right?

or wrong?
my exchange which is CLNEW is classed by ofcom as Market3-
Four or more 'principal' operators provide broadband services at this exchange.
Service in this area has been deregulated!
so if you look at the providers there are-
AOL=TTB
BT=working but NO adsl2
O2/Be=Gone
C&W=Gone
Pipex=Gone
Sky=working
talktalk=working
Tiscali=gone
so when i was with BE used to get 10meg rock solid for years.
Now the best i can get from ALL providers is 5meg?
what is going on here then?
can i report this to Ofcom as NOT being Market 3?

No point on reporting since they are changing from Market 1,2,3 to Markets A and B

On your speeds they are irrelevant to the market definition, and without seeing the line stats it is probably down to the nice matching of hardware to the DSLAM and Be tweaking every speed parameter possible on their kit years ago.

NOTE: If the 5 Meg is the pre-sales estimate then this is due to pressure to only advertise what might be possible, so providers will tend to mention a lower figure now than five or six years ago.

?
BT Wholesale ADSL2+ is showing on Samknows for that exchange.

Also Sky and TalkTalk are both there.

Edited by RobertoS (Fri 04-Jul-14 14:19:34)

thank you for the clarification Mr Saffron,you are a font of knowledge.

that is strange RobertoS as when i called them to see about moving over to them
they too said that i could only get 5mbps but like MrSaffron said may be a
conservative estimate?

Probably going off the dodgy figures from this checker.

Can you copy and paste the table please? And the cabinet number from the line above it.

I get estimated 4 Mbps and I used to get 13Mbps on the line with that ISP. Estimates can be wildly out but usually quite conservative. No ISP wants to tell you that you're going to get 20Mbps and only deliver 12... So it works in their favour to be a tad conservative

Edited by ukhardy07 (Fri 04-Jul-14 15:53:46)

cant see a cabinet number but this is the info i got-
BT BROADBAND AVAILABILITY CHECKER
Telephone Number *********** on Exchange NEW CROSS
Featured Products

Downstream Line Rate(Mbps)

Upstream Line Rate(Mbps)

Downstream Range(Mbps)

Availability Date

WBC ADSL 2+ Up to 5 -- 4 to 6 Available
WBC ADSL 2+ Annex M Up to 5 Up to 1 4 to 6 Available
ADSL Max Up to 5 -- 3.5 to 7.5 Available
WBC Fixed Rate 2 -- -- Available
Fixed Rate 2 -- -- Available
Other Offerings
Copper Multicast -- -- -- Available
For all ADSL and WBC Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) services, the stable line rate will be determined

during the first 10 days of service usage.

Throughput/download speeds will be less than line rates and can be affected by a number of factors

within and external to BT's network, Communication Providers' networks and within customer

premises.

The Stop Sale date for Datastream is from 30-Jun-2012; the Formal Retirement date for Datastream

is from 30-Jun-2014. The Stop Sale date for IPstream is from 30-Nov-2012; the Formal Retirement

date for IPstream is from 30-Jun-2014.

If the End User wishes to migrate from their current Broadband supplier they will need to contact

them in the first instance to obtain a MAC (Migrations Authorisation) Code, and then contact their

new Broadband supplier to arrange for the service to be migrated.

Note: Please note that postcode and address check results are indicative only. Most accurate

results can be obtained from a telephone number check.
Thank you for your interest.

thanx for your time RobertoS

thanx for that ukhardy07 but the big question is by how much??

Like I said I was estimated 4Mbps on one of my lines but got 13Mbps

If you have had 10 before there's no reason that will change. Ignore the estimates . This is assuming it's the same line? Who's your Internet with right now and what's the speeds?

EDIT: Can you provide us line stats of your current line that's the best way forward. If you don't know how to get this we can advise you... Let us know your ISP and the router you are using

Edited by ukhardy07 (Fri 04-Jul-14 23:24:01)

You do have at least 4 providers there: BT (which does happen to be 21CN ADSL2+ but that is irrelevant for counting Market operators), Sky, TT, C&W (why do you say they are gone?) + Virgin Cable.

c&w cant find who they resell to!
they used to be good had them years ago but got sold to NTL then virgin??
went through virgin web check and
they said NO and then linked me to some REALLY bad isp

thanx for your time XRaySpeX

C&W got bought by Vodafone.

i am using a tp TD-W8968 and with vivaciti getting rerouted on monday.


Upstream Downstream
Current Rate (Kbps) 502 6369
Max Rate (Kbps) 548 7024
SNR Margin (dB) 19.5 13.2
Line Attenuation (dB) 27.1 46.7
Occupancy (%) 91 90
Errors (Pkts) 0 0

thanx for your time ukhardy07

Oooppss my bad never knew that,thanx BatBoy

I believe Tesco offer it

What do you mean re routed

A 46db line I would expect around 7Mbps max...

That said....
Based on those stats I think you could probably get a couple more Mbps given the high noise margin... It looks like the cabling to your house may be better than standard.... You say you had 10 Mbps so that should be possible again but I would expect more around the 8Mbps mark and anything above would be a bonus.

The noise margin is high which generally indicates that the ISP has had to slow down your speeds, causing a higher noise margin, & they do this to combat instability. So it's likely your line was unstable at higher speeds hence the slower speeds.

To combat this ensure you're in the master and everything is filtered. Not a lot else you can do.

Switching ips may help or you could call the current ISP and ask if they can lower your noise margin to 6db. That would give you a good speed bump.

tesco

thanx Batboy

i am far away from the exchange and the 10mbps was with BE.
will do as you suggest.

thanx for your input ukhardy07

Did you tweak your be connection to a 3db noise margin by any chance? They allowed this as standard. If so that would explain a lot.

Also what was the impetus for moving away from be? You could have just held off onto the sky takeover there's no reason that would have been worse.

I personally would get onto an LLU provider as it'll be a lot cheaper and extreeeemelly unlikely slower than the 6Mbps seen right now.
That said no reason vivatchi can't provide a better speed with a lower noise margin and they have brilliant support or so I've heard.
What are you paying ATM?
Are you in the master phone socket?

Edited by ukhardy07 (Sun 06-Jul-14 03:01:33)

Another cheapo, though not heard any moans lately.
http://www.tescobroadband.com/tesco-broadband?icid=b...

?

hi ukhardy07
i didn't tweak anything my end.
moved from Be as i didn't want sLy and reading about their antics on this forum im
glad i did.
am in the master socket + an i plate.
wasn't too bad then about a month ago all went T*ts up constant dropping
especially during the day & slowing down.
asked for my MAC and was told eventually that they are dropping daisy.
am getting a new connection tomorrow so i will have to see what occurs
am paying $21 per month.
thanx for your help

I think he meant "Did you set the Gaming Profile" in your Be control panel . Amongst other things that set a 3dB noise margin.

Exactly I could not remember the exact name of it at the time.

Or he may have asked Support to put him on the Gaming Profile, of course .

Edited by RobertoS (Sun 06-Jul-14 23:25:08)

We can see evidence of the dropping in your line stats, hence the noise margin is a lot higher than it should be. This is the cause of your slow speeds. By lowering your speeds your line can handle more interference without the connection dropping, this shows as a higher noise margin. In my opinion this is akin to masking a problem and not resolving it entirely. So it�s likely something is causing the line to drop that wasn�t there before.

You say you are getting a new connection, that seems quite extreme. Do you mean an entire new line?

Also with regards to your migration away from Be to avoid Sky, you may have jumped the gun a little too soon there. The majority of unhappy users who migrated are those who had slower speeds with Sky than on Be. This only affected users generally who had poor setups (I doubt it would have affected you with a near perfect setup).

This is because Sky used to go for a setup where the line will almost never drop out.

Take a user on o2. They are not in the master telephone socket and are using say a cheap ARGOS phone extension lead. On o2 their broadband may drop out 2 times a day but they get fast speeds.

Now they move to Sky. Sky run line management and this line management literally wants no drop outs. A Sky line very often stays connected for weeks on end. This user who is not in the master socket and had 2 drop outs per day on O2 is now on Sky. On Sky they have a much slower speed, but their line never drops. The user is unhappy with Sky as they see �it�s slower� and they complain. The root of the issue is their setup and not the ISP. Do you now see why some users were so unhappy? 2 different ISPs, 2 different strategies. Like I say Sky was all about stability and reliability over speed. This caused slowdowns for some.

Take another user on O2 or Be. Perfect setup like yourself. When they moved over to Sky they already had a reliable line without dropouts. Sky would train them at a speed the same as they had previously. In some cases if the line was stable enough Sky could actually automatically apply a 3db noise margin and the speeds could be better than it was on o2. So if your setup was right generally it would work out.

Regardless of the line training, users could contact Sky and get a manual speed applied by customer service which virtually always matched their Be and O2 speeds. Of course this would reintroduce the dropouts each day but Sky did set manual profiles if you spoke to customer solutions team� This did granted often result in a slower upload but the download matched more often than not.

These users of course then got the instability reintroduced if their setup remained wrong.

Anyway that�s a history lesson as since all of this Sky have relaxed their standards and now actually give faster speeds� So they now accept those drop outs a lot more. In summary I doubt your line would have been worse with Sky than on Be.

I genuinely think you may have a line fault if the lines dropping out and was not before. However getting an ISP to investigate is almost impossible. If heightening the noise margin stops the dropouts and you�re still above the BT fault threshold speed which is extremely low (often below 1Mbps) you�re stuck.

In terms of the o2 network vs the Sky network, in many respects the network which Be used was inferior to the Sky network. Telefonica which run o2 (even o2 mobile in the UK) and owned the broadband infrastructure have serious debt issues. This means their network was literally starved of investment and traffic management had to be used. They couldn�t afford to upgrade the network to support fibre optic so they ultimately sold it. In terms of the Sky network they took the easynet network which was already very good and invested an unbelievable amount of money into this. Look at it this way, if it�s handling speeds of 80Mbps it�ll easily provide you that 10Mbps without any slowdowns.

This even applies to O2 in terms of their mobile coverage. Noticed with O2 there isn't that much 3G coverage.... Why? Well again telefonica are struggling with their debt issues. This is why on the whole EE has a much better 3G coverage of the UK. O2 aren't in a good financial position.

In terms of vivatchi however they do have brilliant support and I trust and have every faith that they can help you better than a lot of ISPs, they are probably far superior in terms of customer service to Sky. I am currently with BT and trust me they aren�t even 10% of the customer service to Sky though. If I had an issue with Sky and it was ongoing I was assigned a specific customer service representative and had their personal email. So overall not too bad.

If you are getting a new line put in it�s literally a lottery whether it�ll be better. You could be connected to a shorted D-side / E-side, basically meaning the line could be shorter and faster. OR the only available line may be a lot longer and it could be a lot worse. It�s a risk.

EDIT: I realise I've gone off on a tangent here so I hope some of it helps.

To sum up are you getting a new line is that whats happening? I think that's the main question here.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Sun 06-Jul-14 23:50:58)

He means he is moving from LLU (Daisy on TT tails) to a BT connection via Enta, I have just gone through this process as have others. Some are experiencing odd slow downs at peak times on their new Enta connections, but I cant say I have yet and never did with Daisy.

The slow speeds are not down to the network it's because the sync speed is just over 6Mbps. They just need the SNR lowering to get those speeds back up. I'm surprised vivatchi haven't noticed this.

Moving over networks may kick-start the noise margin to be reset but it would have been easier to just do it. Can vivatchi manually change the SNR? I'm not sure if it's more challenging via a BT based connection?

just a normal profile from Be as i remember.

defo a fountain of knowledge
thanx for all of the Info.

yeap you are right Banger

i have no idea but will ask.
thanx again ukhardy07

Vivaciti WE LUV YOU!!!!!

i have been switched over to where?

dont know dont care

for about a week now.

BUT where ever it is leave it

very stable and good speed

Thanx

Entanet International on BT tails.

What's this "BT tails", that I've seen two or three times recently?

The Entanet BT-based service is via WBC, just like nearly every ISP in the country^*. The link is User >> BT Wholesale MSAN at the exchange >> BT Cloud >> one of 20 BT Wholesale nodes, where all BTW based ISPs rent MSILs.

An MSIL is the 21CN equivalent of a BT Central, and is where the ISP takes control of the traffic and returns the data requested by the user.

* Strictly speaking, so far as I know all except Enta use WBMC. BTW route each such ISP's traffic to one or more of the twenty depending on where the ISP decides to rent MSILs. For instance, Plusnet has MSILs on WBMC at Colindale, Faraday and Stepney. Then there is IPSC for non-WBC enabled exchanges, with a similar setup. That has ten nodes sited at WBC node locations but independent of WBC. Entanet uses all ten, (unless it has ditched any as IPSC demand falls), Plusnet uses Colindale and Faraday.

Edited by RobertoS (Mon 14-Jul-14 20:25:35)

BT Tails = BT Line card and MSAN, TT Tails = Line and MSAN you get the idea. No Enta Tails available at my exchange.

Wrong.

But I've just spent a long time trying to explain clearly how you are wrong, but got too tired and it reads as clearly as mud. Maybe this will do instead.

You can get Enta at nearly every exchange. There are no retail Enta LLU products even at the 20 exchanges where they have an LLU presence.

Technically the line from the BT Wholesale MSAN could be described as a BT Tail as the service over the Openreach line to you is purchased by BT Wholesale and Ofcom insists on equivalence. Nobody except you seems to be using that term in respect of BT Wholesale services but you. (There are two mentions since Jan 13 and the Zen forum one of those may be where you picked up an incorrect usage. The other may be correct).

TalkTalk tails are where TalkTalk rent the connection from their DSLAM to the user off another supplier - Openreach. Some Daisy services use TT Tails. Where Daisy picks up the traffic from there I don't know, but it isn't a full TalkTalk service.

The only place Enta tails exist is at the 20 exchanges and those are not relevant. You wouldn't be on one even if connected to such an exchange.

I like the analogy so I will continue to use it.

Despite it being wrong and no-one else uses it. Fine. Don't worry if you mess up anyone who doesn't know it's garbage and they start talking to their ISP support or on other forums about it. That's not going to cause you any problems, so it's OK .

Yanno you're coming across very patronising. AFAIK you're only a punter who has set up a website which I bet if someone looked hard enough would find something wrong. What makes you right? I have a telecommunication BTEC unit, have you any suitable qualifications?

Did your BTEC course cover the definition of "tails"?

Of course there are errors on my website. Things have changed quite a bit since I last updated it. The reason for not updating it is a different question. But in general it is right, and does not deliberately mislead.

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 15-Jul-14 20:47:30)

Great for 1 week Now gone to the crappers

i am getting my MAC ASAP then am going to get Dial-up as it seems a

better choice for my exchange

Well I believe you have now been suffering for a few days, but four days 15 hours ago you said

Vivaciti WE LUV YOU!!!!!

i have been switched over to where?

dont know dont care

for about a week now.

BUT where ever it is leave it

very stable and good speed

Don't forget that like the others, the service you were on before is still available from other suppliers. I expect your "dial-up" comment was a joke .

yes RobertS it has been a few dayz + the weeks before hand and i have had enough

now so its time to move on but to where i dont know

"dial-up " is/was a joke But its getting to be reality with NO competition

P.S. while writing this i had to reboot my router as it lost sync,only about the 5th time

this morning.

Edited by deleted (Fri 18-Jul-14 11:11:31)

Defo time to Go,got my MAC so looking for another ISP.

HERE is my speed test which is very sad.

What are the current line stats like for the connection?

Upstream Downstream
Current Rate (Kbps) 1067 4543
Max Rate (Kbps) 1068 8108
SNR Margin (dB) 5.9 10.1
Line Attenuation (dB) 27.8 45.7
Occupancy (%) 99 56
Errors (Pkts) 0 0

In reply to a post by plc143:

Upstream Downstream
Current Rate (Kbps) 1067 4543
Max Rate (Kbps) 1068 8108
SNR Margin (dB) 5.9 10.1
Line Attenuation (dB) 27.8 45.7
Occupancy (%) 99 56
Errors (Pkts) 0 0

Your line stats from Saturday the 5th July

Upstream Downstream
Current Rate (Kbps) 502 6369
Max Rate (Kbps) 548 7024
SNR Margin (dB) 19.5 13.2
Line Attenuation (dB) 27.1 46.7
Occupancy (%) 91 90
Errors (Pkts) 0 0

The upstream sync has increased with the upstream noise margin being reduced but not so for the downstream sync.
Have you tried connecting the router to the TEST socket within the master socket (if you have that type) to see if there is an improvement in downstream sync and less disconnections.

thanx for the reply Apprentice but to tell you the truth ive had enough of this ISP.
tried loads of things and No joy
getting throttled now too so im off ski.

Let us know how it goes on Sky .

In case you don't know, unless they have changed then they will start you at 4Mbps downstream sync and ramp it up to your full attainable over a few days. Exactly the opposite approach to BT Wholesale. So don't panic if that's the speed at the start.