Not as high speed with Origin BB as I had with Plusnet

Hi All,

I am new here. I have used forums before, mainly to solve problems, reaching out to people with more experience than me on the particular subject.

I was with Plusnet on Fibre for about 2 years. I could reach DL speeds of 65-70Mbps (recorded over WiFi with Speednet) with relatively low pings ~10-15ms as well (my son, playing PS4, loved it).
When it came to renew, around a month ago, I realised they were going to increase the fee, so I started looking elsewhere.
The choice was between Sky, Vodafone or Talk Talk. Out it came Origin Broadband, out of the blue, from one of the comparison sites.
Their sales people were responding quite fast and I saw they were rated high in some reviewing sites.

I went for the Origin Max Fibre, where I was expecting comparative speeds, both DL and UL and ping latencies to what I was getting with Plusnet.
I ordered also an expensive router (ASUS DSL-AC68U) from them, thinking ahead of time, after the 18 months period, when I could re-use the router without being locked to the provider (for instance Plusnet's free router cannot be used with any other provider, as it is locked to them).

I got the router two or three days before the D-day, so I tried pluggin the router even while with Plusnet, to see if it was working (it did, though I did not manage to achieve the similar speeds I could get with my cheapo Plusnet router.
I thought this was due to the end of the service, they were winding down....?!

The first week with Origin was so & so. High latency figures (in the 50-60ms), low DL speeds, close to 40Mb, frequent dropouts.
As I work away from home, I could only check the speeds at the end of the week, so I mastered a way to monitor the speeds regularly, even when I was away, providing the line was up and running. I connected a raspberry pi (with home assistant running on it) via LAN into the router, and interrogated Speednet-CLI every 10 minutes with a python script, recorded the speeds (DL and UL) and stored them into an InfluxDB database, which I can display with InfluxDB viewer very easily and even remotely.

Talking of bad news. I had no internet at all for one day and repeating drop-outs in the middle of several nights (I have a server, which I would like to run with a static IP address, which Origin provides me with, but with dropouts it is difficult to get continuity of service - this server, running on a Synology NAS, tells me when there is a dropout and when the line comes back up - So I know exactly when the Broadband line drops out).

I thought I would leave it for the first couple of weeks to settle things down, given the new service. Though I don;t quite understand why that should be.

The frequency of the dropouts, once every night, more or less, and the fact that the router did not go back online quickly (I had to manually turn it back on after turning it off with the button), made me start thinking the router was at fault.
I contacted Origin several times, I know pretty much the names of all of the technical guys there. Some are friendly and helpful, Do not ask to talk to Adam or Tim. They are the worse ones.

Anyways, as I had not been sent a cheap router, as well as the expensive one (£150) I bought from Origin, I could not try if the router was indeed faulty.

After having a rather stable period for 1 and half week, reaching though a max speed of 50Mbps (peak) DL and 18-19Mbps UL, I had 3 dropouts in the middle of the night, 3 nights in a row, while I was away.
I had instructed my son to restart the router, to get things going.

This was the last straw. I bought a cheap TP-Link router, phoned Origin, who were still sorting things out with OR, apparently, but they never contact me, to update me on the progress or even check if things are going well at my end, unless I call them for problems.

Since I connected the new router, things are going better, no dropouts
The DL speeds jumped up from 40-50Mbps which the old router recorded (though I had constant dropouts) to 59-62Mbps, with pings of 10-20ms.
I still record high line attenuation, I think.
Upstream Downstream
Current Rate (Kbps) 19000 59998
Max Rate (Kbps) 24320 61439
SNR Margin (dB) 9.1 6.4
Line Attenuation (dB) 20.5 9.9
Errors (Pkts) 0 0

Despite the good news on the stability front, I am still unhappy about the max speed I can achieve with Origin. (only 55Mbps DL over WiFi on a good run, compared to the 65-70Mbps I reached with Plusnet)
I am about to agree with Origin to send the router back and get the cost of it refunded (the technical manager said over the phone they are happy to do that, but I will not send the router until someone will send me an email or something in writing to confirm they will pay for the router).

- Can someone advice me on what steps (technical, political,...) I can take with Origin to have them agree that there could be a fault of some sort, that does not let me reach the high speeds i was getting with Plusnet?
- Is it possible that the DL speed dropped so much when going from a Fibre supplier to another one? Isn't the copper, alluminium, etc.. the same from before? Isn;t the distance from the cabinet the same as it was before? What has changed? How can I tell?

I am getting nowhere when phoning Origin. It feels, whenever I phone, that I am wasting their time ("Ah, I can see the file, wow, this is going to tak e a long time!!!", and this after 3-35 minutes of waiting on a musical line), whereas I only want to get back to where I was before, one month and a bit in the service, and a lot of hours spent tweaking something that should come already tweaked.

I'd appreciate some thoughts on how I can go about approaching this, and if I should live with the current situation, accepting the technical issue has finally been resolved by replacing the router? Or if I should escalate the matter because I cannot achieve the same speed I could achieve with Plusnet?

Thanks
Jo

Edited by deleted (Tue 19-Nov-19 00:50:29)

Hi Jo, welcome to the forums.

I can�t help much as it�s sleep time for me, but I can explain how you have got to this unsatisfactory position. Which might help you when others turn up during the day.

First, unless things have changed, ASUS modem/routers have a generally bad reputation on these forums, the modem component being far from good. Though IIRC the latest one whatever it is may not be too bad. Plusnet were not �winding you down�, just an inferior modem to theirs.

It is possible you have the OK one but it is simply faulty. IIRC the complaints about ASUS modems were slowness, not dropouts.

The pure routers are very good, I had one myself, though the GUI was not particularly easy to play with, wanting to reboot every time you altered anything where other makes just adjusted in-flight for most things.

Second, your line has almost certainly been banded at 60Mbps (speed capped), the clue being the 59998 downstream sync. If a re-sync has been consistently giving that exact sync that is proved. This explains why your new modem/router is not reaching Plusnet speeds.

This will be because of the frequent re-sync�s. It is what the Openreach DLM on FTTC does on unstable lines, instead of the ADSLx type BT Wholesale one that adjusted the sync-time downstream SNRM to slow the line.

Given stability for a while Openreach DLM does usually remove the cap. But not always. The first removal is unlikely to be a full release, and can take two or more weeks to happen. Subsequent ones can be at intervals of only a few days until it gets back to what you had before.

For this to happen, avoid re-syncs as much as possible, though an occasional one should not be disastrous. I�ve been there, done that! More than once.

If you are on a TalkTalk Business Wholesale connection it is also possible they have a default setting of more stability than Plusnet, which could reduce your best sync, but that depends on several other factors, but that is a topic in its own right.

I hope that helps explain things, but it doesn�t solve it for you I�m afraid. Lights out time for me for now.

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 19-Nov-19 01:35:00)

Not a very good review here: https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/originbroadband.com

I would avoid origin company if I were u.

Thanks Roberto.
I have done a few manual syncs with the new TPLink router in the last couple of days.
Hopefully OpenReach will remove the cap soon. I will stop resyncing.

As i said before, even with the ASUS router, I had managed to achieve some sort of stability at lower speed (50Mbps max DL) for around 1 and half week without ever resyncing.
Then, for three nights in a row the router got stuck with this found in the log [" dnsmasq[239]: Maximum number of concurrent DNS queries reached (max: 150)"] no Internet in the house, and reboot to get Internet going again.

So, from the sound of your response, it feels like I should wait a few more weeks, return the ASUS router and get my money back for it, and hopefully I should be back to where "I belong" in terms of speed, soon....

Yep, one of those is evidently mine....

Unfortunately I am with them for the next 17 months -ish.
If you can recommend a way to easily jump ship without paying any penalty, please share

Edited by deleted (Tue 19-Nov-19 08:57:30)

Lesson are learned! Always read the review first before sign up. God, 17 months is a hell long time to get out of a jail free!

In reply to a post by adslmax:

Lesson are learned! Always read the review first before sign up. God, 17 months is a hell long time to get out of a jail free!

The OP did read some reviews that were positive. The problem with the Internet is that you can get overwhelmed by reviews both positive and negative and it can be difficult to weed the truth out of them.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

Lesson are learned! Always read the review first before sign up. ....

I was hoping to get a more constructive discussion on why I get a lower speed than I had before.

I agree this should not happen, but it sounds like it does happen whichever supplier you go with.
I experienced the same when I moved from BT to Sky, then to Plusnet (first Fibre). I never tried TalkTalk, but I heard same horror stories about them....

Just a side story, relevant to the matter.
I lived in France for 18 months in around 7 years ago. One of the cheapest offers for Broadband and TV and telephone all bundled together from Free (a french ISP) for less than 20 euro per month at the time (including landline costs), allowed me to reach 16Mbps DL with very low latency, and they gave me also the NAS where I could download stuff onto.
Though we think things are worse at the other side of the Channel, when I received the two boxes (router and NAS) I plugged everything in myself and it all worked (credentials were all setup and no porky pies related to Open Reach, this and that, were given to me - it all just worked reliably from day one).

In UK OpenReach own the lines, while paperwork companies sort out the bills for us, no wonder we will not be able to find a single Broadband company capable of providing a decent service which works out of the box.

In UK OpenReach own the lines, while paperwork companies sort out the bills for us, no wonder we will not be able to find a single Broadband company capable of providing a decent service which works out of the box.

That you are having problems doesn't mean that you can extend that to everyone. There are many including myself that have had few if any problems with their broadband. "It just works" is the experience of many if not a large majority of users.

If they have offered to give you your money back for the Asus router I would send it back as soon as possible because it has been the main reason for your speed problems. The ASUS DSL-AC68U is notoriously bad for causing low speeds and instability on VDSL2 lines, it has an inferior VDSL chipset (MediaTek I believe) which is bad news, you stated that even while still on PlusNet the speed had dropped with the Asus modem/router, then after changing to Origin which causes a DLM reset and removal of G.Inp, then once the line starts dropping frequently DLM will act to reduce the speeds further.

Now with the TPLink modem/router things are a lot better, that has the preferred Broadcom VDSL chipset, however as Robertos has said, you now appear to banded at 60Mbps.I wouldn't do manual resyncs, it won't help, you could ask Origin to request a DLM reset, some but not all ISPs can do this as it is a trial with Openreach.

In my opinion that model of Asus modem/router is not fit for purpose and should never have sold. I have read that it doesn't meet the specifications required for Openreach VDSL2 lines.