If the UK internet is holding up, why has my speed fallen?

I have a Zen 40/10 FTTC connection (because I'm over 500m from the box). Its been rock solid giving me a full 40/10 connection. Until last week. My Fritz!Box stats say I now have 29935 kbit/s down (previous week 39066 kbit/s). The SNR seems to have increased from 7dB to 11dB. The line attenuation is the same at 20dB. The upload hasn't changed.

This started on the 26th (Thursday) when the speed dropped to 20Mb. Saturday saw it increase to 30Mb where it remains.

Is it me or the world?

Because VDSL2 users have occassionally seen these sort of drops now and then for reasons beyond what is making the Internet as a whole busy

Noise or extra crosstalk or a combination of things may be affecting the sync speed

More people at home during the day, more electrical devices in use etc etc

Thanks, yes, I didn't really think it was Covid-19!

I don't believe there's any difference in electrical items at my premises but you seem to be saying crosstalk could be the problem. That's going to be worst if there are more people at home using their connections more?

I'll report back next week.

(BTW, I went to the DSL checker as I think my connection may be bordering on the hand-back threshold but it told me to go away as I don't have a BT number. True, its Zen, but its worked in the past.)

I'm an idiot! I put my VoIP number into the DSL checker, not my physical landline number. But now that I have I see my handback is either 35 (clean) or 31.3 (impacted).

Am I clean or impacted? My clean range is 58 to 39.4, impacted 56.5 to 35. I think I usually see my router suggest I could obtain a bit over 40.

Impacted normally means with bridge taps/extension wiring attached without an SSFP.

I saw the same last week. Mine dropped from 74Mbps on Thurs AM to 54Mbps (and below the hand-back threshold) in the afternoon. According to Zen, OR are doing some work on the exchange SMSY and she was unable to find out just what was going on with my line, or even test it. OR are doing some form of migration and SOGEA has just appeared as an option - not that I want it.. On Sat it was back up to 57Mbps and this morning it�s back again to 64Mbps. Both my Draytek and Fritz routers reported a synch speed within 100kbps or each other when tested individually, so it looks more like a line issue than router. OR completely replaced the copper pair a few months back.

Only the inbound data rate was affected with the outbound synch maintaining 19,999kbps throughout.

I think its noise on the copper lines due to more people using their connections, I have seen no decrease in speed over FTTP so I don't think its a network issue.

Paul

Crosstalk is caused by line pairs close together in the cable bundle from the cabinet and can cause significant sync speed drops if a new FTTC user happens to be in close proximity to your line. FTTC lines when in sync are continuously active and cause crosstalk even if not transmitting any user data so increased usage has no additional effect.

Funny enough mine has been going the other way. Was 72Mb middle of February, last week got disconnected and reconnected at about 2AM. Now just a shade under 77Mb.

Mind you I have this theory that if you use your connection more the speed goes up! Just seems strange to get a speed increase as our usage has gone up from 650Gb a month to just under 1TB (and that is with all the kids on the estate being at home i.e. more crosstalk).

But if your speeds drop and you can exclude your own equipment, do get in touch with your ISP. I ended up with a new wire from the pole to the house from doing so.

It's Zen, they moved some of us from one backhaul to another on 26th.

https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/zen/f/4640036-warn...

Drop their support a line - they've been pretty good - although I'm still miffed my latency has gone up.