BT Openreach Fault Reporting and Test Procedure(s)

Good evening friends...

Just a question in regards fault reporting and testing.

As of late my Fibre Speed and Line Sync have dropped over half its normal rate(s). The last few days my SamKnows Box has logged low speeds. Last night I decided to reboot my router and it took 3 hours for the line to sync with the exchange. I decided to check my phone and realised that the line was noisy and no dialtone. I decided to wait and run my own tests today, just in case a temporary fault was the issue. I read elsewhere that exchanges up and down the country could experience issues due to network maintenance and that was my reason behind waiting until today, in the hope all would be fine today. I do think use my landline, it normally has no phone connected so this fault could have existed longer than a few days.

I have tried many new filters, running tests connected to the test socket, a new router and new phone with no success.

The line has managed to re-sync after many attempts, the sync rate is low but I've noticed as soon as I try to make a call (even though I have no dialtone) and this drops the fibre connection.

The fault has now been reported and an engineer visit is 8n place for next Tuesday. I wanted to ask, do BT Openreach run any tests or advanced diagnostic tests prior to visiting my property? I don't mean prior to the appointment that day but run tests starting today through to the appointment day and if a fault is found, would they repair earlier if they can do so without visiting?

ISP run a test and reported no problem (I'm sceptable about these ISP tests).

I had a simular problem to this 12 months ago when a contractor connected my fibre bit he managed to mess up all the cabinets wiring and my whole Street had no phone line and/or broadband -good old Kelly Communications! It wouldn't surprise me if they did the same again!

Hope someone can help...

Almost certainly at some point between the test socket (so possibly the connection from outside behind it, which is Openreach's responsibility) and the cabinet line card one wire of the pair has become detached. That gives exactly these symptoms.

I've never heard of it being inside the master, so don't go looking. Unless there is a possibility you have had the test socket off the wall and messed up the connections behind it.

"I have tried many new filters"

There is little point in doing so, as the xDSL/MODEM route is "Straight-Through", ie electrically exactly the same as connecting your modem directly in to the Test Socket on an NTE5.

Also being "Straight-Through", the Phone signals continue to be available on the MODEM side.



Only the PHONE leg has a filter, an HF Reject type, to prevent the BB signals being loaded/lost in the pre-BB circuitry of telephones, alarms etc.



As you have since discovered, the simple action of connecting a phone revealed the signs of a faulty line (even in pre-BB days), without going to the cost of a new router etc.

Both BT and SKY recommend doing such Quiet Line Tests, 17070, very early in their recommendations to customers.

This may be a stupid question but you have reported your fault as a voice fault - to whoever you pay your line rental too - and not a broadband fault haven't you?

If your line is suffering noise and no dialtone it needs to be dealt with as a voice fault.

I only ask as you keep mentioning a new router/filters and your fibre connection..

Fixing the voice fault, should fix any problems with your fibre connection.

... and a voice fault may end up getting a faster response time. Though I guess "Tuesday" is pretty close in terms of "working days".

Sorry for the late reply, no email updates.

I wondered why my ISP kept saying, "we must ignore the BBC fault and work on the voice side of things - this is now understood.

No, ive not messed around with the wires but noticed today the noise margin has changed significantly but fault remains.

I have a strange setup re: BT Socket;

Because the line comes in behind a radiator pipe, BTO placed a blank plate where it comes in and pulled the thin wires to the top where they've installed the main socket. These wires, should be covered but none are actually showing because the plate and main socket are above one and other. Perhaps over time, they've become loose but nobody ever goes near them and the most part is covered by radiator pipes :/ A bodge job by BTO perhaps . . .

Thanks for your help /all

In noticing the variation today, can that be connected with, say, placing or removing items on the radiator for drying?

Or cleaning around the radiator?

We don't use our radiators to dry clothes, we haven't used our heating for approx 2 months now. I'm always careful when hoovering and it is in an area nobody goes near.

Our electricity just went off and now I'm waiting for the router to re-sync, I'll probably be waiting hours! Once the router does sync, the connection will stay connected :confused:

No gaming today, will have to wait for it to sync

L@@ks like it has totally packed up now, it won't sync at all.

I previously managed to get it to sync late at night, I wonder if it will make a difference come 11pm this evening... we shall see.

Sounds like you have some kind of high resistance fault between the cabinet and your phone socket. You can rule out any problems at the telephone exchange or with the line between the cabinet and he exchange.

The router has again resynced but was only able to do so in the early hours of this morning...

So it has to be a fault at the cabinet... or that's what I think anyway.

I can only assume that there's less interference in the early hours as the sun breaks...

In reply to a post by shaneosborne:

I wanted to ask, do BT Openreach run any tests or advanced diagnostic tests prior to visiting my property? I don't mean prior to the appointment that day but run tests starting today through to the appointment day and if a fault is found, would they repair earlier if they can do so without visiting?

Hi, I reported a fault to my ISP (Plusnet) on 30th March, with the symptoms of noise on the line and low sync speeds on my FTC connection (850m of copper). Following on from that, there is a very long, sorry, story of my Openreach 'engineers' visits. We have had telephone extensions removed, router moved to a new location which means I can no long use an ethernet connection to it, new router, new line sockets, new power sockets fitted to supply the router and the Samknows box, a new 'drop wire' fitted, a 'lift & shift' at the cabinet (twice) and a joint re-made in the capping on the telegraph pole. I know that it's simply a poor joint underground, but have been told that they will not open a chamber to find it as they are then obliged to re-make every joint on every cable at that location. 'Underground' engineers test the line and say no fault found, non-underground engineers tell me there is a fault in a joint underground, which they are not qualified to fix. We go round in circles constantly.

We have now had 17 'engineers' visit the house over the past four and a half months, and I am currently waiting for the eighteenth engineer to visit next Wednesday.

No, Openreach have never conducted any test prior to the engineers' visit. I doubt that this is a local anomaly, they probably just do not do that anywhere.

I hope you have better luck with your fault than I have had! I do not have the option of changing to a cable connection (there is no cable where I live), and I live in between mobile cell coverage areas (no mobile signal in the house). I did wonder about a satellite connection, but have heard it is expensive. I still live in hope they will one day fix my line.

I've had some bad experiences with BTO but nothing as close to the problems you have, I'd go insane if I was you.

I do hope your situation is resolved, we have simular problems here in Cornwall re: services available.

I'd be interested to know how you get on, please keep us updated and thanks for your input.

what you or the bt engineers need is a tdr (time domain reflectrometer) while these are not that common your bt engineer should have access to one , that will pinpoint exactly where on the line to within a few metres there is any mismatch/ problem.

perhaps andrew could buy one and hire it out to those having problems,

just imagine being to tell the bt engineer:-


"the fault is 23 metres away mr bt engineer its a high resistance joint"

DAMN IT!

17:30 just gone and we've lost sync. Worked all of this morning and afternoon and now back to the router attempting to re-sync and make a successful connection :'(

@celad2001 Oh yes, they have had their magic machines on. It is always a 'non-underground skilled' engineer who says "there is a bad joint at 319m" and when the underground 'skilled' engineer turns up he says "oh, that's just a joint on the cable where it connects from one gauge of wire to another, it's nothing to worry about" and reports back 'no fault found'. Then we go round the circle once more. It's never at the same distance twice, either!
The problem is, it can go for three days or more without a break in the BB, and then we get four restarts within a few hours and the speed drops from 30Mbps to 12Mbps. Some phone calls are fine, others after five minutes deteriorate into more crackles than audio.

Hi
I had similar issue, the land line had no dialling tone and it crackled all the time. Fault reported on Sunday, Engineer booked for Wednesday. BTO send telecoms engineer to fix, he used one of these devices that pinpointed a cable loop 34m from my master socket - roughly put the fault 2 doors away under the pavement. He found a new pair and connected me and the phone worked.
My broadband settled down from 70+ resyncs an hour to give me 33mbps.

I let my ISP know. Last Sunday a BTOR engineer arrives at 8am!

He connected his kit to the wires and immediately tells me there is a loop fault some 4 m away. Thinking it was in the door, he goes about tracing the phone line from master socket to the door, in doing so I mention about a frayed cable, by the door and low behold her is the fault.. Now as I had a new front door ten years ago, the installer got rid of the GPO Connector, which caused the BTOR to scratch his head. So he installed a new master ( and drop cable) in the lounge. The line had been frayed since I moved into the house in 2001 and I've had about 6 engineers for various faults and he was the first one to acknowledge the wires were touching.

Surely the fault has gone.... but no ! He went off to the cabinet and found a fault on a card, I presume he fixed the fault as the line synced whilst he was there?

My broadband speed reached 51mbps, still 21mbps short on what it was getting with BT and my ISP for 2 days before the fault occured.

I contacted my ISP and they came back to say the Delta report hadn't been updated and they manually increased the line sync. This gave me 59-61mbps, which still isn't what I was getting before the fault happened.

In the meantime I have decided to leave my current ISP for several reasons and move to s Fibre LLU supplier. Now they tell me that there is a fault on the line still.... Which I thought could just be that I haven't closed the outstanding fault with the ISP, I've done that and hopefully that will clear the fault on the line and result in an installation date for my new ISP tomorrow or Tuesday

I am really pleased so far with my new ISP that they seem to care about the customer and it is nice to know they want to ensure I get the service I am signed up for. I will speak to their Provisioning Team tomorrow or Tuesday and see whether the fault being reported is the same, or I am waiting for a card replacement in the Cabinet.

while these are not that common

How's that ?

EVERY single visiting engineer will be carrying at least one device that can perform a TDR function.

BTO currently working, one of the wires have disconnected (45m from socket). Currently outside hunting around :/

Water covering the connectors underground, all fixed now. Need to wait for speeds to stabilise again :/

Engineer said he would reset the profile as he had to run another test later today. We had this same problem with our electricity where water flooded the aluminium conductors under ground, this causing major power issues blowing up TV's and washing machines. Luckily Western Power Distribution replaced with all new. Possibly related?

Let's see how we go....

Thanks all.

I've read that many people have had problems with these aluminium lines, aluminium was used in the early 80s due to expensive copper prices.

I've read that these type of lines always give slow speeds and if a problem in the past has been due to water then it is very likely to be a problem again (when it pours with rain).

Are these lines truly aluminium and not copper (seems odd)?

Does aluminium offer slower speeds and is it likely this problem will return?

Thanks all.

HeHe! You heard it first here :-

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Almost certainly at some point between the test socket (so possibly the connection from outside behind it, which is Openreach's responsibility) and the cabinet line card one wire of the pair has become detached. That gives exactly these symptoms.

Good to see in your follow-up posts it seems to be fixed .

Thanks for your previous help.

Speed is still low and I've received a text saying work has completed, how do I get my profile reset as the engineer clearly hasn't done it?

I think the engineer is new, he first came with another BTO engineer and until I corrected him, he thought 5up and 7down was good for fibre? :/

Pass . I don't know if it is supposed to be instant or at least very soon after he orders the reset, or whether it happens in the normal overnight adjustments.

If in a few days nothing has changed and ISP cannot get the DLM reset then prod me and see if a pester from my end will work.

Thanks Andrew, appreciate it. Sky have been quite good in the past and changing my profile on my previous ADSL2+ service. They were able to change the profile once I had played wuth the .snr on my 7800n, whether it is the same for Fibre I do not know.

Thanks...

Unfortunately it isn't.

The DLM on FTTC is Openreach, as it isn't "LLU" as such. It's an Openreach product, and Sky can only request one of three stability options at order time. I expect they can have it changed, but the day-to-day functioning is nothing they can affect.

On Sky ADSL2+ they have complete control of the line. All Openreach do is make sure the circuit between you and the Sky kit in the exchange works.

No, Openreach have never conducted any test prior to the engineers' visit. I doubt that this is a local anomaly, they probably just do not do that anywhere.

You are wholly wrong there, Openreach staff are measured on BYTTK (before you turn the key) tests are run prior to any faulting visit.

On the other hand ... " but have been told that they will not open a chamber to find it as they are then obliged to re-make every joint on every cable at that location. " Is awful to hear. It does make you wonder how come the engineer knew it was full of cack already ......

I hope no.18 is a genuine cove.

It was actually late 60 that the GPO started using aluminium as a cost saving exercise and probably used it exclusively for over 10 years.

They do generally give a lower speed because the electrical characteristics are significantly different to copper at high frequencies and things get worse it there is an ally section between copper sections because you can end up with an high resistance joint if water gets into it.

My line is 300m long and has a 120m section of Al cable that was used to replace a damaged section of cable back in 1976. Before it got hit by crosstalk it would only sync at 68-70 Mbps when an all copper cable would probably sync at the max speed. Now with crosstalk and issues with joints, it's down to slightly less than 54 Mbps.

Just like to thank everyone for there input, appreciated.

I got a call from Sky last night but hung up after 10 minutes of the caller having no clue as to what he was doing. Running continous tests on the line because I told him the engineer hasn't reset the speed profile...

I really do not have the patience to speak to an overseas call centre who have no idea, running test after test and him saying 'your line looks good'. Obviously it looks good, it's just been repaired.

Thanks /all.

My line rate/sync won't budge from those below;


Line Rate - Upstream (Kbps):5428
Line Rate - Downstream (Kbps):7095

Current Line Stats (Fibre);

Connection Speed: 7095 kbps 5428 kbps
Line Attenuation: 25.6 dB 0.0 dB
Noise Margin : 22.9 dB 6.6 dB

Line Attenuation for the upload doesn't register on the Sky Hub, had a few of these routers and each one gives the same problem.

IIRC the 0dB upstream attenuation is a bug in the Broadcom chipset/firmware that just affects VDSL2. If you connect the hub to an ADSL connection it will show an upstream attenuation figure.

Having checked the line rate/sync today, no change from yesterday.

Line Rate - Upstream (Kbps):5274
Line Rate - Downstream (Kbps):7095

Actually, downstream is the same and upstream is a little lower.

Connection did re-sync at approx 0830 this morning, a couple of times. I thought this was done automatically to adjust line rate as the line was stable but no change.
What should I do?

Morning!

What exactly happens when your line profile is reset?

I'm a little confused... My sync rate has improved and this happened after I received a callback from Sky, they stated that they had to pass a message on to another dept. to arrange the profile reset. The problem I've noticed is that my line doesn't seem to be budging from this new sync rate. Normally the sync changes each night as it works out the max stable line rate, this doesn't seem to be happening and I have room on the nm to allow greater speeds. My Fibre Line never offered fantastic speeds due to length but it was more than what I'm getting now...


Connection Speed..............22400 kbps.........5383 kbps
Line Attenuation.................25.5 dB................0.0 dB
Noise Margin........................9.3 dB................5.5 dB

Thanks /all

What does the dslchecker estimate for your line? www.dslchecker.bt.com?

35 but before the fault occurred, my Fibre rate was 27 but the line doesn't seem to be adjusting and the snr has some room left to improve the speed...

Correction, . You are very confused.

Whether the line profile has been set via Sky we cannot be sure. But something has certainly happened.

However "Normally the sync changes each night as it works out the max stable line rate" is not normal on FTTC and there is no such thing as "max stable rate".

It could be that 22400kbps is the top of a band, or it could be your line still has wide SNRM variations between day and night times. You could try a single daytime re-sync to see if it improves.

Following that, as long as you aren't getting overnight reconnections just leave it alone now. It will take time and stability for the DLM to remove banding if it is still in place. For example - this post.

Thanks for that RobertoS, that has cleared up any confusion.

I have just completed a re-sync and everything remains the same, I'll leave it alone and see how things progress.

If there is no max stable line rate, what is the 10 day line training for, I thought this was to work out your max stable line rate?

Thanks again, appreciated.

It is, on ADSLx, except all it does is record the lowest sync in the ten days and from that calculate the Fault Threshold Rate. It doesn't do any searching around for the "highest stable" as we would understand it.

On FTTC, BT Wholesale connections BTW may record it in the same way, but it is nothing to do with line training.

See the Openreach SIN 498 Section 2.2.1. The "intervene" there means "apply banding", not the day-to-day stuff like interleaving, SNRM etc.

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 06-Sep-16 14:09:51)

Thanks for the info

Just received an email from Sky informing me that an engineer has been booked for Wednesday. Strange when the original fault has been repaired and the only problem which exists is my speed of which I've lost approx 2mb which I'm not sure justifies a BTO Engineer :/

Sky stated;

"I have had a look at the speeds that you are currently getting and this is only sitting at 21mbps where you should be receiving between 22.9 - 33.1mbps, I have therefore booked.........."

I admit I was getting over 25Mb before the fault but my latest sync rate has budged in a week, even after a reset (seems locked). My NM is at 9.3 and stays at that throughout the day and night.

I'm not sure what an engineer can do...

An engineer can reset the DLM

Ah okay. I would have thought it more cost effective to allow ISPs the ability to reset the DLM.

Thanks.

I admit I was getting over 25Mb before the fault but my latest sync rate has budged in a week, even after a reset (seems locked). My NM is at 9.3 and stays at that throughout the day and night.

I'm not sure what an engineer can do...

Well if all their tests pass, a DLM reset for starters.

I would have thought it more cost effective to allow ISPs the ability to reset the DLM.

Well maybe if ISP's allowed Openreach to do resets and the like on their kit .......

DLM was reset yesterday, speed improved slightly.

BTO telephoned a central office to get the DLM reset, I wasn't aware this was a remote procedure. I thought an engineer had to physically do this at the exchange.

I was advised to allow a few days for the speed to return. I know this was only done yesterday but no noticeable change as yet.

When my Fibre was first activated, the router would resync during the early hours adjusting the sync rate until the nm reached the set limit. This didn't seem to happen last night.

Anyway, thanks for all your help guys/gals.

BTO telephoned a central office to get the DLM reset, I wasn't aware this was a remote procedure. I thought an engineer had to physically do this at the exchange.

Nope, one just dials a number and requests it done.

I was advised to allow a few days for the speed to return.

Nope, it should be instantaneous.

Why on earth did she tell me over a few days then.... grrgghhh!

Anyway, do you know what Skys target snr is 6db or 3db etc?

6dB

Why on earth did she tell me over a few days then.... grrgghhh!

Lack of training maybe ?

Is there a way of forcing a firmware upgrade/downgrade (SR102) to resolve the 0db bug being displayed for the 'Upstream Line Attenuation'?

Thanks in advance.

It's an issue with the firmware burned into the chipset during production so there's nothing that can be done to fix it.