Worst isp I've ever being with

A few weeks back i moved from vivaciti's surfwise package to plusnet Premium, now vivaciti were a great isp, until the recent trouble with their surfwise package, i was getting what i thought at the time was slow speeds, about 3mb and nice high 250-300ms pings.

My line should easily sit at around 6mb, and for a day or so on plusnet i had 6mb, then it drop to 5mb, then 4mb, then 3.5mb, it missed 2mb out for some reason and then i dropped to 1mb.

Then early today it dropped to around 0.8, so phoned for my mac code about then. this has to be the shortest time I've being with a isp.

Funny thing is plusnet say my connection has no problems.

My profile is 6000, The last speedtest i did is here

http://www.speedtest.net/result/632681875.png

but the best speedtest was this one i did early

http://www.speedtest.net/result/632637657.png

i should really look on the brightside, at least my pings are lower on plusnet

It seems i'm not the only one.
For the last year I have been having problems on and off.
From october onwards if not earlier, I have been getting 50kbs (yes bits) from about 3:30pm to 11:30pm. Sometimes more.
Its well below the minimum supplied.

Welcome to the club. Same story here. Moved from Mad as a Fish (MaaF - which should even be on the same network as PN) only a few weeks ago. Had a solid 6.5Mb or so BB connection with MaaF. Then we changed to PlusNet a few weeks ago and now have a solid 350Kbps download and 50 Kbps upload speed. Problem started 8 days ago and PN do not seem to even think there is a problem and have not responded at all, despite the fact that we spent more than £10 calling their helpdesk. We are now probably moving to O2. Best of luck.

Keep an eye on here, they have admitted the problem on several occasions!

Changing gateways has helped improve speeds but I & they admit that is not the long term solution.

Things seem a lot better today just hope it lasts

This is what my line has looked like all day today (and we normally have a solid 6.5Mbps) !!!

Date 30/11/09 01:30:34
Speed Down 479.15 Kbps ( 0.5 Mbps )
Speed Up 33.76 Kbps ( 0 Mbps )
Port 8095
Server speedtest1.thinkbroadband.com

Edited by deleted (Mon 30-Nov-09 01:35:47)

WIth the best will in the world this site's speedtester is not accurate. The best one to use is the BT one which is as accurate as you can get and also recorded so Plusnet can get the results to look at.

www.speedtester.bt.com <-- java so make sure you have it installed/updated first

You will need your phone number and FULL adsl username including @plusdsl.net and then let the test run. The throughput is the most important one you need to consider. If that's low then go to the website and raise a speed fault. There's ususally a good reason for the low speeds and often it's the network which an ISP does not have control over which has the fault on it.

Hope that helps.

In the new BT speedtest it is a bit different you don't type in [email protected] - have a read of this http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/troubleshootin...

I'm another one that's just migrated to this bunch. I'm getting 1500kbps when I was getting 7000 odd with UKFSN/Entanet. I can't download anything as it's crawling into dial up speeds, especially when the boy is on Xbox live.

I migrated on the 3rd, raised a ticket on their laughable help system about the dire speeds on the 10th, the only action was taken on the 15th when I emailed CS and they moved the ticket, nothing has happened since.

I think £30 to move would be money well spent
The worst thing is a mate recommended Plusnet to me as a reliable provider, looks like not only do i need a new ISP I need new mates!

Edited by grumpysod (Mon 21-Dec-09 20:58:16)

It depends very much what your mate uses it for.

I've had all sorts of weird and wonderful recommendations - usually from people who only do emails and a little surfing. I've never had any problems with them is often the refrain.

Plusnet operate Traffic Management which does throttle download speeds on their Network at certain times depending on the BB package you use >

http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/tr...

http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/do...

My mate uses it forl iplayer, itunes and the youngsters youtube, faecebook etc.
Even browsing the web with my connection can be pretty slow with plusnet. The connection is mainly used I do the odd download of stuff from MSDN etc. but no more than about 10 gig a month.
It's the fact that my sync rate is less than half what I had with UKFSN/Entatnet and my actual speed is about a quarter of what it was.

I've raised tickets but Plusnet must have no Customer Service staff that deal with them.

I'm now in the same place I was a couple of months ago with Entanet, I'm looking for a more reliable provider or at least one that provides some sort of support.

In reply to a post by grumpysod:

I'm now in the same place I was a couple of months ago with Entanet, I'm looking for a more reliable provider or at least one that provides some sort of support.

Give us the link to what samknows says about your exchange.

That may give a clue as to why your sync speeds are lower than with Entanet, and tell us if there is anything good to be had.

Do you really mean "sync"? Some people think that is the same as actual download speed. The full results from a BT speed test would be useful.

My exchange is http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/NICN

My sync with Entanet was approx 7000kbps and I was getting downloads aroound the 6000kbps mark, so I had overheads of about 1000kbps
With plusnet I'm syncing at approx 3100kbps and getting downloads at about 1600kbps, it now appears to have an overhead of 1600kbps.

Here's the output from the bt speedtest

Download speedachieved during the test was - 1627 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speedsis 600-7150 Kbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :3071 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 443 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 2500 Kbps
The throughput of Best Efforts (BE) classes achieved during the test is - 18.93:26.55:54.52 (SBE:NBE:PBE)
These figures represent the ratio while sententiously passing Sub BE, Normal BE and Priority BE marked traffic.

The results of this test will vary depending on the way your ISP has decided to use these traffic classes.

P.s sorry for hijacking the thread

Edited by grumpysod (Wed 23-Dec-09 21:47:56)

That looks like a problem with your BT profile, if you can post up the stats from your router I'm sure someone can give you some more info

Here you go,

Line Mode ADSL2+ Line State Show Time
Latency Type Fast Line Up Time 00:20:41:26
Line Coding Trellis On Line Up Count 4
Line Power State L0

Statistics Downstream Upstream
Line Rate 3071 Kbps 443 Kbps
Noise Margin 17.6 dB 29.9 dB
Line Attenuation 39.0 dB 18.7 dB
Output Power 0.0 dBm 12.5 dBm
MSGC (number in overhead channel data) 59 12
B (number of bytes in Mux Frame) 95 13
M (number of Mux Frames in FEC Frame) 1 1
T (Mux Frames over sync bytes) 1 4
R (number of check bytes in FEC Frame) 0 0
S (ratio of FEC over PMD Frame length) 0.9897 0.9912
L (number of bits in PMD Frame) 776 113
D (interleaver depth) 1 1
Super Frames 4631431 4631429
Super Frame Errors 306 0
RS Words 0 0
RS Correctable Errors 0 0
RS Uncorrectable Errors 0 0
HEC Errors 114 0
OCD Errors 0 0
LCD Errors 0 0
ES Errors 0 0

If you reboot your router and take the stats as soon as it connects after the reboot then it will tell us what your taget SNR margin is. At the moment your SNR is 17.6 which is high and suggests you have had an unstable line recently. The figure straight after a reboot will tell us more.

How long can you hold a connection?

I moved to ADSL2+ and I then had a lot of problems with my connection. I tried lots of different things, but the only thing I found that worked was to leave it on without interfering with it. You need at least 10 days, possibly 14.

James

It's held a connection for up to six days.

Heres the output just after a reboot

Line Mode ADSL2+ Line State Show Time
Latency Type Fast Line Up Time 00:00:01:22
Line Coding Trellis On Line Up Count 2
Line Power State L0

Statistics Downstream Upstream
Line Rate 3071 Kbps 443 Kbps
Noise Margin 26.4 dB 26.0 dB
Line Attenuation 38.5 dB 18.7 dB
Output Power 0.0 dBm 12.2 dBm
MSGC (number in overhead channel data) 59 12
B (number of bytes in Mux Frame) 95 13
M (number of Mux Frames in FEC Frame) 1 1
T (Mux Frames over sync bytes) 1 4
R (number of check bytes in FEC Frame) 0 0
S (ratio of FEC over PMD Frame length) 0.9897 0.9912
L (number of bits in PMD Frame) 776 113
D (interleaver depth) 1 1
Super Frames 5097 5095
Super Frame Errors 0 65
RS Words 0 0
RS Correctable Errors 0 0
RS Uncorrectable Errors 0 0
HEC Errors 0 0
OCD Errors 0 0
LCD Errors 0 0
ES Errors 0 0

Line Mode ADSL2+ Line State Show Time
Latency Type Fast Line Up Time 00:00:00:21
Line Coding Trellis On Line Up Count 2
Line Power State L0

Statistics Downstream Upstream
Line Rate 3071 Kbps 443 Kbps
Noise Margin 26.6 dB 26.4 dB
Line Attenuation 39.0 dB 18.7 dB
Output Power 0.0 dBm 12.6 dBm
MSGC (number in overhead channel data) 59 12
B (number of bytes in Mux Frame) 95 13
M (number of Mux Frames in FEC Frame) 1 1
T (Mux Frames over sync bytes) 1 4
R (number of check bytes in FEC Frame) 0 0
S (ratio of FEC over PMD Frame length) 0.9897 0.9912
L (number of bits in PMD Frame) 776 113
D (interleaver depth) 1 1
Super Frames 1305 1303
Super Frame Errors 0 97
RS Words 0 0
RS Correctable Errors 0 0
RS Uncorrectable Errors 0 0
HEC Errors 0 0
OCD Errors 0 0
LCD Errors 0 0
ES Errors 0 0

Edited by grumpysod (Thu 24-Dec-09 19:41:35)

That's BT's system of setting SNR. It seems to be particularly problematic on ADSL2+ .

I'm not an expert but some people were able to get their ISP to reset it. Failing that the best you can do is leave it alone. If you can maintain a connection for a fortnight it will improve automatically.

James

In reply to a post by grumpysod:

It's held a connection for up to six days.

Heres the output just after a reboot

Line Mode ADSL2+ Line State Show Time
Latency Type Fast Line Up Time 00:00:01:22
Line Coding Trellis On Line Up Count 2
Line Power State L0

Statistics Downstream Upstream
Line Rate 3071 Kbps 443 Kbps
Noise Margin 26.4 dB 26.0 dB
Line Attenuation 38.5 dB 18.7 dB
Output Power 0.0 dBm 12.2 dBm

It looks like you are on a banded profile, at the top end of the 1472-3072 band. I think the maximum target Noise Margin is 18dB, so the value after reboot being much higher than that supports the banding assumption.

Leaving the connection alone so the DLM sees the line is stable seems the best way forward with this. Patience is needed since it can take 2 or more weeks for the DLM to react. When it does your connection should re-sync automatically.

Had you seen Dave Tomlinson's post on the Community forums - might be of interest to you.

In reference to community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,82081.0.html:

Hi all,

BT are about to start a DLM test that will allow ISPs to set specific line profiles on individual customers' lines including setting a hard over-ride on the line so that DLM can't change it.

The trial is set to begin in early January so we're looking to get together a list of up to 100 volunteers whose lines we can test out. We'll be using some staff and a couple of our test lines but the more volunteers we can get the better. So if you're interested in taking part (Asbo your name will be already on the list ) please add a reply here.

It would also be useful to post what line profile you want us to set. We don't have the final list yet but it's likely we'll get a choice of the following options:

Interleave - off/on
Target SNR - 6/9/12/15dB (possibly 3dB as well) on both upstream and downstream
Standard set of banded profiles

If the choices are different we'll let you know.

Any questions please ask.