Slow upload speed on fttc

Living in a rural location about 5.5km from the exchange we were getting about 1.5 Mb/s down (on a good day) and 0.3 Mb/s up on ADSL which is about what I expected. Two weeks ago we were connected to fttc, the cabinet being about 1.8km away and I am very happy with the download speed of 17 Mb/s but I am rather disappointed in the upload speed which is only 1.2 Mb/s. My ISP (Zen) has carried out a series of line tests and found no fault and is at a loss to explain the situation except that they say that upload speed degrades faster with distance from the cabinet than ADSL does due to the higher frequencies used - has anyone else any experience of this?

Yes, it is true - to a certain extent.

Working from the lowest frequency end thee is a small upstream band, U0, which uses tones up to 32, then Downstream, D1, followed bu U1, D2, U2, D3. Whereas on ADSL all of the upstream is at the low frequency end. So, yes it appears to degrade faster because of the higher frequencies in use.

If you can run DSL Stats the graphs available will show what is happening.

Yes I see this too. Download is 0.625 of the max 80, whereas upload is 0.4 of the max 20.
Speeds are in line with what the BT checker reports (http://www.dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/ADSLChecker.TelephoneNumberOutput)

My speeds are nowhere near what dsl checker reports for my telephone number:

Telephone Number xxxxxxxxxxx on Exchange FOLKINGHAM is served by Cabinet 1

High Low High Low
FTTC Range A (Clean) 55.3 35.7 13.9 8.3 -- Available
FTTC Range B (Impacted) 46.5 27.4 13.7 6.1 -- Available

My neighbours (same distance from the cabinet) are being connected today so it will be interesting to see what they get

The figures given by the BT checker do change. Originally they predicted a much higher speed for me (which I didn't get). Now they are more inline, I have no idea why...

BT were pressured by the ASA to make their estimates more closely reflect actual speeds.

There are times when the checker database may think a phone number is in another location, what does the checker estimate for the actual house number and postcode.

55 Mbps is NOT achievable at 1.8km from a cabinet

If I try the house name and postcode I get:

Your address has been successfully matched; however we cannot determine ADSL availability at this address. Please try the Telephone Number or Postcode Checker.

Tha actual postcode location is 900m away from our property (there's only 2 properties here so I assume they didn't think it worth giving us our own postcode) so I wouldn't accept what it predicted anyway but if I try that in dsl checker I get:

WBC ADSL 2+ Up to 2 -- 1 to 3.5 Available
ADSL Max Up to 1.5 -- 1 to 2.5 Available

Which is patently wrong because everybody else on that postcode can get FTTC (it's about 900m from the cabinet). Yes, I'm aware that the download estimates were wrong but I though I could get a better upload than 1.3 Mb/s

hmm, that figures...

Okay so one of those where the checker is in a mess basically.

You can do the get mad and complain but nothing will actually improve for your broadband as a result of that. best that can be managed is to get things updated.

Fortunately postcodes that are this large are pretty rare (much more common in Northern Ireland I find)

I've downloaded & run dslstats and looked at the bitloading tab - see:my bitloading graph but it doesn't tell me much, according to the sample pages for dslstats bitloading example the graph should be coloured but mine is only blue. It may be because my router (Thomson TG589vn v3) apparantly doesn't support VDSL2 (although I don't know if my connection is VDSL or VDSL2)

VDSL is often mentioned, incorrectly, wrt Openreach FTTC. It is VDSL2.

Ah yes - I see it says "DSL mode: G.993.2 (VDSL2)" on the stats page

The Thomson TG589vn v3 does support VDSL2 with profiles up to 17 according to specs.

Something is wrong with DSL stats - I presume you selected the Technicolor TG589vn v3. Try playing with some of the settings to get the colours correct and also overlay the SNR graph on Bit Loading

I can't do anything with the appearance of the "tones" tab which is what I posted apart from changing the colour under "other data" see Colour choices. Re the Thomson router this page states " TG589vn is VDSL2 capable, but DSLstats doesn't support it fully in VDSL2 mode.". How can I overlay the snr graph on bit loading?

Select the <Config> tab, then <Items to Monitor>, Under Others, select <SNR per tone>, <Show as separate graph> and <Include with bitloading> That will overlay Bitloading with SNR.



The QLN and HLog graphs might also be useful

Already done that but no change. I think the problem is to do with my router - from the DSLstats options page there is:

Other items (not applicable to Thomson/Technicolor routers)
The remaining items - SNR per tone, QLN, HLog and Signal attenuation - all have individual CLI commands to obtain the data.

Maybe see if I can borrow a different router which does support these items. Thanks for your suggestions

I emailed DSLstats & very quickly they came back to say: Unfortunately this is a known limitation of the TG589v3 when used with a VDSL2 connection. In order to colour the tones graphs correctly, access is needed to the pbParams data, which is a normal constituent of the Broadcom data. Thomson modems use a custom CLI which doesn't include this element, so there's no way to determine where the upstream and downstream bands are located..

Not actually necessary to see where they are located - experience tells you!

From your graph there is U0 and also D1 (or part) and then it seems to stop!

If you can borrow a suitable hub or even buy an HG612 modem and use the TG589 as just a router temporarily more evidence would be forthcoming.

Checked my neighbour's ul speed and they only get 1.2Mb/s the same as I do so it's obviously a result of the line length

I've bought a HG612 from ebay and will unlock it when it arrives but how do I connect it to my TG589 as just a router - the TG589 has only one RJ11 port and 4 LAN ports?

See your new thread.

Edit - Ummm. Not simple. Still see that thread, but I misread it yours initially.
I'm going to ask for the other thread to be locked as this could otherwise get very messy . Below in this post is everything relevant from that thread.
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OK. It looks from the TG589vn specification that it doesn't have an Ethernet WAN port. Unless there is some custom firmware to convert a LAN port. You can't do it as they come out of the box.

But you can do it after unlocking the HG612 if we change it from Bridge mode to Modem/router mode. We then connect LAN1 of the HG612 to a TG LAN port and disable DHCP on the TG. We also ensure they are both on the same LAN IP address subnet, and give the TG an address outside the allocatable range of the HG612.

That isn't a difficult task. It's the standard way of using a second router to extend the LAN connections and wifi range of a single one.

The LAN2 on the HG612 means you still have four Ethernet ports available if you need them all

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 14-Oct-15 22:04:32)

Re you reply in the other thread, using LAN4 as per what you found will cost you at least one LAN port, and if we want easily to access the line stats will cost another. That won't matter in the short term, but in the long term the HG612 modem/router method gives you four LAN ports in total if you need them.

If we just use this as a way of seeing what is going on, then go back to your original setup, the port count won't matter.

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 14-Oct-15 22:16:00)

Apologies - I'm a newbie and am not yet au fait with posting etiquette - I've stopped using the other thread now! My last post on that was:

Ah - so you're saying use one of the 4 ethernet ports to connect to the HG612? I thought they were just for LAN connections but after looking around the TG589 configuration options I found this which seems to indicate that I can use port 4 as a WAN port. I'm waiting for my HG612 to arrive so I'll update in due course

Sorry - posted this before I read your second post so I'll try both methods......

Remember the unlocked firmware you need is 30SP08, not 28SP10.

Got it! Thanks

Use the version that includes the GUI. That makes using modem/router mode easy, instead of CLI commands.

Bought a HG612 & connected it up and managed to get a bitloading graph here does it cast any light on my slow upload speeds? Interestingly I'm getting a dl speed of 17Mb/s with the HG612 compared with 14Mb/s with my Thomson router

Can you compress the graph a little using the slide at the bottom so All tones from 0 to 1500 (or so) are visible.


Good to see an improvement on Downstream.

Compressed graph - nothing above 860 - is that the problem?

Interestingly upload is slower with the HG612 at 0.9Mb/s vs. 1.2Mb/s

Looks as though above 860 the attenuation is too high and there will be nothing available ... can you grab the HLog and QLN graphs too?

See QLN and HLog

It really does look as though there is little more to be achieved, unless there is a line fault which I very much doubt and the figures are broadly in-line with the distance from the cabinet to you house.

As you have seen, different modem types can connect at slightly different speeds - due to several factors in their design and even with two identical ones there can be differences due to tolerances.

Keep track using DSLStats with occasional screen shots or graphs just in case it does worsen.

Ensure that your house wiring is up to scratch. Install the modem as close as possible to the master socket, and if possible ensure the master is as close as possible to the point of entry. Keep electrical and electronic devices and power supplies away from the modem and line. You can run a Cat5e cable from the modem to your router giving you flexibility of placement for that. Run a single phone extension (if required) from the filtered side of the master without using the ring wire.

Thanks for your support - I have all your recommendations in place - the modem is about 1m away from the master socker which is at the place of entry and has an Openreach filter faceplate. the only phone is connected directly to the master socket faceplate. It's not a serious problem having the relatively slow upload but I thought that it was worth investigating.

You now, I hope, have a better understanding of what is going on.