That's confusing. (Not you - the PN message).

I've been thinking about it for a bit. It didn't make sense that your cabinet's initial cards were full so quickly, so perhaps there was a shortage of connections at the exchange. What that would be I have no idea, as even if I knew the detail of FTTC there, I've forgotten it .

The cabinet fibre does end up on some sort of Openreach distribution board, and I believe the GEA-Cablelinks connect to that. Anyone wishing to sell FTTC has to buy one of those to connect to their own MSAN. So BT Wholesale, Sky, TalkTalk and in some exchanges Zen have to have at least one. (It was the different ordering/installation times of those that in the past sometimes meant the first three of those had FTTC availability at different times).

So what this new port is I can only guess.

It could be that the BT Wholesale GEA-Cablelink(s) were congested. Either from them not having bought enough, (I thought one was sufficient), or not being able to as there weren't enough ports for any more on the Openreach distribution board. Maybe CPs need one GEA-Cablelink per enabled MSAN [shrug].

That could be total rot, but is a feasible explanation. I expect it will be something along those lines.

Given possible congestion there it would make sense for BT Wholesale to stop accepting orders, but my theory shouldn't stop Sky/TT/Zen ordering. Therefore the cabinet should still be available. Except we are using the BT Wholesale checker! I wonder what a Sky or TT check shows?

Another possibility is some sort of concentrator on the outside world interface of that Openreach distribution board, and that more ports were needed there ....

And so on, in the light of my ignorance.

Dunno

Thanks for trying, I don't feel such an idiot for asking now

Looking for an image-clue as to what a GEA-Cablelink is, the diagram and comment here on a TalkTalk forum, has a wry point to make about the cost of a GEA-Cablelink: Fibre rollout in town (third and fourth posts).

most likely the exchange has hit capacity issues on backhaul and they waiting for a new port to be added. New port = new backhaul pipe.

congestion caused by cabinet to exchange backhaul is extremely unlikely.

To update on this for anyone interested, the issue of evening speed drops on my connection has now been resolved with more capacity added at the exchange

550 circuits reorganised across 2 new virtual paths

No speed drops at all for the past five days.

Edited by s_h (Tue 02-Dec-14 22:10:32)

That's good.

Bad forward planning by BT Wholesale then. Perhaps they haven't adjusted their forecasting algorithms for FTTC rather than ADSLx level demands.

Ticket 92492407

I find that web browsing does interrupt both Lync and Webex audio and video conferencing. Even connected by wire to my router.

If you are still on BBYW1 that isn't surprising. It has severe speed capping at various times of day on several protocols.

How much does that cost you?

I wont take this thread too far off topic.

The point is that the traffic shaping does not work completely as it should and the problems happen at any time of the day.

I think RobertoS's point was that (from your signature) you appear to be on one of Plusnet's legacy products, with traffic management rules that are very different from the ones applied to the current fibre-based packages.

Those rules differ in the throttling, prioritisation, and in the time of day that various limits are in place - making it hard to compare.

http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/products/archi...

Your mention of Microsoft Lync is interesting, as it suggests corporate use. Are you using it over a VPN?

If so, you'll note (from the link) that PN treats VPN traffic as Gold in the BBYW option 1 package, rated identically to browsing, so making it plausible that interactions can be felt.

The package also places a 512Kbps limit 24x7 on VPN traffic; if both the conferencing and browsing occur over the VPN, this might explain why you see problems.