Speed after router switched off.

A few weeks back I had FTTC, from the start it gave around 5.7MB on the speed test, last week was away and had switched all sockets off including the one for my Hauwei router, been back and powered up just over a day and it's giving 3.8MB on the speed test although it shows as linked at 5595kb, will I need to wait for it to rise with time or has something else causing this?

5595 Kilo bits per second ie very slow?

Which provider? Might be worth finding out what ip profile they are using for the line

It's throu TalkTalk, prior to having FTTC experienced a couple of weeks of drop outs, as soon as FTTC went live all was fine.
Tried the BT Wholesale Broadband Performance Test but 'further diagnostics' won't work, says try later, so can't check ip profile at moment.
Guess I'll have to see what happens over next couple of days before going throu the pain of TalkTalk customer service.

The second part of the BTW Performance Test doesn't work on non-BT Wholesale broadband, which is why you can't get the further diagnostics.

Specifically, all the second part does is pick up the IP Profile and combine it with the part 1 test results so they can give the fancy report.

IP Profile is purely a BT Wholesale thing. Sky/TalkTalk and Vodafone don't have it.

I did wonder if that was the case.
Any idea how long it normally takes to get back up to speed? 5.7 might not be great, but it's better than 3.8.

Upstream line rate (kbit/s):
841
Downstream line rate (kbit/s):
5033
Upstream noise safety coefficient (dB):
6.3
Downstream noise safety coefficient (dB):
7.9
Upstream interleave depth:
24
Downstream interleave depth:
431
Line standard:
VDSL2
Upstream line attenuation (dB):
16
Downstream line attenuation (dB):
33
Upstream output power (dBm):
0.4
Downstream output power (dBm):
10.2
Channel type:
Interleaved

The downstream noise margin, at 7.9dB is on the high side, which will knock the speed down a bit as, with a more normal 6dB, there's about 2dB in hand. It might be because the line is noisy and a bit prone to drop-outs.

Unfortunately the downstream attenuation is high, so this is never going to be stellar. However, just to make sure the potential performance is baselined properly, what's the domestic wiring setup like? Do you have any extensions, and if so, are they filtered at the master socket. VDSL is even more sensitive to interference than ADSL. If there are extensions, and it hasn't been done before, it's always worth checking baseline performance by using the test socket under the faceplate, assuming you have a modern master.

Also, do you know how far you are from the cabinet? From the downstream attenuation I suspect it's somewhere in the 1.3-1.5km region.

One thing I can't square with your stats is the upstream attenuation (which is relatively low by my standards) yet the speed rate is dreadful. I can only assume this is a quirk of the way upstream frequency bands are allocated and that the higher frequency set is being avoided.

The master socket is a mk3, fitted when going FTTC, no extensions etc, just the modem on it's original lead and a phone.
Yes we are on a long bit of copper from the fibre cabinet, and 5.8MB originally getting was about as expected even thou the line checkers indicated that higher speeds where possible.
Our upload speed has always been higher than might be expected considering the download speed.
Prior to about 4 weeks before FTTC went live we had a rock solid(but slow) ADSL connection, we then suffered many drop outs, but since FTTC it has not to my knowledge had any drop outs apart from being switched off whilst on holiday.

By saturday I got fed up and phoned TalkTalk help line, after about a hour and them testing the line it was concluded that my line had a fault, so a visit from 'bright sparks' engineer was booked for today.
Came home from work 3 hours early for visit, engineer looked at set up in the house, all was ok with that (as I already knew and had told them), he ran a line check and got the same results as I did (poor). He rang talktalk up told them there was a fault on the line and to get openreach in to check line.
He was a nice enough chap but what a frigging waste of time sending him out for this.

Possibly a waste in your case, but overall probably worth doing.

In many cases the problem is on the customer's premises. A TalkTalk engineer, that this sounds like, can do this at no direct cost to them or you. Yes they have to have the person on their payroll, but I'm sure they wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't cost-effective.

If an Openreach engineer comes out in the first place and the problem is not external, the ISP will be charged over £100. TalkTalk cannot absorb that sort of thing at their prices, and customer's don't expect to be hit with such a bill when it is passed on.

Only Openreach can touch the external wiring of course.

Got a series of texts today about an engineer checking the line and fixing it, got home to find no improvement.

Line Quality

Upstream line rate (kbit/s):
965
Downstream line rate (kbit/s):
4099
Upstream noise safety coefficient (dB):
6
Downstream noise safety coefficient (dB):
7.3
Upstream interleave depth:
1
Downstream interleave depth:
351
Line standard:
VDSL2
Upstream line attenuation (dB):
16
Downstream line attenuation (dB):
32.9
Upstream output power (dBm):
0.4
Downstream output power (dBm):
9.8
Channel type:
Interleaved
DSL up-time:

Once again a message from TalkTalk that my problem was fixed and yet again it gets worse.

Line Quality

Upstream line rate (kbit/s):
937
Downstream line rate (kbit/s):
3505
Upstream noise safety coefficient (dB):
6.8
Downstream noise safety coefficient (dB):
7.9
Upstream interleave depth:
1
Downstream interleave depth:
301
Line standard:
VDSL2
Upstream line attenuation (dB):
16
Downstream line attenuation (dB):
32.7
Upstream output power (dBm):
0.4
Downstream output power (dBm):
9.6
Channel type:
Interleaved
DSL up-time:
0 days 13 hours 10 minutes 16 second

How are you getting help from talk talk? If it's the phone forget it, use the community forums, they are slow to respond but you will get much better knowledgeable help.

After several phone calls they are finally getting around to booking in a openreach engineer, although they have promised this before. The community forums produced no help above that which i'd already tried.

Well further developments, I have been blaming TalkTalk for not booking in an openreach engineer, it seems they have requested one on several occasions, but Openreach are saying there is no fault with the line, this is despite it running at half speed from their own checker.
I'm not impressed.


Line Quality

Upstream line rate (kbit/s):
798
Downstream line rate (kbit/s):
3731
Upstream noise safety coefficient (dB):
6.3
Downstream noise safety coefficient (dB):
6
Upstream interleave depth:
20
Downstream interleave depth:
319
Line standard:
VDSL2
Upstream line attenuation (dB):
16
Downstream line attenuation (dB):
32.7
Upstream output power (dBm):
0.4
Downstream output power (dBm):
9.7
Channel type:
Interleaved
DSL up-time:
0 days 13 hours 28 minutes 19 seconds

As per previous discussions with TalkTalk I was asked to provide 3 dates for OR to book an engineer in, never got a response, as I was going away for a long weekend I couldn't be bothered with chasing them.
Came back last night switched on router and it was synching at about 3200.
Checked again this morning and it's almost back up to speed (however bad)

Line Quality

Upstream line rate (kbit/s):
795
Downstream line rate (kbit/s):
5779
Upstream noise safety coefficient (dB):
8
Downstream noise safety coefficient (dB):
7.3
Upstream interleave depth:
17
Downstream interleave depth:
989
Line standard:
VDSL2
Upstream line attenuation (dB):
16
Downstream line attenuation (dB):
33
Upstream output power (dBm):
0.4
Downstream output power (dBm):
10.2
Channel type:
Interleaved
DSL up-time:

I know that TalkTalk consider this to be ok on my line despite the 'offer' being 7 to 11 MB, so no good me chasing them for now, but it occurs to me that we have had some nice and dry weather for over a week now, I'll have to keep a check when it starts getting wet weather again as I think back to when the two OR engineers replaced the copper in our road and had to bail out the chamber near my pole when connecting up.

O what fun, here I am sat in kitchen logged on to neighbours via fon.
I had a OR engineer visit, after some messing about he got 9.2Mb on his handheld device, trouble then became my hg633 refused to sync to line, he left saying I had a duff router. TalkTalk have sent a new one, and guess what, that won't sync in either.
Am I just unlucky to get two duff or could something else be amiss?

The TT router should just connect without the hg633, have you tried without the modem? It's an all in one device

Hopefully that'll get you online and you can do a speedtest.

Any virginmedia where you are?

There appears to be a lot of problems with the HG 633.

Have a browse through the TT forums.

Hg633 will not sync on it's own, did try to link it with a BT consumer modem (not sure what model) but or and myself didn't realy know how and failed, only after he left I thought it might be possible to plug ethernet cable from laptop straight into bt modem to test.

Well it's early days, but after two weeks i've got internet again after a talktalk engineer visit, two openreach engineers visits and three routers.
It would appear that it was a line fault, made all the worse by a reset by first OR which pushed the line up to a unstable speed. At present it's running at 6Mb but have been warned that it may well dropped lower due to having 3km of copper. I hope the long range VDSL comes out sooner rather than later, as that's the most likely option to get 'superfast'.

Line Quality

Upstream line rate (kbit/s):
1025
Downstream line rate (kbit/s):
6297
Upstream noise safety coefficient (dB):
6
Downstream noise safety coefficient (dB):
6.8
Upstream interleave depth:
1
Downstream interleave depth:
1
Line standard:
VDSL2
Upstream line attenuation (dB):
15.9
Downstream line attenuation (dB):
32.9
Upstream output power (dBm):
0.4
Downstream output power (dBm):
9.3
Channel type:
Fast
DSL up-time:
0 days 0 hours 14 minutes 1 second

Well that didn't go so well!
Just over a day at a seemingly steady 6Mb, then last night the modem started loosing sync every few moments, after an hour of this I switched off the modem for a couple of hours, and now I get line quality below. At one time when the modem linked last night it showed 'upstream noise safety coefficient -52db' !
Now I'm wondering if this is the same problem that started just before I went FTTC (constant dropping of sync), or will my line just not hold a fast line speed. I should note, BT estimate 7 to 11Mb, as do TalkTalk (same data source?) also a map Andrew linked me to showed 7Mb, but the last OR engineer (local chap used to live just down the road, very much his patch), says to expect 4Mb.
There is one small niggle in my mind, we have 100ft of very old (30+ years) copper runs from mk3 socket to a junction box on end of house before linking to new copper back to the pole, I'm fairly sure on both OR visits remaking contacts in junction box made a differance.

Line Quality

Upstream line rate (kbit/s):
901
Downstream line rate (kbit/s):
3319
Upstream noise safety coefficient (dB):
7.2
Downstream noise safety coefficient (dB):
9.1
Upstream interleave depth:
1
Downstream interleave depth:
1
Line standard:
VDSL2
Upstream line attenuation (dB):
15.9
Downstream line attenuation (dB):
32.6
Upstream output power (dBm):
0.4
Downstream output power (dBm):
9.4
Channel type:
Fast
DSL up-time:

Unless there is ingress of damp or wires are moved connections if made well should last for decades

This 100 ft of wiring is it twisted pair?

If the source of noise causing the drops was in the segment of wiring between modem and cabinet and was an issue for ADSL2+ then likely to remain an issue for FTTC.

Generally if the wiring is loose you also get some oddities in the attenuation side (but not always).

The estimating of speeds once you are down into the 7 to 11 Mbps region is pretty difficult and it is very much a try it and see scenario.

The interleaving to handle errors does not look particularly heavy at this time, and if getting lots of errors I'd expect interleaving to have kicked in, raising latency overall but reducing number of errors.

Shifting the master socket to a point closer to the junction box would cut out some distance (every metre matters for you) and might help avoid some noise. In short site modem as close as possible to entry point to house.

A slight correction to my earlier post, the distance from my house to Cabinet along route of line is 1.2miles, don't know if OR engineer guessed 3km of copper.
The mk3 socket is connected within a couple of inches of where the wire enters house and modem pluged straight into that, the old wire exiits throu window frame up to eaves and along to end of house where it joins new wire at junction box.

Okay so does the 100ft extension work if you take the master socket apart to reveal the test socket i.e. just like at http://www.coolwebhome.co.uk/faceplate/

If a phone still works in the extension when the master is down to just the test socket working, then this extension is a bridge tap and can cause problems for VDSL2.

Just to be clear, this isn't an extension leading from the master socket. It's the original copper from 30+ years ago coming into the house that is still used between the master socket and a junction box on end of house. As it's a flat cable I guess it's not twisted pair.
Anyway this morning modem must have reconected, it's sync'ing close on 6Mb with interleaving on downstream, but actual download speeds are very poor and erratic on the speed test jumping from 0 to 3Mb.

Line Quality

Upstream line rate (kbit/s):
881
Downstream line rate (kbit/s):
5985
Upstream noise safety coefficient (dB):
6
Downstream noise safety coefficient (dB):
8.6
Upstream interleave depth:
1
Downstream interleave depth:
5
Line standard:
VDSL2
Upstream line attenuation (dB):
15.9
Downstream line attenuation (dB):
32.8
Upstream output power (dBm):
0.4
Downstream output power (dBm):
10.1
Channel type:
Interleaved
DSL up-time:
0 days 4 hours 18 minutes 21 seconds

I thought I would update this thread.
I wonder if I might have the worse FTTC speeds in UK?
I would advise anyone who has a long line to cabinet to stay well clear of FTTC.


Upstream line rate (kbit/s):
973
Downstream line rate (kbit/s):
2695
Upstream noise safety coefficient (dB):
6.7
Downstream noise safety coefficient (dB):
11.2
Upstream interleave depth:
1
Downstream interleave depth:
471
Line standard:
VDSL2
Upstream line attenuation (dB):
15.8
Downstream line attenuation (dB):
32.8
Upstream output power (dBm):
0.4
Downstream output power (dBm):
10.4
Channel type:
Interleaved
DSL up-time:
2 days 2 hours 44 minutes 57 seconds

In reply to a post by burble:

I thought I would update this thread.
I wonder if I might have the worse FTTC speeds in UK?
I would advise anyone who has a long line to cabinet to stay well clear of FTTC.


Upstream line rate (kbit/s):
973
Downstream line rate (kbit/s):
2695
Upstream noise safety coefficient (dB):
6.7
Downstream noise safety coefficient (dB):
11.2
Upstream interleave depth:
1
Downstream interleave depth:
471
Line standard:
VDSL2
Upstream line attenuation (dB):
15.8
Downstream line attenuation (dB):
32.8
Upstream output power (dBm):
0.4
Downstream output power (dBm):
10.4
Channel type:
Interleaved
DSL up-time:
2 days 2 hours 44 minutes 57 seconds

What speeds did you get on ADSL?

The variation in your noise margin ("Downstream noise safety coefficient") suggests that *something* is happening to your line, and varying considerably.

Do you do anything to log and monitor the stats?

In reply to a post by lee111s:

What speeds did you get on ADSL?

Around 1.3mb, and as I've posted before, whilst jumping from page to page it was actualy faster!

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

The variation in your noise margin ("Downstream noise safety coefficient") suggests that *something* is happening to your line, and varying considerably.

Do you do anything to log and monitor the stats?

I must admit to not noticing that, will add it to the topics when phoning TT next.
All I do is run speed tests now and again, and check router.
i'm still suspicious of the 100ft of flat cable that runs from the the junction box to the master socket, The house is thatched with semi 'rooms in the roof', this means the top half of house has a wire 'cage' covering it (mobile signal is worse upstairs than down),
Most of the flat cable runs just a few inches from the edge where the wire 'cage' terminates, I wonder if it's picking up interference from this. (yes I'm clutching at straws)

Doesn't time fly when your enjoying yourself!
Thought I would post my latest as my line gradually degenerates.
As probate draws to a close on my mothers estate and I no longer have to deal with someone with MND, I can get back to arguing with TalkTalk, although it seems they have lost the stomach for arguing, at the end of our conversation today and after conducting line tests I was told (with no prompting form me)
"As your line is below that promised and In line with ofcom guidelines we will attempt to fix the issue within 28 days, if we do not do this you have the right to cancel your contract with us"

Line Quality

Upstream line rate (kbit/s):
989
Downstream line rate (kbit/s):
2695
Upstream noise safety coefficient (dB):
6.3
Downstream noise safety coefficient (dB):
10.7
Upstream interleave depth:
1
Downstream interleave depth:
471
Line standard:
VDSL2
Upstream line attenuation (dB):
15.9
Downstream line attenuation (dB):
32.6
Upstream output power (dBm):
0.4
Downstream output power (dBm):
8.8
Channel type:
Interleaved
DSL up-time:
0 days 0 hours 22 minutes 15 seconds