Upload speed has dropped

When I upgraded to FTTC in 2015 I enjoyed download speeds of over 36mbps and upload speeds of over 7mbps. I was very happy with this as I am about 1200 metres from the cabinet. As I was one of the first connections to the cabinet I expected performance to drop slightly over time. Download speed has stayed steady at around 36mbps but upload speed has gradually dropped to the current rate of just over 4mbps.
Checking my router stats it shows this:
B0 Line Rate - Upstream (Kbps) 4729
B0 Line Rate - Downstream (Kbps) 40000

Is this compatible with the 40/10 service I am supposed to be getting?

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

Full 40 Mbps sync at 1.2km breaks pretty much all prediction models your upload speed is more in line with a 1.2km long line

Thanks for your reply Mr Saffron. Confirmed my view that I am lucky to have such a good download speed.
I can live with the upload speed.

Hi

I have this issue all the time with my Plusnet fibre connection. I am 350 metres from the cabinet on a 55/10 Mbs circuit. When the service is functioning normally I get download around 49/50 Mbs and upload 8/9 Mbs (the line is impacted, old cabling and lots of cross talk).

Whenever things go a little pear shaped the first to suffer is the upload speed, it drops off sometimes to about 2 Mbs whilst download speed is pretty much maintained.

I believe that the DSLAM in the cabinet is programmed to try and maintain the download speed in preference to upload speed, which frankly is nonsense in my opinion, the obsession with download speed is driven largely perhaps by the marketing guys in the major ISP's, in reality many folk like myself would prefer a more balanced approach so that on-line backup etc. becomes more realistic.

Plusnet are very good at getting Openreach out to fix the problems, generally after a port reset the service returns to 'normal' at least for a few months !

It could just be that the frequencies used for upload are the ones that are getting hit by noise.

Are you talking about the connection speed dropping off, or the performance measured by speed tests and observations on moving files around. In which case if its speed tests then nothing to do with the VDSL2

Agreed. My upload speed is fairly inferior to my download speed, which would suggest that the voice side is slight impacted (I can tell via the QLT), seen as the upload frequencies are close to the ones used for voice.

There is the gap between the lowest frequencies that VDSL2 use and the voice bands which are filled with ADSL and ADSL2+

More frequency bins are allocated to the downstream side, hence why you can get more bits of download than upload usually, and the old ADSL adage that upload performs good on long distance lines does not apply due to the interleaving of the U and D bands

Ah, interesting. Thanks for the information.

DSLstats will show you what is happening if you have a suitable router.

Hi again

It's the upload performance measurement that drops off, as measured by the thinkbroadband or BT tests. However this reflects the sync speed, as on the Plusnet Hub One router troubleshooting page you can see the actual sync speeds being achieved, and also the signal noise ratio for both upload and download, as well as the max upload and download data rates. When the upload speed is poor the SNR sometimes falls away to 2db so this would seem to suggest that interference could be a culprit. The Plusnet tests do show that there is some REIN interference,

Okay it is possible for RF noise to only affect certain frequencies, so things like turning off Christmas lights if its only just started is a good first fault find step, then removing powerline devices from the mains and the usual test at master socket etc

At 350 m a 55/10 service should be rock solid .....

What are the full stats for your line ?

Presently waiting for a BT Openreach engineer visit, will post again following his investigation.

Result - there is a loop fault on the cabling, probably intermittent so engineer returning to 'walk' the cable etc. Here are the current stats from the Plusnet Router: Obviously just been rebooted following the engineer visit.

1. Product name: Plusnet Hub
2. Serial number: +081441+NQ73600169
3. Firmware version: Software version 4.7.5.1.83.8.237.2.2 Last updated 28/11/17
4. Board version: Plusnet Hub One
5. DSL uptime: 0 days, 00:13:32
6. Data rate: 3447 / 42050
7. Maximum data rate: 5318 / 53305
8. Noise margin: 12.8 / 9.0
9. Line attenuation: 26.3 / 18.5
10. Signal attenuation: 25.3 / 19.4
11. Data sent/received: 462.8 MB / 4.4 GB
12. Broadband username: [email protected]
13. 2.4 GHz Wireless network/SSID: yyyyyyyy
14. 2.4 GHz Wireless connections: Enabled (802.11 b/g/n (up to 144 Mb/s))
15. 2.4 GHz Wireless security: WPA2
16. 2.4 GHz Wireless channel: Automatic (Smart Wireless)
17. 5 GHz Wireless network/SSID: yyyyyyyyyy
18. 5 GHz Wireless connections: Enabled (802.11 a/n/ac (up to 1300 Mb/s))
19. 5 GHz Wireless security: WPA2
20. 5 GHz Wireless channel: Automatic (Smart Wireless)
21. Firewall: Default
22. MAC Address: xxxxxxxxxx
23. Modulation: G.993.2 Annex B
24. Software variant: AA
25. Boot loader: 1.0.0

Colin

Edited by deleted (Tue 12-Dec-17 17:34:51)

In reply to a post by colinshead:

I believe that the DSLAM in the cabinet is programmed to try and maintain the download speed in preference to upload speed,

The amount of spectrum used for downstream and upstream is fixed by the bandplan. In essence, there are two bandplans for VDSL2 worldwide: 997 and 998. BT have indeed chosen to use the one that favours more downstream speed vs upstream, but there is nothing dynamic going on, beyond that choice made by BT back in 2012.

The static choice seems to average out at a 4:1 ratio down:up .

In reply to a post by colinshead:

which frankly is nonsense in my opinion, the obsession with download speed is driven largely perhaps by the marketing guys in the major ISP's, in reality many folk like myself would prefer a more balanced approach so that on-line backup etc. becomes more realistic.

You are welcome to hold your opinion, but the "marketing guys" probably choose to align the service with the biggest market rather than just your "many".

Last time Openreach published figures for the average volume of data downloaded per month vs the volume uploaded on NGA, it came out as a 7:1 ratio, down:up.

See These old statistics. Winter 2015 has the ratio; the subsequent quarters just show the total volume.

The truth is that, while some people want to upload more, the majority just seem to end up downloading more.