Errored seconds and cables.

I bought myself a 2m twisted pair shielded RJ11 modem lead from Tandy and was expecting big things as I only had the straight pair RJ11 modem lead supplied with my Billion 7800.

But when I changed the cable the sync was 200kbps lower than previously. I changed the cable at 1pm today so would have expected the same sort of sync but one good thing is the upstream attainable has increased.

Also what amount of Errored seconds per hour is acceptable, currently running at 20 on the downstream per hour although it did at one stage go up to 120es/h. Upstream is negligible.

Any ideas?

There's a saying;

If it isn't broke...

Had to get a new cable as the other was a bit short, modem on the floor now on a desk.

IIRC the Tandy stuff now includes ADSL Nation. I got their top modem cable and an XTE-2005 many years ago and found both reduced my sync on ADSL2+. Strangely, or maybe not, by an average of 200bps. I ran many experiments in quick succession, and repeated the next day. (I was on O2 LLU where DLM was turned off after 3-4 days so it was safe to play).

In the experiments I included combinations of (one or other of) four dangly filters versus the XTE-2005 and various accumulated ADSL cables. The ADSL Nation ones have been back in their delivery envelope in my desk drawer since.

Interesting it is an ADSLNation cable but sold by Tandy, same thing really. Cant understand how a twist pair cable is worse than a bog standard straight cable.

Is the new cable double the length? ie old cable = 1m and new = 2m... Assuming the old cable was not subject to much interference, you pretty much just added extra copper.

I have never had issues with the flat rj11 cables.

Careful Tim, or you'll be the unwitting recipient of a 'Grimsley' ....

The Oscars of those who fret unnecessarily about stats

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

Is the new cable double the length? ie old cable = 1m and new = 2m... Assuming the old cable was not subject to much interference, you pretty much just added extra copper.

I have never had issues with the flat rj11 cables.

Yes 1m to 2m cable so an extra 1m of cable so maybe that is why.

Found half a meg extra sync by disconnection the extension I used for the modem upstairs and putting it on a filtered extension.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Careful Tim, or you'll be the unwitting recipient of a 'Grimsley' ....

The Oscars of those who fret unnecessarily about stats

L O L . That is so true it's unreal

I remember days gone by when i was so obsessed with speed test results and stats and power levels both upstream and downstream bla bla bla.I would imagine i fried more brain cells back then than chips fried at the local chippy

As long as there are no noticeable performance issues i just leave things as they are now and tinker with nothing

I am just getting prepared for FTTC due tomorrow.

I seriously hope that's a joke...

Edited by deleted (Sun 26-Mar-17 21:17:15)

I hope all goes well Tim .

Cheers Bob, according to the Uno control panel it is set for morning, but welcome email said it could be anytime.

Fingers crossed all goes according to plan Tim.

Hi

In reply to a post by Banger:

I bought myself a 2m twisted pair shielded RJ11 modem lead from Tandy and was expecting big things as I only had the straight pair RJ11 modem lead supplied with my Billion 7800.

But when I changed the cable the sync was 200kbps lower than previously. I changed the cable at 1pm today so would have expected the same sort of sync but one good thing is the upstream attainable has increased.

Also what amount of Errored seconds per hour is acceptable, currently running at 20 on the downstream per hour although it did at one stage go up to 120es/h. Upstream is negligible.

Any ideas?

What you need to remember is the signal has traveled hundreds of metres in cheap telephone cable, why would adding 2 metres of premium cable at the end improve things?

The only time one of these more expensive cables will help is if you have a long run of many metres, even then any old cheap twisted pair will do (it doesn't need to be expensive), just avoid the flat telephone extension cable as because it isn't twisted any noise it picks up is harder to cancel out.

There are all sorts of things that go on with VDSL/ADSL, an improvement could see slightly worse errors simply because power output can be reduced due to an improvement and/or now receiving a fewer higher frequencies that by definition have more errors, but then over a few hours bit-swapping should sort those out.

Regards

Phil

Well VDSL2 has been enabled but still using my Xilo login, but only getting 47meg sync down and 12 up. Wonder if changing the faceplate will make a difference as I am paying for 80/20 but only getting 40/10?

PS Swapped the tandy cable for the Billion cable and got an extra meg.

Edited by Banger (Mon 27-Mar-17 16:41:05)

What do your line stats now say?

And no, you are not getting a 40/10 service you are getting the 80/20 service, just that your line cannot fully support it. If you are only getting 47/12 and stats show very little more is possible then you should be asking your ISP for a downgrade to either 55/10 or 40/10

Line Status:Connected
DSL Modulation Type:VDSL2
Annex Type:Annex A/L
Upstream Downstream
Current Rate (Kbps) 12604 47261
Max Rate (Kbps) 12597 47746
SNR Margin (dB) 6 6.1
Line Attenuation (dB) 35.7 14.7
Errors (Pkts) 0 0

Tried the HG612 but around the same sync.

With those stats you are not going to see much more - talk to you ISP about moving down. Yes you might be then capped at 40/10 but from 47 to 40 you may not notice a difference.

the 14.7 attenuation would normally give speeds up in the 70s so the 47 is a little surprising and having a 6.1dB margin suggests a noisy line potentially from cross talk.

Can you run DSLstats and get a set of graphs including the Bitloading with SNR overlay, QLN and Hlog.


What are the DSL checker figures? I seem to remember them being fairly wide.

All the graphs from DSLStats can be found at https://www.mydslwebstats.co.uk name banger.

The DSL checked said for impacted line down to 41.8mb and Uno have said I cant downgrade as it is within the contract.

Also tried a dangly filter supplied with the TP-Link in the test socket just in case my XTE-2005 had worn out but no different.

I believe it's a brand new cabinet, so unlikely to be crosstalk.

What's the estimated speeds on the Wholesale checker for a clean line?

Have you tried the test socket?

Edited by deleted (Mon 27-Mar-17 17:31:59)

It certainly looks odd, nothing above to 520 around 2.6MHz ... and a very steep drop off over the usable tones.

Not sure on what to suggest.


As for UNO - suggest that you have a cooling off period, and as service has only just started you may consider invoking it. Push them harder to get a regrade or lower charge.

G.Inp is not enabled and Uno suggest this may increase the sync when DLM gets used to the line but they are not budging on a downgrade as it is within spec 41.8 is what the checker says. My upstream of 12.5 is out of spec checker says 13.8 but that doesnt count.

It will not move much ...

I don't think much of their attitude regarding it "being within spec ... It may well be but if they care about customers they would allow you to move.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/button/14906...

Looks like nothing is uploading to MDWS since 23:15.

I hope you haven't turned your modem/router off. Also a bit unhappy at you seeming from your posts to have swapped them. You want zero meddling from first connection to the end of the second day, and possibly to the start of the third.

Matt asked me to try PPPoE on the modem and the asus as a static as I have reported slow single thread downloads, they are around half of multiple thread downloads. Have also tried the HG612, uploads have now resumed.

I'm now seeing some better information on mydslwebstats and that tones in use go up to 2800. There are no obvious noise issues at certain frequencies or total loss of capacity notches.

In general the rate of drop off just seems to be very high - for example in D2 you start at 8 bits per tone and that drops to 4 at the end whereas, for example, mine starts at 10 and finishes at 9. By the time you get to D3 - there is nothing there.

Look at the Hlog graph - just treat it as one line (ignore Up & Down) and it is reasonably continuous except at the high end of U2. However, whilst it starts at just below Zero, at the very top - tone 3950 is around -80 whereas I would expect to see that at about -40. This points to the possibility of an aluminium line.

I guess I will just have to wait for G.Fast (FTTP) to fix that.

G.FAST is not FTTP Tim. It is a faster form of FTTC. And native FTTP is almost certainly many years away.

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 28-Mar-17 09:13:32)

Looking at your graphs again, there is very little you can do to improve downstream - just keep any electronics and power supplies away from the incoming line.

In the U2 band the attenuation is not shown on Hlog for a number of tones - I have no idea why but it is definitely a little odd. Can you access the full data - in your local DSLstats under <Telnet Data> <Hlog> there is a list of ones and values. In the range of tones from 2500 to 2600 there will be values from -50 to -60 normally, what other extreme values can you see? And then under <SNR> what are the corresponding vales?

xdslctl info --stats
xdslctl: ADSL driver and PHY status
Status: Showtime
Last Retrain Reason: 1
Last initialization procedure status: 0
Max: Upstream rate = 12462 Kbps, Downstream rate = 46990 Kbps
Bearer: 0, Upstream rate = 12466 Kbps, Downstream rate = 43986 Kbps

Link Power State: L0
Mode: VDSL2 Annex B
VDSL2 Profile: Profile 17a
TPS-TC: PTM Mode(0x0)
Trellis: U:ON /D:ON
Line Status: No Defect
Training Status: Showtime
Down Up
SNR (dB): 7.3 5.9
Attn(dB): 19.9 0.0
Pwr(dBm): 11.2 7.3

VDSL2 framing
Bearer 0
MSGc: 17 26
B: 239 237
M: 1 1
T: 64 56
R: 0 16
S: 0.1737 0.6071
L: 11056 3347
D: 1 1
I: 240 127
N: 240 254

Counters
Bearer 0
OHF: 3911902 1284491
OHFErr: 1460 0
RS: 0 3176421
RSCorr: 0 0
RSUnCorr: 0 0

Bearer 0
HEC: 143 0
OCD: 0 0
LCD: 0 0
Total Cells: 922925712 0
Data Cells: 5112350 0
Drop Cells: 0
Bit Errors: 0 0

ES: 20554 3
SES: 21 2
UAS: 380 359
AS: 10913

Bearer 0
INP: 0.00 0.00
INPRein: 0.00 0.00
delay: 0 0
PER: 2.78 8.53
OR: 65.96 30.00
AgR: 44051.92 12495.84

Bitswap: 746/782 2/2

Total time = 17 hours 38 min 14 sec
FEC: 0 150
CRC: 41409 1
ES: 20554 3
SES: 21 2
UAS: 380 359
LOS: 2 0
LOF: 13 0
LOM: 0 0
Retr: 2
Latest 15 minutes time = 8 min 14 sec
FEC: 0 0
CRC: 73 0
ES: 65 0
SES: 0 0
UAS: 0 0
LOS: 0 0
LOF: 0 0
LOM: 0 0
Retr: 0
Previous 15 minutes time = 15 min 0 sec
FEC: 0 0
CRC: 128 0
ES: 113 0
SES: 0 0
UAS: 0 0
LOS: 0 0
LOF: 0 0
LOM: 0 0
Retr: N/A
Latest 1 day time = 17 hours 38 min 14 sec
FEC: 0 150
CRC: 41409 1
ES: 20554 3
SES: 21 2
UAS: 380 359
LOS: 2 0
LOF: 13 0
LOM: 0 0
Retr: 2
Previous 1 day time = 0 sec
FEC: 0 0
CRC: 0 0
ES: 0 0
SES: 0 0
UAS: 0 0
LOS: 0 0
LOF: 0 0
LOM: 0 0
Retr: 0
Since Link time = 3 hours 1 min 53 sec
FEC: 0 0
CRC: 1460 0
ES: 1273 0
SES: 0 0
UAS: 0 0
LOS: 0 0
LOF: 0 0
LOM: 0 0
Retr: 0
NTR: mipsCntAtNtr=0 ncoCntAtNtr=0

Here is the output from DSLStats Telnet and Matt has said the line has failed an extended test so it has been raised to Openreach who will look at my line.

So Uno has told me BT Wholesale are seeing excessive errors on the line so we have kicked off 24 hours of monitoring in the test socket.

BT want to send an SFI Engineer to the property which I have my reservations about.

BT want to send an SFI Engineer to the property which I have my reservations about.

Seems like a reasonable suggestion rather than just bodging a DLM reset out of Openreach and masking an issue

Its just the charges and disputing them is all. I dont like confrontation.

Anyway see what 24hr monitoring in the test socket turns up.

Its just the charges and disputing them is all. I dont like confrontation.

If it tests duff in the test jack, then there should be no charges, end of ...

I suspect the drop wire which is underground put in in the 80s, thick grey cable but thats just a guess.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Seems like a reasonable suggestion rather than just bodging a DLM reset out of Openreach and masking an issue

Not "bodging" and relevant to the fault seen on that line specifically. Sometimes you have to go outside of the norm to get things done. Much like with earl ADSL Max days where BTW stated that turning DLM off wasn't possible when DLM would cause havoc - yet could be done by speaking to the right people.

Matt

I suspect the drop wire which is underground put in in the 80s, thick grey cable but thats just a guess.

Any chance of a photo Tim ? Dropwire shouldn't be underground, end of.

OK, it's clear we are seeing things from different angles here.

Perhaps he's confusing drop wire and lead in.

Maybe Lee, but if that's DW3 it'll need replacing anyway.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

I suspect the drop wire which is underground put in in the 80s, thick grey cable but thats just a guess.

Any chance of a photo Tim ? Dropwire shouldn't be underground, end of.

This any good or do you want closer?

thick grey cable

You sure thats your phone wire; that (looks like) good old twin and earth.

It is the phone cable I saw the BT man put it in.

Regarding the photo, looking closely at the line on the cable it looks like fig8 cable, like the (usually black) overhead cable.

T&E at first glance, though. The 'line' caught my attention when I zoomed in.

Looks like a very old dropwire 3 and its needs to go.

Edited by MC31 (Wed 29-Mar-17 21:42:00)

In reply to a post by vitrocmax:

Regarding the photo, looking closely at the line on the cable it looks like fig8 cable, like the (usually black) overhead cable.

T&E at first glance, though. The 'line' caught my attention when I zoomed in.

Looking closely it is a fig 8 cable and is about 30m underground to a BT post in a conduit that is cemented over. Hope the SFI engineer is good at blowing cable if he is going to replace it.

It was put in in the 80s during BT's free re-connection promotion.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Its just the charges and disputing them is all. I dont like confrontation.

If it tests duff in the test jack, then there should be no charges, end of ...

One problem interleaving has kicked in this morning and es has been zero all day so not conclusive. Also INP is now on.

In reply to a post by MC31:

Looks like a very old dropwire 3 and its needs to go.

Problem is I will get charged as I havent got a BT Mk4 faceplate just an ADSLNation one.

I had a length of exactly wire that in my line - had it changed out back in the late 90's. I recently found the remoins that had been cut but remained in place.

With G.INP on the interleaving defaults to 8 down 1 (fast path) up. That is normal, part of the G.INP system. I have seen it at 12 or 16, nothing higher.

Normal VDSL2 interleaving is at depths of several hundred and sometimes well over a thousand.

Edited by RobertoS (Thu 30-Mar-17 01:11:54)

In reply to a post by Banger:

Problem is I will get charged as I havent got a BT Mk4 faceplate just an ADSLNation one.

You can get a Mk3 and faceplate as discussed in your other thread. That seems to be better than a MK4 anyway.

Interleave depth: 835 1
INP: 3.00 0
G.INP: Not enabled Not enabled
Vectoring status: 5 (VECT_UNCONFIGURED)

That seems to be better than a MK4 anyway.

How so?

Ah! People don't normally refer to "that" INP . That has always been around. I assumed you meant G.INP, which most people do mean these days.

Yes, you have normal interleaving. If on a Huawei cabinet (I forget) with a suitable modem then G.INP is almost certain to be turned on in 2-3 days.

Yes MDWS says its a Huawei dslam.

I think I am with the wrong ISP

How can they guarantee the minimum speed? If I hover over the min speed word it says "Accurate to within 1 or 2 meg."

The link won't open for me I'm afraid.

But definitely point the cable out to the SFI.

[edit] Now it's working .......

Jesus, who bodged that ! The truly pants DW3 being used underground ..... and through non standard duct also .... a recipe for disaster.

Where does it go to the other end ? Up the stick or straight UG ?

Edited by Zarjaz (Thu 30-Mar-17 07:44:22)

All underground here, it goes about 30m up the drive to a BT post then underground again to a man hole cover in the pavement outside my neighbour's.

When is your appointment ? And is there a picture of the 'BT post' ?

Appointment on hold until I get a new BT Faceplate, due Friday.

The BT Post

Oh OK, a small jointing post, note the tape, always prone to damp. It *should* be ducted UG cable or armoured UG to your property from here ... if it IS UG cable in here then there is a bodged joint under your driveway somewhere (measurable with a TDR where it'll see the change in conductor type from 0.9 to 0.5 gauge)

All in all it looks pretty grim. Even if it does pass a PQ test this is not fit for purpose.

Uno have told me there is an Openreach advisory on the line, seeing noise from 6.00am to 9.45am and even with the test socket still getting errors on the line even though the sync has reduced and interleaving is on.

Uno have told me there is an Openreach advisory on the line,

Did they offer any suggestion as to what exactly an 'Openreach advisory' was ? It's not a term I have come across in my line of work.

Yes excess noise 6am to 9.45am

So they are saying time specific REIN ? That's gonna be a hard one to prove.

Tellin me and nothing in my house switches on at those times. But its early days for monitoring.

I reckon the low sync rate has nowt to do with the error count.

Last time I had REIN was in dialup days and it was a street light next to my underground cable constantly switching on and off causing drops and errors and all sorts. Council repaired it and all was good, but a couple of months later they replaced all the street lights with new ones.

Edit: Uno said they were still seeing errors on the line around 12pm and that is in the test socket with just a wired phone connected no extensions unless I have a faulty power brick somewhere?

Edited by Banger (Thu 30-Mar-17 18:28:50)

I still believe that making the pair itself as 'robust' as possible is the way forward.

Never heard of REIN affecting dial up ? Every day is a school day.

Sorry not dialup ADSL Max which felt like dialup. Tracked it down using an AM radio following the cable route. I could hear the interference at the top of the street going down the telephone cable. This is a slightly different problem.

I see when I put my telephone number in BT site they are guarantee me a min speed of 60m, do you think they would be able to achieve that with my current setup?

To be honest their estimates are usual about right.

Anyone got a spectrum analyser I can borrow.

Anyone got a spectrum analyser I can borrow.

Nope, I got a 444 meter though

Scuse my ignorance but what is a 444 meter?

In reply to a post by Banger:

Scuse my ignorance but what is a 444 meter?

An RF444B meter, used to hunt for REIN. You can see one in use here (click).

Ta. Hope the engineer has one. General consensus on Kitz forum is drop wire needs replacing and is sync affecting.

They are few and far between.

I'm with the kitz lot.

Well my single thread download speed problems seem to have been fixed.

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

Dunno if Talk Talk have done something or it was me re-applying windows anniversary update which has created new network adapters maybe RWIN has changed with the update.

Engineer booked for 6th.

I'm loathe to wish you good luck after WelshWarrior's recent 'adventures with Openreach' .

Fingers crossed instead.

It's great that you managed to book an engineer for tomorrow! Openreach have certainly stepped up their game.

Edited by deleted (Wed 05-Apr-17 09:25:24)

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

I'm loathe to wish you good luck after WelshWarrior's recent 'adventures with Openreach' .

Fingers crossed instead.

What happened with WelshWarrier I must have missed that, got a link? I am just hoping he or she is flexible enough to see the problem and test at the jointing post.

I have already received my instructions from Uno including get the engineer's name.

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/fibre/t/4538485-eng...

Here is some of it.

Ta for that, a good read.