FTTC at 340m from cabinet

Hello

This is a simple enquiry. I'm interested to find out what sync speeds users are getting about 340m from a cabinet, running the 80/20 fibre package please. I'm hard-wired to my router and am getting about 50mbs at the computer, which seems a little slow.

Thanks in advance, Nigel Strudwick

A lot depends on the quality of the cable. My line is 300m to the cab but there is a 120m section of aluminium cable with copper at either end and I'm currently syncing at 53 Mbps but if DLM intervenes, as it does now and again, it drops down to around 44 Mbps.

I'm 600 metres and connected at 60Mbps.

# xdslcmd info --show
xdslcmd: ADSL driver and PHY status
Status: Showtime
Retrain Reason: 1
Last initialization procedure status: 0
Max: Upstream rate = 16319 Kbps, Downstream rate = 59812 Kbps
Bearer: 0, Upstream rate = 15142 Kbps, Downstream rate = 59997 Kbps
Bearer: 1, Upstream rate = 0 Kbps, Downstream rate = 0 Kbps
Link Power State: L0
Mode: VDSL2 Annex B
VDSL2 Profile: Profile 17a
TPS-TC: PTM Mode(0x0)
Trellis: U:ON /D:ON
Line Status: No Defect
Training Status: Showtime
Down Up
SNR (dB): 5.9 6.7
Attn(dB): 19.7 0.0
Pwr(dBm): 13.6 7.4

Are you with a BT Wholesale ISP, or Sky/TalkTalk/TalkTalk reseller? If BT Wholesale then run this test. (Ignore the red instructions for now except for not running anything else that is downl or uploading). Don't bother with the initial results page - click Further Diagnostics at the bottom of it. Then please copy and paste the full contents of the down and up text boxes of results.

Telling us your ISP may help.

400+ metres.

Currently syncing at around 76Mbps - due to a "noisy neighbour" and when their modem is off I can sync at a full 79999 with max achievable just above that.

You could have a very noisy line, fine gauge copper, aluminium, a very bad impedance mismatch, a bridge tap ... to name teh common ones.

What are your basic line stats? And if you have DSLstats installed, can you do a screen shot of the <Tones> tab?

I'm around the same distance (310-350m) as your and syncing at full 80/20 with attainable of around 115/30 (for now)

my old address was shorter line (200-250m) yet only capable of 57-60/20 and my neighbours was worse..

Seems to be a case of what quality your pair is, what it passes, how many joins... I'm still under the impression that a final length of my previous line was aluminium but the 2nd cabinet (underground) probably was also to blame.

I'm at 825m according to CodeLook website and I'm syncing at 71 and connected speed at 71 (currently DLM is off).

It depends on the quality of line from the cabinet to the pole to your house, and also were you are connected inside the cabinet because of interference.

Are you 340m at the road goes or as the crow flies?

You actual line length may be considerably longer than the above due to the way it may be routed.

My line length is about the same at 350m and with the "correct" hardware, the line syncs at 80/20 with attainable at 90/30. With the ECI modem on, it syncs at about 70/20.

I had a line that was 375m, with an attenuation that showed it was likely to be standard 0.5mm copper.
That was actual line length, not as-the-crow-flies length.

Over 3 years, it went from a sync of 80/20 (with attainable of 90/25) to 78/20 ... The reduction likely to have been the gradual increase in crosstalk. When the line went faulty, it caused more errors, which triggered DLM intervention. That took speeds to 72/19 for a while.

I suspect that crosstalk could have taken speeds even lower - perhaps 60Mbps. At least lines on Huawei cabs are unlikely to suffer that speed drop from DLM intervention now, as G.INP provides a much better alternative.

My current line is only 100m away, but acts like 150m. I believe it uses 0.4mm copper.

In reply to a post by bowdon:

I'm at 825m according to CodeLook website and I'm syncing at 71 and connected speed at 71 (currently DLM is off).

I'm sure you know this but Codelook is reporting the distance from the exchange not the cab

Thanks everyone. I didn't start out with too much detail as I wanted to see what the initial reactions were.

ISP Origin
Router ASUS N-12

I've been using all the speed testers, but here is the BT one

Download speedachieved during the test was - 50.32 Mbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speedsis 40 Mbps-53.1 Mbps .
Additional Information:
IP Profile for your line is - 53.1 Mbps
2. Upstream Test: -provides background information.
Upload Speed
17.05 Mbps
0 Mbps 20 Mbps
Max Achievable Speed
Upload speed achieved during the test was - 17.05Mbps
Additional Information:
Upstream Rate IP profile on your line is - 20 Mbps

I am pretty sure that we have a less than perfect line for it to be losing that much data on the profile etc.

I'm looking for comparable data so as to be able to encourage my ISP to do something about it vis a vis the line.

Many thanks.

As I've asked previously, do you know that's your line length or is that your guesstimate based on how far away from the cabinet you live?

What speed range for your line is given on the BT Wholesale availability checker?


Also, a loss of 3meg on a 53meg profile when carrying out a speedtest wouldn't really indicated to me that there's an issue with your line causing a loss of throughput.

Sorry, the line length was given to me by my ISP, along with all this other data in December:

Description GEA service test completed and no fault found but unable to check for customer equipment connected to modem.
Main Fault Location OK
Sync Status In Sync
Downstream Speed 58.7 Mbps
Upstream Speed 20.0 Mbps
Appointment Required N
Fault Report Advised N
NTE Power Status PowerOn
Voice Line Test Result Pass
Bridge Tap Not Detected
Radio Frequency Ingress Not Detected
Repetitive Electrical Impulse Noise Not Detected
Cross Talk Not Detected
Estimated Line Length In Metres 334.3
Upstream Rate Assessment Very Good
Downstream Rate Assessment Low
Interference Pattern Not Detected
Service Impact No Impact Observed
Home Wiring Problem Not Detected
Downstream Policing Discard Rate 0.0
Customer Traffic Level Upstream and Downstream Traffic Detected
Profile Name 0.128M-80M Downstream, Error Protection Off - 0.128M-20M Upstream, Error Protection Off


Parameters MIN MAX AVG
Down Stream Line Rate 58.6 Mbps 59.4 Mbps 59.2 Mbps
Up Stream Line Rate 19.9 Mbps 19.9 Mbps 19.9 Mbps
Up Time 102.0 Sec 900.0 Sec 896.5 Sec
Retrains 0.0 1.0 0.0

It's an estimate so it could be wrong of course

Can you put your number into here - https://www.btwholesale.com/includes/adsl/adsl.htm?s... and post the results.

It looks like your sync speed has dropped since those figures were given you. It's just below 55Mbps now.

That's a reverse calculation. IP Profile on FTTC is sync x 0.9679 without G.INP and 0.9669 with G.INP.

Were you an early adopter on your cabinet or has it been there for a while? You can lose sync speed as more users get FTTC on the cabinet, and it can be sudden caused by one particular connection, not gradually in proportion to the number.

I guess your ISP is Plusnet.

That "estimate" is very likely to be accurate to within a few metres as it will have been measured electronically using a TDR.

The OP needs to give actual line stats from the modem or router.

The cabinet was new in late October. As our BDUK local rep, I was one of the first to get in, so the slowing may well be down to that.

Regarding your line length, hopefully the length is as measured by a TDR (Time Domain Reflectometer or as I called my one, Pocket Radar Set).

I am only 50 Meters from the PCP with no obstructions etc, green-field site; BUT 250 Metres by original phone line.

The FTTC location although only 40 Metres from the PCP and 10 Metres from my house, adds an extra 50 Metres for the VDSL run, increasing the line length to 300 Metres.

In reply to a post by eckiedoo:

Regarding your line length, hopefully the length is as measured by a TDR (Time Domain Reflectometer or as I called my one, Pocket Radar Set).

I am only 50 Meters from the PCP with no obstructions etc, green-field site; BUT 250 Metres by original phone line.

The FTTC location although only 40 Metres from the PCP and 10 Metres from my house, adds an extra 50 Metres for the VDSL run, increasing the line length to 300 Metres.

So, could I use a ex BT 301C TDR to accurately measure my line length, or would BT start beating me with a big stick?

Edited by Nightglow (Tue 26-Jan-16 15:40:09)

In reply to a post by Nightglow:

So, could use a ex BT 301C TDR to accurately measure my line length, or would BT start beating me with a big stick at me?

Yes you could. And if you read it correctly and look for little "blips" you may even be able to say where there are joints in the cable.

I was slightly confusing there.

I had a TDR at my workplace, using it for maintaining and extending the internal network amongst many other things; and it was not used on my home phone line.

Using it with an oscilloscope, I could demonstrate the In-Phase Reflections from an Open Circuit; and the Out-of-Phase Reflections from a Short Circuit.

-----------

The Phone Line length came from -

https://windows.mouselike.org/be/index.asp?DoAction=...

Since upgrading to VDSL and the inclusion of the FTTC Filter-Link, that no longer works on my line.

--------

I would advise you NOT to use your TDR on your BT/OR Phone Line.

Thanks, that's a intresting link, just used the Postcode to PCP & it is spot on with my cabinet location & distance is nearly the same as when I used my surveyors wheel to check distance to cabinet.
A good way for peeps to find their cabinet & it's number.

P:S: Just check another cabinet other end of village & it's spot on for cabinet location, & it also tells me it's under review.

Edited by Nightglow (Tue 26-Jan-16 19:19:36)

Revelations - that is a Revolutionary way to get the distance, certainly contrasts with Reflections on a TDR!

So what was the speed when you first connected?

Getting hold of the line statistics from the modem would be the next step - particularly the attenuation. Alongside @lee111s request for the estimates, of course.

It's always been like this in response to the question about the availability checker:

FTTC Range A (Clean) 80 74 20 20 -- Available
FTTC Range B (Impacted) 80 70.4 20 19 -- Available


The connection speed when we first went live was about 53/18.

Edited by nstrudwick (Wed 27-Jan-16 09:39:21)

It's possible you have a section of aluminium cable between the cabinet and your home which would certainly explain why your speeds are lower than expected for the line length.

In reply to a post by lee111s:

It's possible you have a section of aluminium cable between the cabinet and your home which would certainly explain why your speeds are lower than expected for the line length.

I had almost identical problem with speed, qouted 66Mb to 80Mb, got around 20Mb,sometimes a bit lower, the cable was a mishmash of aluminum & thin copper,bad joints, took a lot of complaining before they finally replaced it, now on 72Mb.

Edited by Nightglow (Wed 27-Jan-16 09:55:30)

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

So what was the speed when you first connected?

Getting hold of the line statistics from the modem would be the next step - particularly the attenuation. Alongside @lee111s request for the estimates, of course.

That has been asked about four times! and ignored.

In reply to a post by lee111s:

It's possible you have a section of aluminium cable between the cabinet and your home which would certainly explain why your speeds are lower than expected for the line length.

That is certainly one explanation. Other valid ones exist too - including lines that aren't routed in the direction the subscriber believes, or that their line "trombones" further away from the cab, before returning. Or lines of a reduced gauge.

The data that will allow for the best comparison is the attenuation values (single and/or per-band), which will be part of the line statistics.

I've been complaining for nearly a year now and still no action on the aluminium cable.A few more have switched to fibre in my road and they are just accepting that they will only get 30-40 Mbps when there should be no problem getting significantly higher speeds if the aluminium was replaced.

All that happens is the estimates on the checker get reduced.

I just realised that the OP does state his ISP in his second post - Origin. AIUI they are Plusnet resellers, which ties in with my guess from the data he supplied.

He won't have stats to give us of course unless he has an HG612 he can unlock or gets one. He may not even know what we mean by modem stats. He has an ASUS N-12 router which does not incorporate a modem.

See my reply to MHC a few minutes ago.

Is your Openreach modem an HG612 version 3B, or an earlier version, or an ECI model?

We can't help you about whether your connection speed is low or not without line stats. Those can only be obtained by using an unlocked HG612 v 3B or by buying an expensive combo modem/router. Your speedtest results are fine for the connection speed you have.

If your modem is not what is needed I believe they are still available on eBay at around £25. Don't pay extra for an unlocked one if you are happy inside a router's GUI, which with what you have I expect you are. The HG612 is easy to unlock with free firmware.

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 27-Jan-16 13:28:06)

I find it very hard in this forum quickly to tell what is being asked of me, the original poster (is that OP?), and then when I reply it always appears at the end!

I clearly don't know the technical stuff like many of you do, but I am doing my best to provide info where asked, but I do have work to do! I have indicated the initial speed I got. But thanks for many illuminating comments.

As for the above, all I can tell you is the modem is an ECI one from Openreach. Not sure what is meant by "Your speedtest results are fine for the connection speed you have", although presumably you mean vis a vis the VDSL sync speed. I can follow router stats so long as I can get into it...

The one interesting thing which has come up in the last week it that it was found that at the cabinet, my port was synching at 66mbs and not 80. OR were unable to get the port to synch higher, so moved me to another port, at which point they assured me it was synching at 80/20. I confess to being baffled that no improvement whatsoever was seen in the sync speed at my house.

I'm pretty sure that all problems can ultimately be traced to the quality of the wire to the cabinet, but it's unclear how much of a fuss it takes to get that improved!

The question you have to answer is which exchange and which cabinet are you connected to? You may know this already.

The reason for this question is to determine if you are connected to a Huawei cabinet or an ECI cabinet. Being as you said BDUK, chances are that your cabinet is a Huawei but you can find out by following these instructions http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/cabinet-lookup.htm

If you are connected to a Huawei cabinet, you will get a better connection if you use a Huawei HG612 modem that supports G.INP, rather than an ECI modem which doesn't.

Edited by deleted (Wed 27-Jan-16 17:07:14)

In reply to a post by nstrudwick:

I find it very hard in this forum quickly to tell what is being asked of me, the original poster (is that OP?), and then when I reply it always appears at the end!

OP can mean either Opening Poster or Opening Post, depending on context .

Are you using Threaded Mode for the forums or Flat Mode? Towards the top right is a row of buttons, "Mark read, (either) Threaded or Flat, and Index". That centre one changes your view to the one it says at the time.

All posts have a Header saying who they are a reply to, and every post has a Reply button. If in Flat mode there is a temptation to always click the last one, which then looks like a reply to that rather than the post you may have intended.

Once you decide on your preferred view you can set it to the default on the My Home page, at the bottom. My settings there are:-

Normal index
Active in the last week
Descending date
Flat mode
Collapsed threads
99
99
On
140
25
Yes
Yes

I hope that helps. Many people also set up Favourite Forums on My Home and make it their entry point to the forums. I have about twenty in there, and it makes things much quicker.

I clearly don't know the technical stuff like many of you do, but I am doing my best to provide info where asked, but I do have work to do! I have indicated the initial speed I got. But thanks for many illuminating comments.

We all start of knowing little - don't worry about it .

As you have an ECI modem the line stats are not viewable - Openreach decided that for the ECI and the HG612. One bright guy said a rude word to that and managed to extract the configuration of the HG612 and unlock it. Many of us use that. However it turned out the same couldn't be done with the ECI. It can be unlocked, but needs soldering doing to its circuit board to achieve it.

As I said in my previous post, having confirmed there are no glaring discrepancies between your connection speed (yes, that's the VDSL2 sync speed) and your throughput, particularly as I believe you are on a Plusnet connection resold by Origin, we can't really help much more without seeing the stats. HG612 or some posh combo, but I think very few of us would recommend the combo at this stage.

The one interesting thing which has come up in the last week it that it was found that at the cabinet, my port was synching at 66mbs and not 80. OR were unable to get the port to synch higher, so moved me to another port, at which point they assured me it was synching at 80/20. I confess to being baffled that no improvement whatsoever was seen in the sync speed at my house.

Hmmm.

During daylight hours (sync's done at dawn/dusk/night are normally slower) power down your modem for 5-10 minutes. You may as well do the same with your router. See how things are afterwards. Probably no significant difference, but needs to be done just in case.

I'm pretty sure that all problems can ultimately be traced to the quality of the wire to the cabinet, but it's unclear how much of a fuss it takes to get that improved!

Given the speed you have, no chance of anything being done. (In my opinion).

Post deleted by WelshWArrior

Consider the sheer quantity of phone connections in the UK, I have seen the figure of 25 Million suggested.

Typically, these are likely to be 1 mile (1.6 Kilometres) long from the Exchange, to the premises/home; and many in rural areas particularly being significantly longer.

They are a mixture of very-multi-way cables, 100 pairs, down through various combinations to a single pair, depending on specific circumstances of each installation.

I don't know if the uses of the aluminium hybrid wires is recorded; but locating and physically replacing all of such lower-standard wiring would be a massive undertaking, also including such aspects as road closures, loss of service, replacing damaged ducts (which may or may not have impacted on the service) etc.

As far as I can judge, the underground jointing chambers are about 305 Metres apart, about 1,000 feet.

Having been on the periphery of the telephone system technically since 1952, I am constantly amazed that it manages to cope with the various forms of (higher-speed) broadband, even with the technical short-cuts observable in the implementation of FTTC.

In reply to a post by eckiedoo:

I don't know if the uses of the aluminium hybrid wires is recorded; but locating and physically replacing all of such lower-standard wiring would be a massive undertaking, also including such aspects as road closures, loss of service, replacing damaged ducts (which may or may not have impacted on the service) etc.

The type of cable is recorded. The OR engineer pointed out the section of aluminium cable to me on his laptop when he was checking the route of the cable ran from the PCP to the DP my drop wire is connected to. He said it would explain why the cable length was showing as 450m when he was testing the line.

The cable is ducted under the pavement and the ducts are clear (they were in 2011) because they ran fibre through the them to an aggregation node in the chamber where one end of the aluminium section ends.

He even lifted all the covers of the duct boxes by each pole to check the condition of the cable but concluded it was in pretty good condition considering it had been there for over 40 years. He was a bit concerned about the condition of the copper/aluminium joints because he tried a couple of different pairs to try and get my speed back but the first synced at 38 Mbps and the second only synced at 19 Mbps.

The annoying thing is my neighbour syncs at 67 Mbps on the same DP.

Thanks for that information.

I wonder if any one has experience of joining either aluminium to aluminium; or aluminium to copper.

The speed at which aluminium forms the anodic skin must make it difficult to solder, so is it wire-wrap, IDC etc?

Must do some searching.

I wonder if any one has experience of joining either aluminium to aluminium; or aluminium to copper.

Yep me ! and just about ever OR guy who does u/g work . Gel filled crimp connectors . Most ally cable faults are in joints,