Vectoring; should I care? (ELI5)

I've been hearing a lot about vectoring on this site recently and apparently it will make speeds of 100mbps possible on the current FTTC rollout. I currently receive ~70mbps on my upto 80mbps BT Infinity line. Would vectoring make any significant difference to me? And if so are BT likely to want me to reset my 18 month contract to take advantage of it?

Yes you will more than likely see an increase, not sure about the contract but I would happily say it will take more than 18 months to be rolled out.

AFAIK, Vectoring isn't even in trial yet (although it's starting this Summer, I think?) so you're not likely to see it for a while.

There's been a lot of speculation about what equipment will need to be changed to enable Vectoring on the current Openreach FTTC kit - new frames/line cards are going to make it less likely/further away. From what I've read, there's a real potential for 120mbps with vectoring but it'd also allow them to offer higher speeds to more people, which may play in their favour in terms of marketing etc.

There should be appreciable gains for most people. When you mention ~70mbps, is that the actual throughput you're receiving? If that's the case, you're likely on the capped sync of 80000kbps with a max attainable already higher than that, which means you'll see a benefit from the higher speed profiles alone, should they ever look at higher speeds with vectoring.

Edited by mikehiow (Thu 25-Apr-13 01:08:55)

Yes, you probably should care. Even if you don't want to go any faster. Your neighbours want you to care too.

Why should you care? It might not be obvious now, but it probably will become obvious over time.

Back on ADSL, your biggest enemies were the distance from the exchange, and noise caused by line errors or interference.

Now you are on FTTC, and are getting 70Mbps, you've already shown that those 2 factors can be ignored. The replacement factor - that you're close to the cabinet - is less of a factor too. You're probably within 400 metres or so.

But your last remaining enemy, and now the biggest enemy, hasn't shown its face yet... it is the group of other subscribers that are being added to your cabinet over time.

As subscribers are added, the signals to and from their modems are picked up by your telephone line, and appear as noise to your modem. This is called crosstalk - and the more subscribers there are, the more crosstalk you will see. Some subscribers will have little effect on you, while some will have a dramatic effect. Your line is having the reverse effect too.

The added noise from crosstalk means that either you will lose some of your speed, or you will suffer from errors and packet loss. DLM will turn on interleaving & FEC to correct those errors, so you will see increased latency and a reduction in speed.

The effects are random, but mean that any line could lose 40-50% of its theoretical top speed. That might not mean much to people 100 metres from the line (where most people will still get near 80Mbps), but at 1km range, the drop can take people down to 25Mbps.

Vectoring is a smart process to remove the crosstalk, so your modem gets a cleaner signal. There will still be noise from other sources, but the signal should be better. A better signal means fewer errors

Where do things go from here?

Well, with a better signal, you can do two things: a) Run at a higher speed, or b) Run at a lower transmit power.

So, if BT chose to, they could probably add packages at 100Mbps, or possibly even 120Mbps, and let you run at higher speeds. Trials in other countries show that 100Mbps is a plausible speed for properties within 300 metres, and possible within 500 metres, depending on the state of the copper wires. BT haven't run public trials yet, so we don't know how things will fare here.

BT could also choose to not introduce higher top speeds, but to allow modems to run at lower power, at least for closer subscribers. At lower power, it is possible that these subscribers would have even less impact on the more remote customers, especially if vectoring is less than perfect at removing crosstalk. The more remote subscribers would get a better signal, and get a speed boost up to closer to theoretical limit for their line.

For customers between 800 metres and 1km from the cabinet, vectoring could improve their speed from 25Mbps up to 40-50Mbps.

That's important to BT because somewhere in the region of 80% and 90% of the country are within 1km of their cabinets (if they have cabinets).

Finally, the technical problem to all this... Vectoring only works if it can work on all the lines from the cabinet in one go. For BT to get any advantage from this at all, even for a single customer, every subscriber on the cabinet must be vectored.

So, to answer your questions:

- No, it won't make much of a difference to the best performance you are seeing now
- Yes, it could make a difference to you when you cabinet is running full, and your top speeds have fallen away
- It will certainly make a difference to your neighbours living 500 metres further away.
- BT aren't likely to reset the 18 month contract just to put you on vectoring.
- But if BT introduce higher speed packages (say 100Mbps) and you want to be on them, I suspect a move is likely to trigger a new contract.

But... it hasn't even gone to a live trial yet, and I guess that BT will want to try a lot of things out to balance between higher package speeds and lower power; between speed improvements for closer lines and improved range.

The only answer is to keep watching.

When you say that every subscriber has to moved to vectoring on a cabinet for it to work, will they all need a new modem to support vectoring or does the magic take place cab side?

according to ispreview BT see it as a speed enabler not speed booster.

Meaning they are not going to increase headline speeds with vectoring but instead use it to allow more lines to hit the full 80/20. Or at least get closer to it. This is a good thing in my view.

Also a ofcom document I read suggests 2013 for start of vectoring rollout. But 2017 as a end year.

Edited by Chrysalis (Thu 25-Apr-13 14:30:15)

I think it'd be disappointing if BT don't at least boost the speeds slightly.

I'd be surprised if they weren't keen on at least hitting or exceeding 100mbps to match or better Virgin's headline offering.

In reply to a post by Crusiux:

When you say that every subscriber has to moved to vectoring on a cabinet for it to work, will they all need a new modem to support vectoring or does the magic take place cab side?

I assume the OR modems already support vectoring, or would with a firmware update.

The specification for non-OR modems and modem/routers is quite clear.

The modem shall support 17MHz Vectoring as defined in G.993.5[8]. This requires the modem to be �vector ready�.

Source: SIN 498v4p3.

Edited by RobertoS (Thu 25-Apr-13 14:27:02)

except they will already beat VMs headline speed with FTTPoD.

In reply to a post by Crusiux:

When you say that every subscriber has to moved to vectoring on a cabinet for it to work, will they all need a new modem to support vectoring or does the magic take place cab side?

The vast majority of the magic happens in the cab for both upstream and downstream.

The user modems are needed to measure the analogue error seen on the line, and report back during initialisation. That helps the cabinet decide how to set up vectoring. This will need at least a firmware update to be considered "vectoring friendly".

It is believed that many modems of today's vintage can cope with this, but I haven't seen that statement expanded into proper details.

Even if they can't, I understand that the cab can cope with less precise (and slower) SNR details that are already seen today. I haven't seen what the real consequences of this are. Details of trials are almost impossible to come by except for those published by the equipment manufacturers, and they (of course) only want to show the positive spin.

It'll be interesting to see what they mean by "speed enabling" rather than "speed boosting", both in a strategic sense and a technical sense.

I suspect they're caught between
- Not wanting to "do an ADSL 2+" by marketing a headline speed that no-one can get
- Wanting to outdo Virgin on headline speed anyway
- Wanting to increase the range of mid-level decent speeds, so it costs less to get the network deployed.
- Wanting to get vectoring deployed before the take-up gets too high, so it doesn't annoy too many current subscribers who see speed drops in the interim
- Wanting to hold off the need for FTTP deployment as long as possible. That is, to hold off the BT-funded FTTP but allow the user-funded FTTPoD to run free.

If it turns out to be plausible to increase range of those distant by refusing to increase the headline speed of those closer, then I too hope they choose it.

another possibility is that if ECI cabs are skipped, its probably better not raise headline speeds because then people may ask why only some FTTC areas have higher speeds.(at probable same price).

Edited by Chrysalis (Thu 25-Apr-13 15:50:52)

And yet...

BT's hopes, as of last year, included vectoring being a technology that brought 100Mbps+ to a significantly greater proportion of the population.

Take a look at page 8 of this fibre product surgery, from Jan 2012. I'm sure I've seen the same graph in financial slides too.

Most of that blue chunk was destined to come from vectored FTTC, not from FTTP.

The text also mentions the potential of 50% of properties having 100Mbps+ due to vectoring

I wonder if they still have the same hopes.

that url doesnt work.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

that url doesnt work.

Works for me

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

that url doesnt work.

Works for me

and me ...

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

that url doesnt work.

It's to a pdf. Could that be an issue for you?

Still working here.

Google "bt wholesale fibre surgery slides" and look for the 26th January. You can see both PDF and PPT formats.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

Most of that blue chunk was destined to come from vectored FTTC, not from FTTP.

The text also mentions the potential of 50% of properties having 100Mbps+ due to vectoring

I wonder if they still have the same hopes.

A question that is made more interesting by BT having decided to ignore their previous FTTP targets, and revert back to installing FTTC instead.

Presumably so they can spend money competing against Sky TV.

This is interesting

Impact on backhaul networks is still real but starting to stabilise at ~200Kbit/s per EU

Wonder how long that will last, after they introduce IPTV?

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

Wonder how long that will last, after they introduce IPTV?

won't that be multicast, so little impact on backhaul

edit sp

Edited by ggremlin (Thu 25-Apr-13 20:14:39)

I don't know about "little impact", but multicast is certainly a requirement.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

that url doesnt work.

It's to a pdf. Could that be an issue for you?

shouldnt be the BT site simply says document does not exist. I will try again.

Actually its noscript thinking its a xss attack, I didnt notice that error the first time round. So is browser side issue.

Edited by Chrysalis (Thu 25-Apr-13 21:41:57)

So going by what you are saying FTTC as it stands will not be able to cope if too many people uses it?

so pay more to go faster, then get a load of people on it and go back to ADSL speeds.

i think I made the right choice, at least the speed i get is constant, most of the time.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

So going by what you are saying FTTC as it stands will not be able to cope if too many people uses it?

I think not!

While cross-talk may be a growing issue and may be a limiting factor for some lines it will in no way "slow down to ADSL speeds" and FTTC is not "unable to cope".

Vectoring seems capable of delivering speeds of 100Mb/s or so over distances that have never been promised before.

crosstalk is nasty but I dont think you will be back to adsl speeds

I am eg. still 11x higher than my old adsl sync speed (the highest adsl sync speed, it was often lower). and the upstream is over 20x higher than the typical upload speed I had on BTw based adsl.

To be honest what I thought was a drop in speed from crosstalk was in fact was a really nasty problem with the local power supply which is still not resolved.

In 18 months since the cab went live I have seen a loss of max attainable from 86 meg/sec to 82 and OR seem to be very busy over the months hooking people up to the FTTC cab,

Not exactly the end of the world and even the local power supply issue dropped my speed down to 64 meg/sec so in fact VDSL2 can be quite resiliant to problems.

Edited by deleted (Fri 26-Apr-13 20:51:44)

What the others say is about the right emphasis. The impact from crosstalk is a known part of using VDSL2, and is one reason that most early-adopters get speeds *way* above the estimates from BT It looks like those estimates take into account the worst cases of crosstalk.

BT estimates my line to be 55Mbps. When first connected on an 80/20 package, my available speed was around 85Mbps so synced at 80. In the 15 months it has been running, the available speed has slowly dropped to 77, but I'm still sync'ed at 80.

So, VDSL2 will cope as expected, and won't slow down to ADSL2 speeds (unless, of course, you are too far away from the cabinet - a couple of km or more).

Vectoring is, of course, the expected solution. Implementing that should make more people be able to get better speeds - especially in the 300m - 1km range.

By avoiding FTTC you might well save yourself the gradual drop in speed from crosstalk. But you also saved yourself from the basic increase in speed, the extra increase when profile 17a came on stream, definitely lost out on the early-adopter extra-speed-gain.

Unless you're a really borderline case, it isn't even worthy of consideration.

your case compared to mine just shows the variability really.

if lucky crosstalk will have a minimal affect. If unlucky it will have a significant affect, but I would think it to be extremely unlucky and rare for crosstalk to bring a line down to adsl sort of speeds (unless the line already was very poor previously).

so in 18 months you lost 5%
in 4 weeks I lost 40%.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

What the others say is about the right emphasis. The impact from crosstalk is a known part of using VDSL2, and is one reason that most early-adopters get speeds *way* above the estimates from BT It looks like those estimates take into account the worst cases of crosstalk.

BT estimates my line to be 55Mbps. When first connected on an 80/20 package, my available speed was around 85Mbps so synced at 80. In the 15 months it has been running, the available speed has slowly dropped to 77, but I'm still sync'ed at 80.

Before I cancelled my phone line BT estimated I would get around 45Mbps, but that was before fibre was available here, when it came I did another check, but on house number and post code as i have got rid of my phone line at that time, the estimate was more or less the same. I done a check with my next door neighbours phone number and again more or less the same.

As of yet I have not seen a FTTc connection that runs at the speed it is suppose to. Granted they are still faster than my 10Mbps which I get from my ISp, which is faster than what I used to get with ADSL.

So, VDSL2 will cope as expected, and won't slow down to ADSL2 speeds (unless, of course, you are too far away from the cabinet - a couple of km or more).

Strange then that a mate of mine who is on plusnet and lives around the corner from the cabinet is gett less than half of what he is suppose to get.
Had Bt there and they said there was nothing wrong and his line was reporting 76Mbps. It may be plusnet mind you, with all their traffic management

i think mine is about 500meters from me, mind you depends on what cabinet it comes from.

Vectoring is, of course, the expected solution. Implementing that should make more people be able to get better speeds - especially in the 300m - 1km range.

Knowing Bt they will cut corners and muck it up.

By avoiding FTTC you might well save yourself the gradual drop in speed from crosstalk. But you also saved yourself from the basic increase in speed, the extra increase when profile 17a came on stream, definitely lost out on the early-adopter extra-speed-gain.

Unless you're a really borderline case, it isn't even worthy of consideration.

Not too bothered about really high speed to be honest, I got a reliable 10, seems to be more reliable than my ADSL was and seems to be more reliable than what I have heard about FTTC, no line management or profiling for a start.
I remember Bt profiling on their ADSl service, flipping awful thing it was, which is why I went to ADSL24 and the cable and wireless network.


A few people have asked me why I am not on FTTC, now that it is available, my reasons is that one I am still in a contract for another 14 months at least.
Two, As of yet there are no small ISps that offer FTTC for a decent price with a decent data usage and to be honest, I doubt they ever will be able to.

Three, I would have to pay to have my phone line reconnected

Four, i would be once again at the mercy of bloated toad. (BT)

As of yet I have not seen a FTTc connection that runs at the speed it is suppose to.
Mine runs faster than the estimate, with a sync of around 70 (just dropped from 76 after some fiddling) on an estimate of 58.
My impression from various posts is that it is very common to get speeds significantly over estimate,
though of course there are many cases where they come in well below as well.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

As of yet I have not seen a FTTc connection that runs at the speed it is suppose to.

Depends on your definition of "seen", I suppose.

I've had two different FTTC lines in two separate parts of the country. Both worked at least 25% faster than the prediction. That's two you now know about, even if you haven't seen them in operation.

Strange then that a mate of mine who is on plusnet and lives around the corner from the cabinet is gett less than half of what he is suppose to get.
Had Bt there and they said there was nothing wrong and his line was reporting 76Mbps. It may be plusnet mind you, with all their traffic management

It depends on what tools he used to "see" his speed.

As you say, the ISP traffic management could be an issue, and could depend on package type. It could be backhaul. It could be use of WiFi, or the settings for the network within Windows (or whatever OS). It could be a limitation in a browser, and it could even be a plugin in a browser. I've seen all of those (except backhaul) cause issues for me, on one machine or another.

I've even had one PC suddenly decide to run its gigabit ethernet connection at 10Mbps, for no apparent reason.

At these speeds, there is so much more that can go wrong, not just the FTTC - which I agree, can go wrong too. And can be harder to get fixed.

i think mine is about 500meters from me, mind you depends on what cabinet it comes from.

That sounds right, for a 45Mbps prediction, or perhaps a little higher.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

As of yet I have not seen a FTTc connection that runs at the speed it is suppose to. Granted they are still faster than my 10Mbps which I get from my ISp, which is faster than what I used to get with ADSL.

Estimate 44.6meg - actual today 48meg. (very stable as shown by my Samknows reports).

Strange then that a mate of mine who is on plusnet and lives around the corner from the cabinet is gett less than half of what he is suppose to get. Had Bt there and they said there was nothing wrong and his line was reporting 76Mbps. It may be plusnet mind you, with all their traffic management

Its possible he's on the wrong product, and congestion can occur as on any other ISP either in the ISP network, or on their trunks/peering - or within the broadband network, either WBC or LLU. I assume by "Bt" you mean he had Openreach, not BT Retail.

Knowing Bt they will cut corners and muck it up.

Compared to Virgin Media here where my neighbours get a 60meg service that runs at 10meg in the evenings with insanely high latency, my BT Infinity 48meg download, 8meg upload and consistant latency has excelled itself since last Sept. Only thing I miss from my BE days is the static IP option, and if I was signing up now there are more ISPs with more choice.

Not too bothered about really high speed to be honest, I got a reliable 10

Whilst a lot of people I know would love 10meg (one gets only 512k, the rest about 4meg) - the concept of superfast is in a different league for what you can do, and what you'll be able to do in the future. I used to use around 40gb a month on my 14meg (16meg sync) connection. Now I use around 70gb a month, thanks to the speed I now stream HiDef from iTunes and Netflix.

As of yet there are no small ISps that offer FTTC for a decent price with a decent data usage and to be honest, I doubt they ever will be able to.

Yes, the economics of the BTWholesale network mean that you need a _lot_ of customers to amortise the usage over to get the sufficient economies of scale. But at that point you get the BT and Sky price of around £25/month for unlimited usage.

AAISP for example for my 70gb a month would cost me over £80 - AAISP seem to think that more than 20GB a month is 'business' and even businesses apparently use less. That's a very early 2000s viewpoint of an Internet Connection.

Four, i would be once again at the mercy of bloated toad. (BT)

I'm not their biggest fan, but the Openreach split seems to have worked for many people across the country who now have a good competitor to Virgin Media, who are in my view over selling a very poor product. Not something I can say about Openreach.

My next ISP won't be BT Retail, but will be someone with a sensible usage allowance (at least 100GB a month) and static IP. I don't need email or webspace, or free Yahoo/Flickr accounts - and I'd be happy to pay £30/month (after phone rental) - and I think only PlusNet have a product in that space. However I'm in contract until April next year, so everything could be very different by then.

I think you are right also, I think BT significantly under estimate so they have a cop out on bad performing lines, and of course peopl then are happy when they are above the estimate. Inevitably some lines will only be at estimate or even below it but vectoring will remove most of that variance at least in any given area, although different areas may still perform differently due to the make up of their local loop's. If vectoring is deployed properly and works as expected then everyone can expect performance close as to what they would get if they were the only one on the cabinet.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

Depends on your definition of "seen", I suppose.

Gone to peoples places and seen FTTC working, granted I have only seen three

I've had two different FTTC lines in two separate parts of the country. Both worked at least 25% faster than the prediction. That's two you now know about, even if you haven't seen them in operation.

Someone down the road says he is getting around 38, which is what he been told he would get, but not because he is further away from the cabinet, but because that is the product he is on.

It depends on what tools he used to "see" his speed.

Just standard speed tests, normally speedtest.net, but we have used this site tests as well

As you say, the ISP traffic management could be an issue, and could depend on package type. It could be backhaul. It could be use of WiFi, or the settings for the network within Windows (or whatever OS). It could be a limitation in a browser, and it could even be a plugin in a browser. I've seen all of those (except backhaul) cause issues for me, on one machine or another.
I've even had one PC suddenly decide to run its gigabit ethernet connection at 10Mbps, for no apparent reason.

He got 4 machines connected, a laptop via wireless, his sons laptop, a older machine via ethernet and his sons surface via wireless.

i even took my own router down, just in case it was a problem with that junk that plusnet forces people to pay for, put the laptop via ethernet, even went direct to the modem. Still the same.

Did a speed test with Bt own speed tester including using Bt own user name, which bypass the ISp and it still came back with naff readings, which is why I have doubts that it is the ISP.

At these speeds, there is so much more that can go wrong, not just the FTTC - which I agree, can go wrong too. And can be harder to get fixed.

It was bad enough when ADSL went wrong, i don't think I want that hassle any more.
I have had 2 un-notified outages since I been on the service I am now and both was solved within 20 mins. the only little problems that they seem to be having a lot of maintenance at the moment and we are getting a few notified outages, but they are normally early in the morning when I am still in bed.

That sounds right, for a 45Mbps prediction, or perhaps a little higher.

That of cause depends who you go with and if they go above 40. I would not pay for anything higher to be honest, not worth it just for another few megabits.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Estimate 44.6meg - actual today 48meg. (very stable as shown by my Samknows reports).

so what do you do with all that speed?

Its possible he's on the wrong product, and congestion can occur as on any other ISP either in the ISP network, or on their trunks/peering - or within the broadband network, either WBC or LLU. I assume by "Bt" you mean he had Openreach, not BT Retail.

They have only got two products, as far as I know, I doubt very much if congestion is the issue, well not when he first had it as the cabinet was new. Now maybe, but i doubt it.

Yes, Bt openreach.

Compared to Virgin Media here where my neighbours get a 60meg service that runs at 10meg in the evenings with insanely high latency, my BT Infinity 48meg download, 8meg upload and consistant latency has excelled itself since last Sept. Only thing I miss from my BE days is the static IP option, and if I was signing up now there are more ISPs with more choice.

I heard the VM can be a pain sometimes, I would liek the chance to try them, but it is not going to happen.

Whilst a lot of people I know would love 10meg (one gets only 512k, the rest about 4meg) -

I only get 10 because I pay for it, normal on this system is around 5, which is still faster than what I got on ADSL. I know people that would love to get 10 as well, thankfully one family I know will be able to soon as the system I use is being expanded where they are.

the concept of superfast is in a different league for what you can do, and what you'll be able to do in the future. I used to use around 40gb a month on my 14meg (16meg sync) connection. Now I use around 70gb a month, thanks to the speed I now stream HiDef from iTunes and Netflix.

Netflix Hd works on my 10Mbps connection, never use Itunes. i can when it is working also watch HD on Iplayer. I doubt it would work if I was downloading something at the same time, but since it is only me here, I can control what the network is doing.

Yes, the economics of the BTWholesale network mean that you need a _lot_ of customers to amortise the usage over to get the sufficient economies of scale. But at that point you get the BT and Sky price of around £25/month for unlimited usage.

AAISP for example for my 70gb a month would cost me over £80 - AAISP seem to think that more than 20GB a month is 'business' and even businesses apparently use less. That's a very early 2000s viewpoint of an Internet Connection.

And this is a major problem for me, I got fed up of the big ISps with their naff customer service, reading from scripts and dare you ask anything that will put them off.

I phoned up my provider a few months back when things was going a bit slow and a engineer phoned me back within a hour and told me that their supplier have sent them the wrong network switch, so it could not handle the amount of data that was required. He did start to explain what a switch was, until I told him I knew. So because I knew some stuff he did not treat me as if I was a imbecile, which I found the larger Isps did and yet they knew nothing apart from what they was reading.

it did take a bit longer to sort out which I would have liked, almost a week, but it only knocked 4Megabits off.

ADSL24, was also good with customer service, but not as good as All pay, but then that is only because Allpay is a local company.

BT, I tend to avoid, Talk Talk i would not use them if they was the last Isp on this earth, so the only larger one would be sky and i would not reallly want to use them either, but at least their customer service is a bit better than the other two.

I'm not their biggest fan, but the Openreach split seems to have worked for many people across the country who now have a good competitor to Virgin Media, who are in my view over selling a very poor product. Not something I can say about Openreach.

My next ISP won't be BT Retail, but will be someone with a sensible usage allowance (at least 100GB a month) and static IP. I don't need email or webspace, or free Yahoo/Flickr accounts - and I'd be happy to pay £30/month (after phone rental) - and I think only PlusNet have a product in that space. However I'm in contract until April next year, so everything could be very different by then.

This is one of the other problems i have with large Isps, they all offer other stuff and they badger you via email or phone calls to get these other services. Bt is the worse. A friend of mine have got Bt broadband and they got calls about BTvision, then about Bt phone as they still pay line rental to another supplier. Now they are getting badgered about FTTc and BT you view.

The same with someone I know that is on Talk Talk, but they mainly get emails telling them about You view and all the other exciting Talk Talk services.


I myself just want broadband, i don't even want a phone line to be honest, which is one of the reasons i went wireless. i don't need email, I don't watch Tv, so I don't need you view. i don't want their anti virus or talk Talk spying homesafe or what ever they call it.

i just want a decent connection with a decent speed to the internet.

My contract ends next year my broadband, I expect I will stay as I am, but you never know. I am not saying I will never go FTTC, but at the moment, I don't feel the need. who knows what will happen, Allpay may not make enough money with their service, which would be a shame as there are people out in the sticks that rely on their service for decent broadband. the problem is inside the city itself they are not going to get the people like myself as FTTc is available to most people.
I just like to be different and i like to support the smaller companies.

I haven't bothered to read all the content of your posts, but it sound like to me:

A) You're trying to justify to yourself your choice of package/ISP
B) You don't really know what you are doing.

Have you checked your friends Plusnet speed profile?

To do this login to the member center, go to connection settings, then high speed broadband. It will then show your friends current line speed - PN will not send data any quicker than this. It should be slightly lower than what his modems synced at. They can get set to the wrong value.

Have you unlocked his modem and checked the stats?

My estimate was 57Mbps, I currently get around 42Mbps, and never had 57Mbps even though I was the first on the cabinet. I'm disappointed with the connection speed, no, would I like a higher speed, of course I would, but I doubt it will make much difference.

My connection has been very reliable, even in the early days when a fault existed in the cabinet which kept causing resyncs it was still reliable in use.

I'm just hoping that vectoring will boost my line speed, as sooner or later the additional speed may be required.

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

A) You're trying to justify to yourself your choice of package/ISP

Why would I need to justify to myself my choice of package/ISP?

I choose the right service at the time and I still think it is the right service, sure I can't get 40Mbps, but at least it is reliable.
If things change in another 12 months is another thing. Price could be better I must admit. £18 for 5Mbps was a bargain, since I was paying more for around 3.5 on ADSL and then the line rental on top. Not sure if a extra tenner to get another 5 is mind you, well not now that Fibre is available.

But I don't need a phone line, so that is a advantage. I think my ISp may have to rethink it prices, but then they did not start up for people like myself, they started up for people who live in the sticks.

But as I said, I made the right choice at the time, fibre kept being put back, I wanted a more reliable system for Netfliks, because ADSl while it stayed connected, it could only just cope with SD netfliks.

If I had known that fibre was only a few weeks away when I had this system installed, I may have had a rethink, but i need unlimited data and none of the smaller Isps do unlimited data at a decent price.


The most ADSl24 does is 500Gb and that costs £65 a month, no doubt I could cope on 250GB, but that is £47, ok data is unlimited off peak, but not much cop to me.

Other small ISps are more or less the same, not their fault, it is just the system we have in this country with BT being a monopoly.

B) You don't really know what you are doing.

Have you checked your friends Plusnet speed profile?
To do this login to the member center, go to connection settings, then high speed broadband. It will then show your friends current line speed - PN will not send data any quicker than this. It should be slightly lower than what his modems synced at. They can get set to the wrong value.

I did not know you could check the speed profile that way. but then if the speed profile was lower then surly the BT engineer would have noticed as he said there was nothing wrong with the speed as it was as close to 80 as it could be, I think it was something like 76.
Also for the first week the speed was fine, second thing is it will peak to around 50 for a little while and then go back to around 25.

He paid extra to get the faster speed and also to get the extra data usage, of cause just after Plusnet changed their packages and it became unlimited, I told my mate he should ask to be put onto that, as it cost the same as what he is paying

Have you unlocked his modem and checked the stats?

I have done that on someone else, but I doubt my mate would allow me to do that on his.

I will pop over there tomorrow or maybe later on if he is not busy and have a look at the speed profile, but I doubt it will tell us anything we don't already know.

My estimate was 57Mbps, I currently get around 42Mbps, and never had 57Mbps even though I was the first on the cabinet. I'm disappointed with the connection speed, no, would I like a higher speed, of course I would, but I doubt it will make much difference.

My connection has been very reliable, even in the early days when a fault existed in the cabinet which kept causing resyncs it was still reliable in use.

I'm just hoping that vectoring will boost my line speed, as sooner or later the additional speed may be required.

His connection is reliable, just not as fast as it should be. It have made one hell of a difference to him, certainly with the higher uploading speed which is what he wanted. He can up load videos and audio in minutes instead of hours. His wife can watch stuff on Iplayer.

If we could get the download speed to where it should be, thing s would be even better, of cause the router that Plusnet supplies don't help. he is going to get one like mine a TPlink at some point, at least the wireless would be better for his laptop then.

The BT engineer will only see the BT side of things, he can not see what the Plusnet profile is set to. To find where the problem is you really need to check the PN profile, and if that's correct then use an unlocked HG612 modem to monitor the line 24/7, which is easy to do, and you could pick one up ebay fairly cheaply. Also you won't know if the PN is correct unless you know the BT profile, which can find out via the BT speedtest.

I pay less than £30 a month including line rental from PN with unlimited usage, PN were a pain at the time because they were very slow updating their packages, but when they did it was a fantastic package at a great price. My upload speed is around 10Mbps, which is great, but my cloud backup services never runs quicker than about 3Mbps. Also with downloads, even though I have about 40Mbps at my disposal, a lot of downloads don't run anywhere near that, and it's nothing to do with PN.

If you need help with monitoring the line or any of this, then start a new thread, as this is all rather off topic.

Don't forget that if high-speed uploading is being done, either deliberately or unrealised from someone's historic P2P downloads which are feeding external seeds, the downloads can grind almost to a halt, as the upstream is flooded and can't send the ACKs.

And if those are happening over the wireless link, that is clobbered as another effect even if the connection upload itself is coping.

Also his current product sounds like the speed-capped one - which I agree shouldn't affect BT speed tests but could affect normal running.

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

The BT engineer will only see the BT side of things, he can not see what the Plusnet profile is set to. To find where the problem is you really need to check the PN profile, and if that's correct then use an unlocked HG612 modem to monitor the line 24/7, which is easy to do, and you could pick one up ebay fairly cheaply. Also you won't know if the PN is correct unless you know the BT profile, which can find out via the BT speedtest.

I pay less than £30 a month including line rental from PN with unlimited usage, PN were a pain at the time because they were very slow updating their packages, but when they did it was a fantastic package at a great price. My upload speed is around 10Mbps, which is great, but my cloud backup services never runs quicker than about 3Mbps. Also with downloads, even though I have about 40Mbps at my disposal, a lot of downloads don't run anywhere near that, and it's nothing to do with PN.

If you need help with monitoring the line or any of this, then start a new thread, as this is all rather off topic.

BT engineer said the line was fine it was running at the speed which it should be. I was not there at the time. but my mate said he had some equipment and used that and the BT bloke said all was fine. The sync speed was as high as it was going to get, in the high 70's.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Don't forget that if high-speed uploading is being done, either deliberately or unrealised from someone's historic P2P downloads which are feeding external seeds, the downloads can grind almost to a halt, as the upstream is flooded and can't send the ACKs.

And if those are happening over the wireless link, that is clobbered as another effect even if the connection upload itself is coping.

Also his current product sounds like the speed-capped one - which I agree shouldn't affect BT speed tests but could affect normal running.

Nothing else was running when we done the checks, I even connected his laptop direct to the modem as it is the faster machine apart from the one in the basement which is never connected to the net. Still the same.

i agree with you, for some reason Plusnet is capping the speed, sometimes his uploads have been faster than his downloads.

Plusnet offer two fibre packages with phone, the cheaper one have lower upload speeds and download speeds.

since my mates uploads are fine and is up around 17-18Mbps, I take it that plusnet have stuck him on the higher package, but it is his downloads that is naff.
a few weeks back he was lucky to get 10Mbps, I get more than that.

It have now gone up to around between 25 and 40 if he is lucky. He have given up now, because it is working faster than what he had with ADSL, but I must admit, I would not.

Maybe plusnet don't like it because he did not have their phone service.


I don't know, we have all this extra speed and there is so much more to go wrong, when I went from 1Mb to what ever my line would give me, ADSL max or something like that? My poor little router would not hold the sync, i know it was cheap, but it did well on a fixed speed. it also worked well and still do work well at a mates place who is a bit closer to the exchange then me.

Then when BT changed to ADSL2+, that caused problems. Iam coming to the conclusion that BT have no idea what they are doing and just muddle through, how they keep the network going I have no idea.

I hope that if they do use this vectoring, they don't muck up peoples broadband like they did when they changed from ADSL to ADSL2+

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

Nothing else was running when we done the checks, I even connected his laptop direct to the modem as it is the faster machine apart from the one in the basement which is never connected to the net. Still the same.

Speedtests only tell you that something is wrong somewhere, but not where - it could range from a browser plugin, the browser itself, the PC operating system (like windows), the network card, cable to the router, router, modem, sync speed, BT IP profile, Plusnet IP profile, Plusnet traffic management, Plusnet's edge routers, the IP exchange, the speedtester's ISP, the speedtester hardware. And many more things.

The short story is that you don't know who to blame, except, if you believe the BT engineer, it isn't the sync speed.

What is the downstream IP profile value that BT hold? Does Plusnet's value match?

If he's on the cheaper product, it would show there, rather than in the traffic management side of things. The traffic management is set to line speed for most things on either package, so we need to know what the line speed is.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

Speedtests only tell you that something is wrong somewhere, but not where - it could range from a browser plugin, the browser itself, the PC operating system (like windows), the network card, cable to the router, router, modem, sync speed, BT IP profile, Plusnet IP profile, Plusnet traffic management, Plusnet's edge routers, the IP exchange, the speedtester's ISP, the speedtester hardware. And many more things.

The short story is that you don't know who to blame, except, if you believe the BT engineer, it isn't the sync speed.

I know it is not my mates fault, as i have said before, we changed computers over, we went direct from the modem to different machines, i tried my laptop, which have Linux on, not windows, no difference.

I don't just try one speed test, I try different ones ffrom different sites.

Well, you saying that the Bt engineer may have lied, really give me faith in Bt, which I have very little as it is.


What is the downstream IP profile value that BT hold? Does Plusnet's value match?

I have no idea at the moment, i have not been there for a couple of weeks.

If he's on the cheaper product, it would show there, rather than in the traffic management side of things. The traffic management is set to line speed for most things on either package, so we need to know what the line speed is.

I am pretty sure people don't read stuff on here.

HE IS NOT ON THE CHEAPER PACKAGE. He is one what at the time was their top broadband package, but it have now been replaced with unlimited, while his is not unlimited.
The only thing he did not go for was the phone package as his phone is with Bt and he did not want to move it, due to some offers he have got, which he don't use that is another story.


anyway, next weekend I will pop up there and see if things are any better, but I doubt it, i don't have time this weekend and next week I am working everyday.


The thing is, he is not the only person I know of who is having problems with FTTC, which makes me think that I am better away from it to be honest and made the right choice. I admit, I did start to wonder if I did or not, but i am pretty certain I have.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I don't just try one speed test, I try different ones ffrom different sites.

Good to have tried the variety of ways to connect & test. But once you have had one or two bad results, you need to organise the tests to isolate the bad point. Just blindly runnign speed tests alone doesn't prove anything extra.

Well, you saying that the Bt engineer may have lied, really give me faith in Bt, which I have very little as it is.

Actually, I was implying that the speed could have changed since the engineer was present, rather than him lying.

If your mate is suffering severe line problems, and speeds get limited artificially, or because DLM has intervened, then this could indeed be the problem now, even if it wasn't present at the time the engineer was there.

Likewise the engineer could be right, but the problem is more that you have a lack of belief in him - and that does seem to be a bit of the problem.

What is the downstream IP profile value that BT hold? Does Plusnet's value match?

I have no idea at the moment, i have not been there for a couple of weeks.

How about the past values then? These are the key numbers that tell us whether the line has a problem, or if there is an artificial limit being placed.

If he's on the cheaper product, it would show there, ...

I am pretty sure people don't read stuff on here.

HE IS NOT ON THE CHEAPER PACKAGE.

I'm pretty sure I've read stuff on here properly. The entire point of my post was to show that your problem is NOT being on the cheaper product - because the sync speed would be limited to 40, and the engineer couldn't then report 70+.

I was trying to re-iterate that the line speed is the important thing to know, and (as they are consequential values) the IP profile values held by both BT and Plusnet.

Those are the things to discover as the first step after a duff speedtest. That is, unless he's using an unlocked modem you can interrogate directly.