Fibre, cause of connection issue?

A few years ago I had a problem with a Bright Box that failed to connect for very long and when in use would continuously re-sync. The issue (discussed on this thread ) was solved by using the other router that Orange used at the time, the DGN1000. All this time I've had a rock steady connection, with re-syncs months apart... until recently.

Our exchange was 20CN so only up to 8Mbps services were available at the time. At the back end of last year they updated the exchange to 21CN and added Fibre. We were flooded by BT trying to sign us all up, they had all our emails from that competition they ran a few years back.

About couple of months ago I lost my connection and land line phone for about 20 minutes. When it came back up I noticed that the upload speed was much lower than it should be. It had always been fixed at 448Kbps but it was now 125Kbps. A few days later it went up over 600Kbps then up to 956Kbps where it has stayed. This seemed rather odd having had it at 448Kbps all this time. I thought maybe they had upgraded the connection when they upgraded the exchange. But my download was still syncing just over 6200Kbps and was not much different than before.

Last week the download sync speed started to get faster, over 6500Kbps then over 7200Kbps. BT wholesale speed tester was showing that I could only achieve 7.15Mbps maximum. With a line attenuation of 42.5 I thought I would struggle to get to the maximum of an 8Mbps line. I also noticed that the IP Profile was no longer limited to steps of 0.5Mbps, I'm sure I read 6.02Mbps at one point with the actual download speed being about 6.4Mbps. I'm confused.

Then... crash and burn. The router re-synced and it went to 1500Kbps download and noise margin of 24. I decided to run router stats for a while tonight and at one point about 7pm the noise margin dropped from 24dB to 2dB and has not changed since then (2 hours later) although the DGN1000 itself still reports 24dB. All a bit confusing.

Although I'm paying for a 16Mb service I've still only been getting less than 8Mbps even though the exchange can now handle ADSL2/2+ and Fibre and availability checkers tell me that I can get ADSL2/2+ and Fibre. Now I'm getting lest than 2Mb. I had been recently checking what other ISP's are offering when I was suddenly hit with a line from BT wholesale availability checker regarding FTTC...

"Sorry your cabinet is temporarily unavailable, capacity will be restored as soon as possible."

On this page it also states that I can not get higher line rate than 6Mbps down or 0.5Mbps up even though my current up speed is almost twice this and I have been above 6Mbps for almost 2 years. It states my line can actually do no more than 2.5 on ADSL Max and 3 on ADSL2/2+ these figures are rubbish as the line has been doing twice this easily.

So this is where I ask for help. Are the recent upgrades to the exchange and introduction of ADSL2/2+ & fibre my problem or is something else going on here? Is this the cause of my up/down connection that I can not use for very much given it's now slow speed? Does anyone have any idea what might be going on with my line? EE have no service status page that I know of and ringing them only gets you the fools that know nothing and read from a script.

Does this sequence of events even sound familiar to anyone? Any suggestions or ideas would be appreciated.

DGN1000 (the Orange provided one) stats...
Downstream
Connection speed 1512Kbps
Line Attenuation 42.9dB
Noise Margin 24.7dB (RouterStats is reporting 0dB - 2dB)
Upstream
Connection Speed 956Kbps
Line Attenuation 24.0dB
Noise Margin 10.4dB

I have no idea what mode the router is trying to use as it does not provide this information. The old Bright Box used to say G992.1(G.DMT).

EDIT: I've just noticed that telephone conversations sound like a very old black and white film. Not good.
FURTHER EDIT: BT wholesale speed test further diagnostics says I have a 2Mb line. Upload up to 0.83

Edited by deleted (Thu 13-Feb-14 22:47:43)

You are no longer on G.DMT, cuz your Up sync >> 448K. You are now being supplied with 21CN WBC ADSL2+, altho' it is possible that the DLM has downgraded it to ADSL2. Either way you should be getting about 8 Meg Down sync. Do you still have the DG834? You could put that in and posiibly find the ADSL Mode from http://www.kitz.co.uk/routers/netgeardg834_interleav...

Ignore the BT wholesale availability checker as to speeds; they are only estimates and are often under. They predict my 20 Meg line at 13 Megs for yonks. Your attn. is the best predictor of speeds.

The introduction of FTTC & 21CN should not affect your speeds, but when anybody is messing about in cab anything can happen. I have the odd weekend where I get loads of discons but come Mon it all clears up. I put that down to some eng messing about in exchange or cab near my line and when the day shift comes in they notice something amiss; I never call Orange.

No, your problem is:

Noise Margin 24.7dB

but if you are hearing noise on your line with a corded phone and no router using the QLT (17070) you need to report a voice fault to your voice provider, w/out mentioning BB. Fixing voice faults will often fix BB as well.

In reply to a post by Kail:

FURTHER EDIT: BT wholesale speed test further diagnostics says I have a 2Mb line. Upload up to 0.83

Post full further diagnostics text boxes only.

Thanks. Good idea i'll dig the DG834 out tomorrow, looks like i'll be off work again with this weather. I'll post back when I've had a go.

I've tried the DG834 and there was a problem. It connected to the internet but when I managed to log in after it hanging a few times, only part of the web interface was displayed. I had previously spotted a problem with the DGN1000 and using Firefox it displayed a number of the status pages incorrectly or not at all in the case of the attached devices page. Using IE solved that but no luck this time. Not sure if the DG834 has a problem. I could login and It worked fine before I hooked up the ADSL, then it either hung or failed to respond to login requests. The ADSL still worked and I had access to the net.

I fired up telnet and it just start up and hung with a flashing prompt, no activity. Not sure what was going on there. As I had net access I ran a speed test off this site and got this...
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/button/13923...
Clearly something has changed, I checked BT Wholesale availability checker and the FTTC is back up and available between 20-50Mbps for my line.

I gave up on the Netgear DG834 and dug out the flacky Brightbox as it at least might tell me what the connection is. It connected fine but then that was never it's problem. Re-ran speed test...
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/button/13923...
I also ran the BT wholesale speed checker again and got...
6.06Mbps download with a connection range of 2Mbps-7.15Mbps, IP Profile of 6.12Mbps.
0.9Mbps upload with maximum achievable speed of 0.83Mbps, Upstream IP Profile of 0.83Mbps.
I'm not sure how the upload can actually be more than the profile and upper limit. Compressed data being counted? Not sure about that I always thought it was a raw data count.

At least I could get to the BrightBox's stats...
Status:
Configured Current
Line Status --- SHOWTIME
Link Type --- Interleaved Path
Operation Mode Automatic G992.5(ADSL2+)
Data Rate Information:
Stream Type Actual Data Rate
Upstream 1073 (Kbps.)
Downstream 6937 (Kbps.)
Defect/Failure Indication:
Operation Data Upstream Downstream
Noise Margin 5.4 dB 3.1 dB
Line Attenuation 24.8 dB 46.5 dB
Indicator Name Near End Indicator Far End Indicator
Output Power 12.7 dBm 0.0 dBm
Fast Path FEC Correction NA NA
Interleaved Path FEC Correction 43069 509
Fast Path CRC Error NA NA
Interleaved Path CRC Error 18 0
Loss of Signal Defect 0 0
Fast Path HEC Error STR NA NA
Interleaved Path HEC Error 235 0
Error Seconds 13 0
Statistics:
Received Cells 900135
Transmitted Cells 153220

The noise margin has dropped and it is obviously ADSL2+ as the router reports but not sure why I was dumped onto a 2Mb line for a while. Am I still only limited to 8Mbps? The maximum download I can hope for is 7.15Mbps according to BT Wholesale speed checker but then the above test with the DG834 has higher than that. My upload also exceeds what they say is possible.

Do you think I should give the Bright Box another run out? I'm thinking (stupidly?)... if I'm on ADSL2+ then they may have switched me onto new equipment? Previous problem seemed to be the BroadCom chip used by the BT HUB2 and BrightBox as the Texas Instruments/ Infineon chips faired better on the Netgears. It always used to disconnect after a period of time and it would do it more frequently at night when the noise margin dropped to 0.

You are now getting ideal figures from the BrightBox.

Note it reports your attn. @ 46.5 dB from which you can expect about 6.5 Meg, You are getting a bit more as your DLM has reduced NM to 3 dB. . IP Profile = 88.2% sync is spot on.

You are limited (to < 8 Meg) only by the length of line.

Keep using the BrightBox as long as it continues like this.

Can I recommend that you order FTTC quickly before the Cab fills up again!

That will sort both upload and download issues.

Will also get you a new router from whoever you pick, oddly the Homehub 5 from BT seems to be a good box and copes with FTTC very well, but most of the routers seem to be reasonable for normal use.

It may be that the router you were using was locked to ADSL and this was making your connection around the 2Mb you have clearly been migrated to ADSL2+ when the upload changed. This is likely to be because BT is withdrawing the ADSL service where it has the WBC ( ADSL2+) service available.

In reply to a post by kitcat:

Can I recommend that you order FTTC quickly before the Cab fills up again!

Would like to get fibre but it is currently too expensive. A lot of the cheaper and similar priced fibre offers actually charge a lot more for the phone services I currently use. When I signed up Orange (now EE) were the cheapest for what I need and they still are. It would be good to upgrade but can not possibly do it right now.

Thanks for the help.

It re-synced a little while after my last post, it is running a little slower now, down 210Kbps. It has been stable since that single re-sync and the up time is currently 1 day 19:46:47.

Should I be concerned about the error seconds and loss of signal during that time?

Status:
Configured Current
Line Status --- SHOWTIME
Link Type --- Interleaved Path
Operation Mode Automatic G992.5(ADSL2+)
Data Rate Information:
Stream Type Actual Data Rate
Upstream 1087 (Kbps.)
Downstream 6727 (Kbps.)
Defect/Failure Indication:
Operation Data Upstream Downstream
Noise Margin 6.6 dB 3.6 dB
Line Attenuation 24.9 dB 47.0 dB
Indicator Name Near End Indicator Far End Indicator
Output Power 12.7 dBm 0.0 dBm
Fast Path FEC Correction NA NA
Interleaved Path FEC Correction 1730259 1750
Fast Path CRC Error NA NA
Interleaved Path CRC Error 2092 250
Loss of Signal Defect 11 0
Fast Path HEC Error STR NA NA
Interleaved Path HEC Error 9853 227
Error Seconds 1453 171
Statistics:
Received Cells 44665431
Transmitted Cells 3346728

Previously these errors had come in bursts and it was near impossible to tell when and why they were happening. Of course the DGN1000 did not give such a detailed read out of what was going on, so this may have previously gone unnoticed while using the DGN1000. The BrightBox seems to be fine in use at the moment but I'm limited to 1492 packet size on my network, not a major disappointment I think I can live with that.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

You are limited (to < 8 Meg) only by the length of line.

Given the upload is exceeding what they say the line can do I take it the 7.15Mbps is not a fixed value but a reasonable guess based on what they know about the line? If the line was shorter or longer this value would go up or down?

On a side note, I noticed that there is a lot of talk of an recent firmware upgrade for the BrightBox. I take it I will automatically get an update at some point soon? I am using an Orange issued BrightBox1 from the early days. Current verison...
Runtime Code Version: v0.09.82.0001-OT (Mon Nov 28 17:30:50 2011)
Boot Code Version: v1.00.09.0002-OT (Wed Nov 9 10:21:21 2011)
ADSL Modem Code Version: A2pD035b.d23i

Thanks again for the helpful suggestions.

In reply to a post by Kail:

Should I be concerned about the error seconds and loss of signal during that time?

ES are OK. You've had 11 discons since you rebooted; the last 44 hours ago.

I'm limited to 1492 packet size on my network

Sez who? Sez your router as it hasn't had the earlier update:

Runtime Code Version: v0.09.94.0006-OT (Fri Sep 21 03:00:26 2012)

that allowed MTU = 1500.

I take it the 7.15Mbps is not a fixed value but a reasonable guess based on what they know about the line?

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

Ignore the BT wholesale availability checker as to speeds; they are only estimates and are often under. Your attn. is the best predictor of speeds.

Edited by XRaySpeX (Sun 16-Feb-14 15:48:22)