Random thought but have you tried connecting in ADSL2 mode rather than ADSL2+? If so, does that make any difference?

Otherwise, as others have said, proper logging is the way to go..

There is absolutely zero wrong with the modem router or its setup. There are no reboots going on other than the ones that I trigger. The ISP is happy to accept that all problems are beyond my front door and all I'm seeking is some guidance on what to do about it. I'm not the sort to just blame it on random aliens spiking noise and accept that there's nothing to be done.

So far, REIN has been tested for and ruled out, which inter alia eliminates the light railway as a source. I've had a "lift and switch" at the exchange, which had no benefit and yesterday we had a "TPM switch", whatever that is. It must have been a major activity because it took out my broadband service for 14 hours.

Can someone please get past the "what it is" and advise on the "how to get Openreach to bottom the problem" issue?

Many thanks.

In reply to a post by WafferThinMint:

SNR down / up 19.0 / 9.0dB
Line Attenuation down / up 57.5 / 31.5 dB
Data Rate 2944 / 768 kbps
Max Rate Down / Up 3008 / 900 kbps
Power 18.5 / 12.5dbm
CRC 0 / 0
I'm Annex A DSL with interleaving.

You SNR margin is very high. Looks like your modem is the problem.

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

........You SNR margin is very high. Looks like your modem is the problem.

I don't know how many times I have to say this. It's my third modem. The last one was reporting similar numbers. There is nothing wrong with the modem. Besides which, High SNR margin is supposed to be good. It's low SNR that's a problem and <6dB is usually said to be in dodgy territory..


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Maybe it's the type of modem, have you tried other manufacturers? Different ones suit different lines.

In reply to a post by WafferThinMint:

As I type this, my last drop was 30 minutes ago. I'm experiencing UK pings in the range 53-4485ms for the 9 minutes since I turned on the logging PC this morning. I'm showing 2% of packets lost. At the time I'm downloading a total of 4 Gb of large test files from this site at an unremarkable speed nowhere near modem capacity or that indicated for the line. Aggregate speed is just under 300kB so I'm assuming the bottleneck is at the ThinkBroadband end.

Modem figures at this instant are no different to "normal"..................
SNR down / up 19.0 / 9.0dB
Line Attenuation down / up 57.5 / 31.5 dB
Data Rate 2944 / 768 kbps
Max Rate Down / Up 3008 / 900 kbps
Power 18.5 / 12.5dbm
CRC 0 / 0
I'm Annex A DSL with interleaving.

2944kbps connection speed gives an IP Profile of 2.597Mbps. A download speed of a reported 300kBps from thinkbroadband is 2400kbps so pretty well spot on. TBB is highly unlikely to have a bottleneck on that server.

To have a downstream SNRL of 19dB suggests it connected at 15dB or 18dB. Probably 15dB. But huge noise variance.

Despite what you say about the wiring on your premises you cannot rule out a local noise problem. Possibly in your house, possibly in your neighbours. Plus, "am on just under 3km of aluminium cable all the way back to the fastest (fibre enabled) exchange in my area. For part of the route it runs alongside a light railway and passes a substation" is somewhat suspicious. Particularly the light railway system. Trams? Users close to railways with overhead power cables for the trains, particularly close to level crossings so the lights and gates can also have an effect, have frequently in the past had very similar problems.

Please could you, (preferably during daylight hours), take the stats reading, then do a re-sync and take them again. Posting both sets. Also have a read of this page.

Edited by RobertoS (Sat 16-Jan-16 19:28:11)

Or simply the random noise bursts are infrequent enough to not be visible without someone monitoring everything 24/7 so never seen when during engineer visits but enough such that the DLM raised the target noise margin eons ago and things have never been stable enough since then for the DLM to reduce the margin. Could try asking the ISP to reset the target noise margin and see what happens.

Railways, aluminium cable runs all potential problem sources, and if it is burst noise from say sparking rail pickups not much Openreach can do.

It may be worth spending time finding out if the neighbours have similar issues, local engineers will often have a feel for this.

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

Maybe it's the type of modem, have you tried other manufacturers? Different ones suit different lines.

You are having a laugh, aren't you? As per previous posts, (but with a little more detail).... this modem is ASUS ............. previous one was a D-Link ............... before that was the rubbish, re-badged freebie Thomson clone supplied by the ISP that I only took in case I had problems and to ensure they couldn't blame it on my kit.

As for those who have had something useful to offer, please accept my thanks.

The monitoring front is a dead duck. I've been watching and refreshing the stats when I've forced a DSL drop by downloading big files and as I keep saying.... the numbers don't change. I understand that all of the supplementary logging programs have a sample interval longer than my monitoring has been.

As for neighbours - next door has the same issue (different ISP) and logs similar numbers. His drops do not coincide with mine. He's also had multiple modems, one a Zyxel, one a Netgear. Across the cul-de-sac they complain of episodes of dropped pages.

The TPM didn't work either. Drops continued throughout the weekend, including several times during the early hours when all but the modem was idle and even my server was on power saving shutdown.

As I understand it after a lot of research, a downstream attenuation of 60dB represents an incompetent line. Mine is 57.5dB and should be about 40dB for the line length. By the same token, my downstream power is ridiculous at 18dBm. The target range is +/- 5dB and up to 10-12db is the limit of acceptability. So with numbers like these trying to eliminate the possibility of a spike from the thermostat on my fridge (or someone else's) is a bit of a nonsense.

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In reply to a post by WafferThinMint:

As I understand it after a lot of research, a downstream attenuation of 60dB represents an incompetent line.

Not sure what you mean by an incompetent line but most lines which contain aluminium cable only have it for part of the local loop - not all of it.

The fact that your exchange has fibre even if you do not is irrelevant to your problem.

The reason why everyone is saying do some proper logging is that DLM does not only look at the position at resync-it constantly monitors the line and takes longer term issues into account. As such, there could be something locally affecting your SNR at specific times that makes DLM decide a higher figure is more stable. Your disconnecting/reconnecting is unlikey to help matters either - it will simply make DLM think there is something wrong.

Some modems are better on long lines than others - try one of those.

No, I'm not having a laugh, I'm trying to understand what the problem is so I can help you.
Although your speed is about right for the attenuation, the high noise margin indicates more speed is available.