I have experience of one case where the speed was "acceptable" however another issue was causing a problem. The problem was always going to be at a joint rather than a random point in an unstressed cable. A BT Technician actually located a chamber that was totally overgrown and had probably not been opened for 20 years or more and found a joint there was causing problems. Using the TDR capability he knew there had to be a joint box somewhere and started digging and prodding in the verge. He actually remade quite a few whilst the chamber was open.

Yeah, I am not sure mine went into that sort of trouble! He pointed at a hole in the ground and said my cable runs through there but he couldn't find a joint there. Apparently, it was one solid run from my house, past a few hole covers to the next street where it joins to another run. The joints there seem OK and the line tests OK from that point. So it points to my cable.

Whether he is right or not, I couldn't tell you. But I hope they find and fix it.

I certainly did. A few years ago my line had erratic problems, usually after rain. The problem was that it was intermittent (the worst sort of fault to track down). Of course the problem was never there when the engineer came albeit remote line tests when the problem occurred showed it. Occasionally there would be some pair swaps and then, perhaps a month or two later it would recur.

Eventually it failed so badly that the line was virtually unusable. After a couple of visits with increasingly sophisticated kit it was established how far the fault was away from the house (about 8 metres). Unfortunately at the time my house was built, the then-GPO used what's called "direct buried cable". In essence, the distribution cable for the local houses was buried in the earth under the footpath and a couple of pairs T'd off to each house. There was no footbox. The cable, joint and all was just buried in the ground.

The result was a contractor had to dig up the junction, and engineer remade the joint with a great big plastic waterproof joint and the whole thing reburied (they wanted to put in a footbox, but there were other utilities which got in the way).

If your is like that it will take somebody with some cable tracing gear to find the joint before its dug up.

I did have other issued with slow VDSL2 later which turned out to be problems with the E-side pair (which took about 2 hours to resolve by pair swapping further towards the distribution point).

Thanks for the response. Yep, my guy also said that the cable was directly buried - without trunking in place. It's a pretty hefty cable that comes in, with some serious shielding around it. Like you say, it must be a joint, rather than fault of the cable itself.

How long did it take them to resolve it?

In may case about 10 days, but as they didn't actually identify where the fault was until Christmas Eve (and hence where to dig the hole) that went some way to explain the length of time.

The hole was dug by a contractor of course (and filled in afterwards). Fortunately I didn't have to be in whilst it was done, although as it happened over the holidays I was actually around. Sitting in a muddy, wet hole remaking a connection did not look like fun.

One such fault in this area recently was caused by mice

Edited by deleted (Thu 17-Sep-15 15:06:07)

Welp, another set of engineers arrived and did some work remotely, which, happily, has now resolved the noise with the voice line (moved me to a different set of wires between two junction points?).

However, this did little to improve my internet speeds. My latest xDSL stats:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/43025045/Screens...

And here are some graphs from DSLStats:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/43025045/SNRpert...
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/43025045/Bitload...
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/43025045/HLog-20...
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/43025045/QLN-201...

Should I go back to Zen for more troubleshooting or just get them to downgrade me to a lower product?

Thanks
Alex

At the top end there is now some of U2 in use which was not there before. It does suggest that you may not get much of an improvement and you may be right to consider moving to a 40/10 product - and saving a little.

You may be right. I am looking at MyDSLStats page and those with my downstream attenuation seem to be comparable to what I get.

A shame.. but still better than ADSL2 I had before, especially the upload.

As a last try, power off the modem tonight and then disconnect the line a few minutes later. Tomorrow morning, reboot the modem and then after 5 minutes remake the connection. Then see what you get.