aluminium cable?

My Broadband Ping

Hi,

I have recently started having problems with my bb connection. After many many call to SKY and openreach visits the fault has been identified as a length of aluminium cable which is dropping cabinet speed from 40 to ~22. The sky tech 2 guy gave me this website address so I started running the monitor. Results are hopefully attached.

My questions:-

1. Does this look like it is being caused by al cable?
2. Openreach are refusing to fix this. Are they obliged too?


Any help advice to a newbie would be very welcome, cheers

Without knowing when you were using the connection its difficult to interpret, e.g. if packet loss was just a case of you having a very busy connection because you were downloading/uploading a lot then its not a problem.

How far are you away from the cabinet and what are the stats reported by the Sky Hub.

The fact the line was pretty clean between 4am and 10am suggests nothing is wrong latency wise.

Broadband Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 25069 kbps 3558 kbps
Line Attenuation 25.2 dB 0.0 dB
Noise Margin 6.0 dB 6.6 dB


I am 300m from cabinet.

My Broadband Ping

I am web browsing atm. Not sure what that packet loss spike is?

Edited by deleted (Tue 05-May-15 18:14:00)

Yellow is a delayed packet, not lost packet which is red.

25dB attenuation would normally give around 34 to 39 Mbps and be in line with a length of 800m to 1km. If really 300m from the cabinet one would expect it to be lower, and thus may be reflecting the presence of aluminium and there is no obligation on openreach to remove it.

Have you confirmed without a doubt that the cabinet you think you are connected to is the correct one.

yeah, last open reach guy was very good. He checked speed at cabinet and all the way down to where it dropped. I am on 38mb contract and he expected that to be available.

300m is direct line on google maps. It could be a little longer depending where they run the cable.

Sky say Openreach will only replace if they get lots of customer complaints but I am guessing most folk will not even know what speed they should get.

You really need to try and follow the cable route to ascertain the length.

tbh the cable length is definitely less than 400m. The Openreach guy checked each junction and has 40meg all the way to where (he believes) it is Al length where it drops from 40 to 22. The section at 22 is less than 100m to my house

Sky predict over 60meg (seems high) but my contract is only up to 38. I fail their speed test (min 27meg) which is what kicked all this off.

It seems that you are expected to suck it down and put up with [censored] OR policy from what I can gather, although there is case on sky forum where an 80m section got replaced with Cu

I would be surprised if aluminium cables caused time specific problems. Aluminium cable has definite resistance and attenuation properties that remain constant.

The aluminium cable is not the cause of the bursts of additional latency that is down to other network issues/problems/congestion. The aluminium will cause a fixed attenuation increase and thus a lower speed.

At 400m with good copper you should have seen 60Mbps - however as aluminium has a higher attenuation across the spectrum getting worse at higher frequencies it is causing the drop in sync speed.

You can blame Openreach for not replacing it, however, voice works and you do get a good service so why should they replace it? Who would pay for it? You? Sky? Remember Openreach can only spend the money they get for providing the services and as their customers such as Sky and Talk-Talk keep demanding cheaper prices there is less money to spend on doing "nice to have" changes ... it has to be spent on repairs and new infrastructure. Maybe if Sky paid £1/month/line extra then OR could make the changes.

In reply to a post by Klytus:

My Broadband Ping

Hi,

I have recently started having problems with my bb connection. After many many call to SKY and openreach visits the fault has been identified as a length of aluminium cable which is dropping cabinet speed from 40 to ~22. The sky tech 2 guy gave me this website address so I started running the monitor. Results are hopefully attached.

My questions:-

1. Does this look like it is being caused by al cable?
2. Openreach are refusing to fix this. Are they obliged too?


Any help advice to a newbie would be very welcome, cheers

Your only choices are to put up with it, or move to an area where there is FTTP or Virgin Media available.

You have to remember we're in the UK, where there's very old copper/aluminium installed in the 1960's by the post office, which is still used for our 'high speed' broadband. We don't know the exact % of aluminium or 1960's cable that's still in the network, though it seems to be quite high.

Thankfully Virgin Media was bought out by Liberty Global (an American Company), so they now have the capital to greatly expand their network.

Over the next few years, as bandwidth demands grow and grow, more people will realize how much more advanced/modern the coax system utilized by Virgin Media is, and more will jump ship to it, causing more investment into the cable network. Hopefully they can get the coverage up to 80 or 90% over the next decade.

Edited by dave2150 (Wed 06-May-15 17:43:00)