FTTP below spec

Have a 300/50 service installed.

Testing the downstream (using BTs internal test) - with Gbit Ethernet connected DIRECT to the BT Hub I get from 298 to 305 Mbps which is fine. If I use wireless from the hub or a remote WAP - high 200s so again fine.

The upstream is a different picture. Wired direct, wired through the network and switch, wireless to the hub, wireless to a network WAP all give very, very similar repeatable results 35.1 to 35.5 Mbps which is well down from the expected 48Mbps or there abouts.

Any thoughts on what may be going wrong? On why there appears to be a restriction.

That’s an odd one ..... maybe a remote profile issue ?

Often the advice given is to make a direct connection to the ONT.

That is on the list of things to try.

Also, may connect my Ubiquiti Gateway direct and take the BT hub out of the link too.

So far, UK based support, India based support, Enhanced IT support have all failed - next will be a tech visit. To myself and the Enhanced support, it is possible that an artificial cap is in place incorrectly - should be 50 but set to 35 (maybe). I can run 10 tests and get 35.4 Mbps 8 times and 0.1 or 0.2 lower the other times, so totally consistent.

Test direct. Nothing in between. Try a different box. You should *easily* be able to saturate 50 Mbps.

In fact you should easily be able to saturate the full wire speed up to a Gbps on a modern machine with clean setup.

It should be bouncing up to the 50M upload limit 24/7.

Edited by Pheasant (Tue 30-Mar-21 21:41:24)

In my (limited) experience , it is usual for speed tests of the upload speed on Openreach FTTP to be exactly the profile figure , or often a little above.

Whereas my 330/50 on g.Fast has just given
https://www.speedtest.net/my-result/i/4505223737
(over wifi with the router two floors below.

I reckon there’s summat amiss with your profile

Exactly ... I would be happy if it was 48, 50, or just above. 35 is way too low.


And have to agree about the profile being wrong.

Edited by MHC (Tue 30-Mar-21 21:48:10)

Def. looking that way. Testing with another box (direct in) removes all doubt that it’s something up with the local machine.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

In my (limited) experience , it is usual for speed tests of the upload speed on Openreach FTTP to be exactly the profile figure , or often a little above.

Whereas my 330/50 on g.Fast has just given
https://www.speedtest.net/my-result/i/4505223737
(over wifi with the router two floors below.

I reckon there’s summat amiss with your profile

That “southern ping” is incredible! I have never achieved below 18 up here and mostly it’s 20-24ms.

And I though mine were good ... moving to FTTP I see 5 ms on speedtest.net and around 7 on TBB and BT

edit to add:

Have managed to find a server with 4ms response!


One thing I notice with all the various servers on speedtest.net is that whereas the download is a little variable (WiFi) the upstream maxes out at 31.72 and flat lines all the way across so demonstrating that the problem is probably a cap/setting somewhere.

Edited by MHC (Tue 30-Mar-21 23:39:18)

I suspect your provider will be pushing for an Openreach faulting visit next. A somewhat pointless exercise, as there is little or nothing the bod can do other than confirm your findings, and pass up the chain .... but I guess they’ll have to adhere to process.

330/30 rather than 330/50 profile been set then. What’s the site engineer going to do about it?....not terribly much.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

330/30 rather than 330/50 profile been set then. What’s the site engineer going to do about it?....not terribly much.

Completely agree, but it would seem that’s the ‘path’ these kinda faults tend to follow.

Just a waste of resources. Surely it would be faster and cheaper to recheck/do the soft change first 🤷‍♂️

Yep .... ours is not to wonder why ....

Have made that point to BTBusiness, but they definitely insist a visit is needed. Yes, a waste or resources.

330/30 was once the 'top' tier for any On Demand FTTP. Now you can get 1000/220 straight off the bat as you can of course with native FTTP.

Seems someone has simply pushed the wrong profile to your service. Hopefully its resolved PDQ.

In reply to a post by MHC:

I can run 10 tests and get 35.4 Mbps 8 times and 0.1 or 0.2 lower the other times, so totally consistent.

Another advantage of FTTP is its a consistant fault and easy for the end user to prove.

Hope you get it sorted asap.

Yup, not like copper which can be intermittent!

...except for ONT copper side (ethernet) faults, which wont be diagnosable remotely / need a truck roll. Been there.

And that is 0.5m of Cat5e patch lead, which has been replaced "just in case". Everything disconnected from teh hub - network, 4G, free BT WiFi turned OFF, so just ONE PC, nothing else.

A "visit" which OR say will be external is next.

So they'll check the light (levels), may even swap the ONT. Fault wont move - it will be referred up and some bright spark will (hopefully) twig the profile does(not) match.....

Edited by Pheasant (Wed 31-Mar-21 13:23:15)

The "Enhanced IT support" agreed that it was almost certainly profile related, but nothing they could do directly. They were the ones to initiate the visit.

Yep just got to go thorough the motions

Only have a single BT hub with FTTP designation - do you know if a standard FTTC one will work?

Apologies. When I said ‘box’ I meant another laptop/desktop/PC to test with, not another router/hub. A hub just introduces the potential for delay or throttling, so is best removed for any ‘raw’ bandwidth speed testing.

To otherwise answer your question, I can’t give you a categoric yes/no as I don’t have a BT hub to test with. I have always used my own routers and do to this day. However any device that can provide a PPPoE client on its Ethernet port ought to connect fine!

Thx,

If I use a PC, do I need to define the IP address or will it be auto?

It is just a little awkward as I will need to take a docking station too.

You need to define a PPPoE connection for the ethernet port on your host machine and provide username & password for the service.

You should be able to set for the PPP protocol to obtain the IP address, DNS etc. Although you can manually assign those too.

My laptop 'test' connection has PPP grabbing all that, even with a fixed IP allotted for the service.

I'm having the exact same issue I'm on the 500/70 package with BT, downloads are just over 500 uploads are anything between 35 and 50 and quite erratic, during the test, rather than a steady number, on the Think BB speed test the analysis says my upload quality is as low as E (mostly better than that though)

I've connected directly to the hub, removed the hub and used Nest Wifi, changed cables, all the same. I reported it to BT yesterday and a telephone engineer randomly turned up today a bit puzzled as he was sent to check my telephone line but nothing about FTTP.

Edited by deleted (Thu 01-Apr-21 15:46:18)

BT technician visited on Friday and confirmed my findings. He changed the ONT and there was no difference.

On a "gut feel" he found a new BT Smart Hub 2 - consumer version which is a different base model to the Business hub. Installed and booted - first test was 48Mbps and further tests showed 50+ Mbps.

Faulty hub ? If so why would it only work up to 35Mbps?

Now need to wait for a replacement to try .

I really dislike ISP supplied routers with a passion. Anyway looks like the SH2 had firmware issues relatively recently...posted also on another thread I believe. There's a chance your business hub suffered a similar fate.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2020/07/isp-bt...

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

I really dislike ISP supplied routers with a passion.

Likewise, but if the world of POTS moves to ISP supplied routers, then replacing is going to be hard. Those of us on this forum are likely to be aware, and may use alternative VoIP suppliers, but the majority will probably go with the ISP supplied.

interestingly the Virgin Media hub 3 in modem mode still supports their propriatory VoIP.

I've seen that and it is similar to what I am seeing.

However, the Business Hub is the older SmartHub 1 - there may be some commonality of software modules if they are from the same supplier.

The one that works is actually a Smart Hub 2- consumer which is the one users claim has issues. Have it available but not fitted so that when a new Business Hub arrives I can check that and see, then if 35Mbps again, put the SH2 in place to confirm still 50, what I don't want is for the SH2 to update.

I'll be checking the firmware version on the new hub before install and then first off will be a speed test. And then wait to see if it updates.

No doubt yes. I'd expect in the fullness of time, that some folks may cotton on to the fact that an independent VOIP provider could be a good thing (cheaper, not tied-in with CP so more 'portable', etc, etc).

I suppose it doesn't really matter as long as the CP doesn't either lock-in or block / make it punitive or technically awkward for their end users to run another third party VOIP over the top of their service.

Did you ever get 50Meg up on testing, directly into the back of the ONT from your PC/laptop?

Edited by Pheasant (Mon 12-Apr-21 12:57:01)

Never managed to get and try it, however the BT Tech did on Friday And he left his Cat5e cable behind!.

I run two other VOIP services along side the BT cloud - but that is a networked base and handset. They all play happily together.

In reply to a post by MHC:

Never managed to get and try it, however the BT Tech did on Friday And he left his Cat5e cable behind!.

Minor compensation for the hassle

Definitely then your business hub at fault if BT chap could get 50 out of the box. Not a profile issue.

Edited by Pheasant (Mon 12-Apr-21 13:05:43)

Tbh, they're not as bad as they used to be, and to say you get the SH2 free with some BT packages, that's not bad!

Nice new business hub arrived today.

Powered up and checked firmware version without connecting to the ONT - an older version than my current hub.

I did a full set of tests: Wireless and Wired to the hub. BT Wholesale Test, Fast.com, TBB, speedtest.net - so 8 tests, on my original hub, the Residential Hub, and new (earlier firmware) business hub.

In every case the difference between wired and wireless was negligible and could be ignored. On downstream the speed seen from each tester was consistent irrespective of the hub and always 300Mbps and above (Fast gave one at 320Mbps).

However, with upstream, the original business hub gave 35Mbps on BT and around 32Mbps on the others. Moving to the Residential Hub saw the speeds jump right up with 51-52 on BT and 48-50 on the others. Then changed to the new Business hub - straight back down to the low 30s.

It appears that the Business hub is the problem ... at present, BT are unsure on how to progress as we know the profile and service are correct and 50Mbps is achievable.


Another attempt late to get my PC talking to the ONT.


Any other suggestions?

Well it’s purely a BT business hub firmware bug/issue. Totally up to them to resolve. In the meantime you’re owed pro-rated compensation for all the days your service is under delivering. Not much probably in the grand scheme of things, but it may help to focus minds if you remind them.

It would appear at least on the surface that it’s the same/related speed profile bug in the firmware of the business hub as they were known to have mid last year in their residential hubs.

Presumably this would affect other business hub customers, as it did residential hub customers although (again presumably) the outright numbers may be lower and hence this issue is not widely realised nor indeed been addressed. In any event BT support teams need to escalate the issue to the appropriate folk internally to resolve.

I don’t think you need any other suggestions, you have categorically proved that the issue is with the BT Business badged routers, and some firmware glitch. It is BTB’s issue to resolve now.

Easy enough to resolve - send me a BT Residential Hub!