constant packet loss since 'upgrade' to 21cn

Hi,

I've always had a flaky internet connection as my Exchange is 5km or so away (I'm connected to Kennford exchange) and often goes down when the phone rings (15 or so engineers not been able to fix), anyway my connection was last week upgraded from 20cn to 21cn but ever since I've been 'upgraded' I've had constant packet loss all the time (hardly ever packet loss before and when I did it was very small like 1 or 2% not the constant packet loss I'm getting now).
I've (hopefully) attached a pic showing it happening.

My Broadband Ping

The issue I have is that I use my internet connection to work as I trade on Betfair on the sports markets and have streaming graphs for it etc and this constant packet loss is causing big issues with it as I now get big ping spikes every 5 seconds or so that cause my software/graphs to freeze for a couple of seconds making it impossible to trade, I also like to game and it's impossible to do so online with it, pingtest shows up results like ping of 265 with a jitter of 450 for instance where as before it was 40 and 2 at worst.

I've got my ISP looking into it for me but wondered if anyone knew what the issue could be?.

thanks
Mike

Can you post you stats from your router (SNR, Attenuation, connection rate).

It could just be the distance is not good for ADSL2+ and requesting the connection to be set back down to ADSL may give you back the stability (or an increase in target SNR may have the same effect).

Hi,

thanks for looking, my router stats are

SNR 6
Attenuation 58 down 31.5 up
connection rate 3456 down and 608 up

I should point out that the exchange was due a BT 21cn upgrade in May 2013 but when BDUK was signed for this area it was stopped and on samknows and BT availability checker it now says it's due March 2014 (same time as fibre is due on exchange due to BDUK). The connection now is on the Talk Talk 21cn back haul and it's currently been set to ADSL, we've also tried it with a noise margin of 15 and even set it to a fixed line 512kbs line which gave a noise margin of something like 27 and nothing has changed.

Regards
Mike

In reply to a post by IranianGiraffe:

I should point out that the exchange was due a BT 21cn upgrade in May 2013 but when BDUK was signed for this area it was stopped and on samknows and BT availability checker it now says it's due March 2014 (same time as fibre is due on exchange due to BDUK). The connection now is on the Talk Talk 21cn back haul and it's currently been set to ADSL

In that case, you're not on BT 21CN at all, but on the TalkTalk network. Your line will be connected to a TalkTalk MSAN at the exchange (not the BT Wholesale 20CN DSLAM or 21CN MSAN), which provides the ADSL service on your line and connects you to the Internet via TalkTalk's network.


There's two possible ways your line is configured.

One is 'full LLU', where TalkTalk rent MPF (a pair of wires) from BT Openreach, and the TalkTalk MSAN provides both voice and ADSL service - in this case you pay TalkTalk for both voice and broadband.

The other alternative is 'partial LLU', where TalkTalk rent SMPF (the ability to put broadband on an existing voice line) from BT Openreach, and the TalkTalk MSAN provides ADSL service whilst another company rents wholesale voice service from BT Openreach and bills you for voice phone service.


In either case, you need to take broadband faults up with TalkTalk, who use their own engineers to work on their equipment and request BT Openreach engineers to repair faulty BT Openreach assets.

Have TalkTalk moved you to another port on their MSAN? It's possible the line card port or the DSL/voice splitter is faulty.

So are you now with AAISP, or have you moved on. If so, to which ISP please?

When you said you were "upgraded" to 21CN, you are slightly confused, as many are at first by the term.

It sounds as though you are on TalkTalk Wholesale with your new ISP? That is ADSL2+, but not 21CN. 21CN, properly known as WBC, is merely BT Wholesale's ADSL2+ service.

Assuming the upgrade was either a migration or a change of package, your connection will have been moved to a different piece of exchange equipment. I'd put my bet on either a bad contact in the rewiring there, or a faulty line card, which is what your line actually plugs in to in the end.

Pretty much "Snap" . You must have been about to post as I started typing.

Hi guys,

Many thanks for your replies, I am indeed with AAISP and the first part of the email I got from them said

"We currently provide broadband to you using older ADSL1 technology using
BT back-haul. Wherever possible we have an ongoing programme to upgrade
lines to newer ADSL2+ technology (21st Century Networking)."

Sorry about the confusion when I put I've been upgraded to 21cn, After reading the first part of the email they sent and the fact I've never really looked into the details of ADSL2+ as I'm a long way from exchange and saw speed wise it wouldn't benefit me, I (like a fair few it seems) assumed that 21cn was ADSL2+ but from reading your replies I see that it's a BT fancy name for their ADSL2+ service like Infinity is for their fibre service.

I should also point out later on in the email they do mention Talk Talk wholesale as now being the back-haul provider and my connection will be down for a few minutes only (which it was) while it is rejumpered at the exchange.

So it looks like it's either a bad contact in the rewiring or a faulty line card then?

Thanks again
Mike

I should also point out later on in the email they do mention Talk Talk wholesale as now being the back-haul provider and my connection will be down for a few minutes only (which it was) while it is rejumpered at the exchange.

So it looks like it's either a bad contact in the rewiring or a faulty line card then?

That's what I reckon Mike, if it started with or soon after the swap.

I would have thought AAISP could sort this out given their reputation for good support.

So would I seem to, but what I'm suggesting doesn't seem to be something that occurs to any ISP's first line support.

Edited by RobertoS (Mon 30-Sep-13 12:26:20)