub.

not sure if contracter makes any difference andrew.

The impression I get with BT from top to bottom is they simply have low quality control and engineers seem to lack knowledge in the broadband field.

As far as his engneer was concerned I suspect his line tested ok on the tools they use, sync speed was ok, so as far as he was concerned job done and he move on which appeared to actually happened.

Then the huge reliance for DLM to sort any instability out which may or may not do that, depending on the nature of the problem on any given line.

It was a little bit like that yes, he did mention quite a few times how he had other jobs to do in the area and how he hoped they'd be like this one ie: quick and simple. In regards to sync speed, I'm syncing at the full 80/20 although the engineer seemed to thing this was the speed I should be seeing on speed tests.

did he check CRC error rate? thats what could be key.

If its high then excessive errors affect throughput, if not you have some other issue not related to line or cabinet.