Slow FTTC upload speed

Hi,

Had fttc installed a week ago. When Open Reach engineer came to the house (having done the rewiring at the cabinet), he first plugged in his meter (straight into my existing ADSL filtered faceplate) and was showing 30Mb/s down and 6Mbps up. This seemed good, slightly higher than the estimate of 20 down and 5 up, but in line with some of the graphs I had seen for a connection of around 1km.

He then changed the back box and put the new faceplate on and retested with his meter, this time it was 28 down and only 3 up. He then installed the open reach modem and I connected up the Plusnet fibre router and tested - seemed my profile was still stuck at 3Mbps from ADSL, so had to call plusnet who then raised the download speed to my initial estimate of 20Mb/s. Unfortunately late that evening the profile seemed to drop to 3Mb/s, but a call to plusnet and they put it up to 30Mb down as they could see this is what I was synced at. Since then, It seems to have been stable around those down/up speeds.

My question is why am I getting a much lower upload speed than estimated, and why was it faster with the old ADSL filtered faceplate?

Obviously I'm happy that the download speed is better than the estimate, but I am disappointed with the upload speed.

As an aside, I wasn't happy with not being able to see the line stats fromm the open reach modem (the newer ECI type) and the plusnet router was poor to say the least, so I have purchased a new BT home hub 5 from ebay. This hasn't improved (or made worse) the upload speed, but at least I can now see some stats (pasted below).

Any thoughts/suggestions gratefully received.

(p.s. I did ask to leave my internal wiring connected - wondered if it was worth removing this and testing?).

Thanks,
Tim.

1. Product name: BT Home Hub
2. Serial number: *******************
3. Firmware version: Software version 4.7.5.1.83.8.173.1.4 (Type A) Last updated Unknown
4. Board version: BT Hub 5A
5. VDSL uptime: 0 days, 06:38:50
6. Data rate: 2945 / 28369
7. Maximum data rate: 3017 / 32753
8. Noise margin: 6.3 / 6.2
9. Line attenuation: 0.0 / 28.2
10. Signal attenuation: 0.0 / 25.0
11. Data sent/received: 41.8 MB / 184.4 MB

Edited by timh (Thu 05-Dec-13 12:58:41)

Not sure how close the meters agree with the modems themselves, as not many reports on the meter readings.

If you had a faceplate, then should have been no need to change the back box, but just uninstall your faceplate, add the interstitial and connect the normal half sized master faceplate and make sure extensions are connected to that.

If any ADSL/VDSL kit was connected when doing the changes it may be the DLM saw errors and slowed you down, all the openreach profiles tend to favour error free stability over the fastest speeds.

In reply to a post by timh:

(p.s. I did ask to leave my internal wiring connected - wondered if it was worth removing this and testing?)

Yes, definitely. How is this internal wiring connected?

I think it is daisy chained from socket to socket - but will check later. I asked it to remain connected, as our house alarm has a phone dialer

My description of 'back box' is probably wrong, the box into the wall remained but he changed the front parts. This is what it was 'converted' to http://phil.lavin.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/f...

In reply to a post by timh:

I think it is daisy chained from socket to socket - but will check later. I asked it to remain connected, as our house alarm has a phone dialer

The question really is, how is it connected at the master socket?

Anything phone like, e.g. alarm sky box needs to be wired to the faceplate (smallest part in http://www.coolwebhome.co.uk/faceplate/images/test-s...

http://www.coolwebhome.co.uk/faceplate/ has arrows added showing the key bits.

Ok, I've disconnected the bottom part of the front faceplate - to which my internal wiring is connected (as per those images), and now just have the home hub plugged into the rj11 socket. Upon restarting the home hub I'm still at the same connection speeds. Interestingly I spoke to my adjacent neighbour today and asked what speeds he was getting on fibre, his down is similar 25-30Mbps, but his upload is much better than mine at 5-6Mbps (i.e. slightly more than the estimate).

Is it worth me re-instating the adsl filtered faceplate I had previously and seeing what that connects at - this is what the Open Reach engineer did initially and showed the upload sync of 6Mbps?

Do you have an old (working) dangly filter? If so, you can remove the interstitial filtered faceplate and use that into the test socket behind it. That would probably be a lot easier and safer than messing with the extension wires.

Don't mess too much often - the Openreach DLM can get upset. It does usually recover but can take a while.

Yes, I can probably find an old dongle style filter, but I think I can get my old adsl faceplate reconnected - and at least this then matches the first test the engineer did where the upload speed was good. I'll probably leave this until tomorrow, as it has been disconnected a couple of times today (by itself at about 5am this morning, and then recently by me).

Out of interest, what are the differences between the ADSL and VDSL filters - is it just that higher frequencies are allowed to pass for the higher connection speed? If so, with my much lower connection speeds (due to 1km distance to cab), I guess this may not be much of an issue anyhow.