BT slow?

Is bloated toad on a slow down today? Just sorted out my next door neighbours phone cables and their broadband seems to be really slow, about 2.5Mb/s, They have fibre.

I am on plusnet and all seems fine here.

Was it slow before you sorted out the phone cables?

I'm maxing out the WiFi here so seems OK. Perhaps you have kicked in DLM while sorting out their cables.

Back to basics, what line stats does their service show ?

Fine in London - tested over wifi on iPhone

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...

Seems about fine for the time of day for me.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...

Paul

Edited by PaulKirby (Sun 05-Mar-17 11:11:17)

Cheers peeps. I put the cables back to where they was before I started and it was still the same, I am going back over there after lunch, but I just had a thought, their son download on demand stuff from the Sky box, so I wonder if the box is downloading stuff and that is why the net is slow. I will check that this afternoon, if so then that is my problem.

The reason why I have been sorting the cables out is because the connection sky put in top connect their boxes to the phone line is now failing, in that it is broken, so the idea is to take it out all together, Sky do not seems to bother with it these days anyway. I will disconnect it for a few weeks and see if sky contact them, if not then the cables can be got rid of.

Are you testing over wireless as sky's standard hub is only 2.4ghz

No problem running Sky without phone line connected ( I never have it connected). It has been known to be cause of problem..

New box's don't even have a phone connection

In reply to a post by witchunt:

New box's don't even have a phone connection

Correct, they just have an Ethernet Port and Wi-Fi.

However stupid Sky still insist it being connected to the phone line LOL.

Paul

It is Bt broadband not sky broadband

Tested over Lan as well as Wi-fi.

Ok, I disconnected all the extensions from the BTOR master box apart from the one BT put in that goes upstairs for the router. I will try and explain this.

So the master socket is a normal socket Bt put in for fibre, but connected internally is a cable that goes upstairs to another socket that the modem/router is connected, just a RJ11 connection, I think that is what they are called, not a normal BT plug.

Now when I connect the modem to the socket upstairs, it do not sync at all now, it did until disconnected it, but if I put it in the socket downstairs it syncs.

At the moment I have it all connected downstairs, but the speed is still about 2 to 3Mb/s. with nothing else connected.

so my idea here is that something is wrong at BT end, maybe the cabinet, and that while the modem will sync downstairs the extra lentgh of the cable going upstairs make it lose sync in the upstairs socket.

they now have got broadband, but very slow, I had a look in the upstairs socket, there are two wires that are not connected, but I do not think they was ever connected I am pretty sure you do not need more than four wires for broadband to work.

I am not very good at explaining things, so I hope someone can work that out
We will wait until tomorrow and see if it is better when I get home from work, if not we will get in touch with BT.

Edited by zyborg47 (Sun 05-Mar-17 17:27:42)

Photos of the insides of the Data Extension socket upstairs would help, and photos of the back of the master faceplate and the front of the interstitial filter plate if that's what is there.

My immediate thought is you have disconnected the wires from upstairs from the visible A/B terminals on the interstitial plate, causing upstairs to be dead.

Why the speed is slow in the first place is a different question.

Can you supply us line stats?

If they have a smarthub you can get pretty good stats

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Photos of the insides of the Data Extension socket upstairs would help, and photos of the back of the master faceplate and the front of the interstitial filter plate if that's what is there.

My immediate thought is you have disconnected the wires from upstairs from the visible A/B terminals on the interstitial plate, causing upstairs to be dead.

Why the speed is slow in the first place is a different question.

The box downstairs is just a normal BT fitted FTTC/phone box, from there an extension goes up stairs to a box like this which the modem connects to. I just had a look online for wiring and there are only four wires connected anyway, so the two that is not connected, never have been as there are six wires coming into the box, but four connected.

Thanks for the help, but I think my reason of it being slow was right in the first place,there is a problem somewhere BT end.

I will phone them tonight when I get home for my neighbours.

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

Can you supply us line stats?

If they have a smarthub you can get pretty good stats

I will have a look tonight, i could lok into their router on my laptop from here, but can nto be bothered this morning, got to go to work soon.
But I am pretty sure it is BT that is playing up, had a quick check using my tablet this morning of speed and it is still low, yes I know being wireless would make a bit of a difference, but not over 20Mb/s

I'm talking about the connection to the upstairs socket for the router to be plugged into. That is a non-standard connection inside the master, not to the back of the faceplate.

The fact that upstairs socket has stopped working suggests you may have disconnected the non-standard one and reconnected it to the faceplate. That would stop the router working upstairs.

That's why I asked for photos. Take a look inside the master. The upstairs socket should be wired to A/B terminals at the top left of the filter plate that has the FTTC socket, not to the back of the faceplate. Broadband signals do not get to the faceplate. That's what the FTTC plate does, filter them out.

2.4Ghz wireless in my home gets 13Mbps.

Wired gets 55.

5Ghz gets 55.

You'd be surprised. I doubt this is congestion, more likely poor stats or poor wifi.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I'm talking about the connection to the upstairs socket for the router to be plugged into. That is a non-standard connection inside the master, not to the back of the faceplate.

The fact that upstairs socket has stopped working suggests you may have disconnected the non-standard one and reconnected it to the faceplate. That would stop the router working upstairs.

That's why I asked for photos. Take a look inside the master. The upstairs socket should be wired to A/B terminals at the top left of the filter plate that has the FTTC socket, not to the back of the faceplate. Broadband signals do not get to the faceplate. That's what the FTTC plate does, filter them out.

I have not touched the master socket apart from unplugging the extension that is used for the downstairs phone.

i phoned Bt today, they said there is a problem and they will cxheck it, I looked at the home hub today as well,

Data rate is 799 / 24956
Max data rate 10892 / 22949 I presume this is what they are suppose to be getting.
Noise margin is 21.3 / 31.4 I know about this, but I never really looked at it for VDSL
Line attenuation 32.7 / 20.7 Same as above, so I do not know if that is good or not. , i would say the noise margin is pretty high

Signal attenuation 0.0 / 0.0, no idea what this is .

We will see what Bt find out, just a shame it takes nearly an hour on the phone, Plusnet is far quicker when I have a problem, i thought BT was going to stop outsourcing their customer service to other countries.

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

2.4Ghz wireless in my home gets 13Mbps.

Wired gets 55.

5Ghz gets 55.

You'd be surprised. I doubt this is congestion, more likely poor stats or poor wifi.

when I was over my neighbours place and done a speed test on my phone to my network, i lose around 5Mb/s and my router is an old plusnet Sagem thing that is only 2.4Ghz, so the BT hub, which BT says is the best thing since sliced bread should do a better job.

anyway, Bt have admitted that there is a problem, neighbour always having problems with their broadband, maybe they should change provider.

The noise margin shows loads of spare (like ADSL the target noise margin is usually around 6dB so it currently being 31.4 shows lots of room for increased speeds). If the noise margin is not erratic then DLM should automatically shift the line to a higher rate. If it is erratic then it suggests there is a noise source somewhere that has made DLM kick in and reduce the sync rate.

I suspect it's a reporting error given that th me attainable rate is so close to the current rate.

I was surprised at that but would suggest the margin is a decimal point out so around 3dB - which would be low and so suggest the decision to get an engineer out is most likely correct. Would still be useful to monitor the SNR to see if it is varying.

Looks to me like DLM has kicked in and lowered the sync rate. I hope you turned everything off when you disconnected the extension?

I have known people not to do this when messing with the wiring and the DLM has thought that it's a major fault and significantly lowered the sync rate to make it stable.

In reply to a post by ian72:

The noise margin shows loads of spare (like ADSL the target noise margin is usually around 6dB so it currently being 31.4 shows lots of room for increased speeds). If the noise margin is not erratic then DLM should automatically shift the line to a higher rate. If it is erratic then it suggests there is a noise source somewhere that has made DLM kick in and reduce the sync rate.

So no different to ADSL really then, I still have the separate VDSL modem, so I can not see any info, so I have not really taken much notice of what is what on fibre.

Anyway, this morning i connected to their network via my tablet and done a speed tests, 31Mb/s, so it is fixed, in fact I have never seen their broadband so fast, it is on par with mine now, which is what it should be more or less.
I will pop over this after noon when everyone is awake and put the router back to where it should be, I presume there was nothing wrong with the extension upstairs, but the quality of the line affected the router to sync, because of the extra length.


I will also do another print out of the info to see how much it changed,

thanks to everyone on here for the help.

In reply to a post by robertcrowther:

Looks to me like DLM has kicked in and lowered the sync rate. I hope you turned everything off when you disconnected the extension?

I have known people not to do this when messing with the wiring and the DLM has thought that it's a major fault and significantly lowered the sync rate to make it stable.

Which extension? they have two, the one that Bt put in that is upstairs, which only have a socket for the router or the one downstairs which just plugs into the master socket that are used for the phones.

I switch the router off, unplugged the downstairs extension and then switched the router back on, made no difference anyway.
Bt seemed to have fixed the fault. either this morning or late last night.

when I was over my neighbours place and done a speed test on my phone to my network, i lose around 5Mb/s and my router is an old plusnet Sagem thing that is only 2.4Ghz, so the BT hub, which BT says is the best thing since sliced bread should do a better job.

If I use the homehub at my parents, I get 70Mbps over WiFi, like most of us though I have neighbours attached, bluetooth devices (2 wireless headsets, 2 bluetooth speakers, a bluetooth keyboard and mouse), 2.4ghz doorbell, and multiple WiFi SSIDs in range.

I know the neighbours also have a 2.4Ghz TV transmitter for their Sky+ to work in their bedroom.

Other things such as baby monitors, neighbours doorbells / landlines etc also no doubt exist.

Combine this together and what is 70Mbps at the parents more remote location, is 13Mbps at the very best in my densely populated location. There are times it becomes so slow you almost wait 30 seconds for a web page to load.

I would like to say this is exclusive to just my location, but having moved 4 times now I see a very similar situation at all but one property.

I would never rely on 2.4Ghz for fibre speeds given my experiences.

I know what you are getting at and I agree, but Wi-fi was the best way to see if it is better at the time.

i have just moved the home hub back upstairs and they lose about 2-3Mb/s, I presume due to the length of the extension, ADSL was never that fragile, but they are still getting a good 24Mb/s, sometimes a bit more, so it is fine.

Even going via the lan from the computer is it more or less the same.

Here are the stats as they are now.

5. VDSL uptime: 0 days, 00:07:13
6. Data Rate: 9999 / 24552
7. Maximum Data Rate: 11832 / 31471
8. Noise Margin: 7.9 / 7.7
9. Line Attenuation: 42.7 / 35.3
10. Signal Attenuation: 0.0 / 0.0

I should have done them when it was downstairs as well, just to be nosy, but oh well the main thing it is a lot better.

thanks for help once again people.

Yes and my whole point is not applicable here anyway as the homehub is most likely dual band

You're right extensions affect VDSL a fair bit more. I have a 10m extension and the attenuation goes up 1.5db using it. Luckily I have a very short line so I get full speeds either way.

My old house had a master in a good location, the current one has the master in the back of a bedroom hence I use the extension. It's not always possible to use the master.

The main thing to monitor is whether their speed keeps on falling in the extension, it may indicate the extension is picking up interference from electrical wiring or something similar triggering DLM.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

i have just moved the home hub back upstairs and they lose about 2-3Mb/s, I presume due to the length of the extension, ADSL was never that fragile,

A very rough calculation, ignoring losses from joints ...

We should expect speeds to drop from around 80 Mbps at 300m to 25 Mbps at 1250m. That equates to a 1Mbps drop for every extra 17m of cable.

The other point to note is that any extension wiring not sat the right side of a filter will on VDSL be giving a bridge tap, these always inject errors and eventually have a detrimental affect on the circuit.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

i have just moved the home hub back upstairs and they lose about 2-3Mb/s, I presume due to the length of the extension, ADSL was never that fragile,

A very rough calculation, ignoring losses from joints ...

We should expect speeds to drop from around 80 Mbps at 300m to 25 Mbps at 1250m. That equates to a 1Mbps drop for every extra 17m of cable.

Sounds about right, as I have said it is a BT installed extension, so they can put the router upstairs, only the router cable fits it, so in theory it should be fine and any loss is normal

Myself I would drop Bt, not because of this problem, because this would have happened anyway, but because their customer service is naff, very difficult to understand what she was saying, they keeps you on the phone for far too long. I was on that phone for nearly 45 minutes and yet when I reported a fault with plusnet I was on there for less than 15, oh yes we see you have a problem, we will get it sorted and it was.
Also, Bt is way over priced.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

The other point to note is that any extension wiring not sat the right side of a filter will on VDSL be giving a bridge tap, these always inject errors and eventually have a detrimental affect on the circuit.

It is connected directly into the master socket, it have to be connected to the unfiltered side as the extension can only accept an RJ11. It was put in for the moden and not phones.

So a 'data extension kit' fitted by Openreach, BT or yourself maybe ?

These are fine. (As I know you already know)

You said earlier that after your disconnection of the Sky cabling then reconnection of it that the modem no longer works upstairs. That was what I was talking about earlier wrt the terminals at the master.

Have you got that sorted now so it does sync upstairs?

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

The other point to note is that any extension wiring not sat the right side of a filter will on VDSL be giving a bridge tap, these always inject errors and eventually have a detrimental affect on the circuit.

The way it came setup was just a RJ11 cable in the front. I've kept it that way, so not a real extension socket. The RJ11 cable looks alright, I found the box and receipt from maplin in a cupboard, it was £20. It does the job for now anyways.

The way it came setup was just a RJ11 cable in the front.

So not a BT job. Does the faceplate filter have IDC terminations on the back allowing for a data extension termination ?

Myself I would drop Bt, not because of this problem, because this would have happened anyway, but because their customer service is naff, very difficult to understand what she was saying, they keeps you on the phone for far too long.

Agreed I either tweet or message higher up now. There are some very good UK based teams at BT who are genuinely the best CS I have ever experienced, dealing with all sorts from credit reference agency mistakes, ceases on my line (and getting it fixed ASAP), various faults etc. Generally speaking you only get there once you have a high level complaint, but for those of us who have got that far, if we have any further issues these same UK teams are very helpful even 1 year after the past issue.

Also, Bt is way over priced.

Depends I have BT Infinity 1 for £25.99 including Line Rental (retention deal). Standard price of £47.99 is high though. I paid Line Rental + £10 last year and £25.99 this year, to date it has never been close to standard pricing. That said, they mess up the billing 9 times out of 10, but always got it fixed.

I did a switch to VM last month and speeds were all over the place, so panned that.

Speed wise, BT are always spot on:
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

The way it came setup was just a RJ11 cable in the front.

So not a BT job. Does the faceplate filter have IDC terminations on the back allowing for a data extension termination ?

This property doesn't even have a faceplate, standard NTE5 with a dangley filter, and RJ11 cable into this.

My max attainable is over 100Mbps, sync at 55Mbps with SNR of around 33db, hence I do not worry too much ATM.

In time I will get a filtered faceplate, and the socket relocated. BT have agreed to do it for free, I just need to setup a good route for the cabling to go, ie so it's out of sight and easy for an engineer to install. Where I want it, there's no easily external route. I plan to setup some ducting where you can just push the cable through, from where it currently enters.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Thu 09-Mar-17 11:39:58)

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

This property doesn't even have a faceplate, standard NTE5 with a dangley filter, and RJ11 cable into this.

Uh?

The removable bit is the faceplate. I doubt if you are plugging the dangly into the test socket, or are you?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

You said earlier that after your disconnection of the Sky cabling then reconnection of it that the modem no longer works upstairs. That was what I was talking about earlier wrt the terminals at the master.

Have you got that sorted now so it does sync upstairs?

The sky cabling was connected to an extension that was plugged into to the master box, i think the problem with the broadband was just a coincidence, it may have had a problem for a while and when I checked the net to make sure all was working after taking the sky phone cables out, I noticed it was low speed. I moved the router downstairs just to check and it worked but still slow, it only failed to sync upstairs when I plugged it back in.
It is now fine upstairs apart from a couple of Mb/s less in speed than it was downstairs after Bt fixed the fault.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

So a 'data extension kit' fitted by Openreach, BT or yourself maybe ?

These are fine. (As I know you already know)

so that is what they call the data extension kit? I never seen one before as everyone i know have the router/modem right next to the master phone socket.

It was put in by BTOR.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

You said earlier that after your disconnection of the Sky cabling then reconnection of it that the modem no longer works upstairs. That was what I was talking about earlier wrt the terminals at the master.

Have you got that sorted now so it does sync upstairs?

Yes, now works fine, just a little slower than it was downstairs once Bt fixed the problem, around 24Mb/s, so much better than what they had before.

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

Agreed I either tweet or message higher up now. There are some very good UK based teams at BT who are genuinely the best CS I have ever experienced, dealing with all sorts from credit reference agency mistakes, ceases on my line (and getting it fixed ASAP), various faults etc. Generally speaking you only get there once you have a high level complaint, but for those of us who have got that far, if we have any further issues these same UK teams are very helpful even 1 year after the past issue.

I have dealt with Bt customer service a few times over the years, including when I was with them, lose the will to live to be honest, even sky is better, Talk Talk is worse.

Depends I have BT Infinity 1 for £25.99 including Line Rental (retention deal). Standard price of £47.99 is high though. I paid Line Rental + £10 last year and £25.99 this year, to date it has never been close to standard pricing. That said, they mess up the billing 9 times out of 10, but always got it fixed.

I could not be bothered with the hassle, I do nto see m to have any problem with plusnet, I have thought about phoning them up and asking what deal they can do me, but to be honest the only one I would move to is Vodafone, because they are the only ones that are cheaper.
Not all about price I know, but TBH, plusnet is ok, but sky and BT is too expensive for me and no way would I go for Talk Talk which is no cheaper anyway.

I did a switch to VM last month and speeds were all over the place, so panned that.

I would like to try VM, sadly they are not available where I am, I used to use a wireless broadband service, I was happy on that until they had problems with too many customers, which is why I went to fibre and plusnet, i was going to go back to them once they sorted the problem, but they did not sort it out and pulled out of the broadband market which is a shame.

i would love to get off the BT network.

Speed wise, BT are always spot on:
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...

My speed is fine for where I am with plusnet, there is no way it is going to be any better who ever I go with unless they move the cabinet closer to my house and that is not going to happen.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...

i know people who live up the road with other providers and they do not get this and also people who I thought live closer and do not get any better, one of them have EE, but they get awful latency and speedwise, is worse than mine.

Gone slow again, not as bad as it was, but again it fails to sync upstairs, Bt have again admitted there is a problem.

their network is falling apart, they need to get it sorted.

Sounds much more like the upstairs extension is causing problems.

Can they try out using the TEST socket for a few weeks?

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

Sounds much more like the upstairs extension is causing problems.

Can they try out using the TEST socket for a few weeks?

BT have admitted there is a problem which is affecting speed, so I presume if there is a problem on the line and the attenuation is high again, then sticking the router on an extension is going to make the problem worse,.

It just make me realise that my thought that BT is useless is true, they are useless, network is old, they got it cheap and do not maintain i and yet get enough money from line rental to do so.

British rubbish Telecom again.

country is useless, can not do anything right.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

It just make me realise that my thought that BT is useless is true, they are useless, network is old, they got it cheap and do not maintain i and yet get enough money from line rental to do so.

British rubbish Telecom again.

country is useless, can not do anything right.

Where did they get it cheap? And they do maintain it ...

And maybe you should blame government for stopping BT investing and developing. In the 90s BT wanted to invest in early fibre and even built two factories before they were stopped!

"country is useless, can not do anything right. "

In that case feel free to move.