Plusnet Profile V BT's

It seems unfair that a small glitch can drop your Plusnet profile nearly instantly, but when things stabilize the Plusnet profile can take a day to catch up with BT's profile again.

P.S. Can some kind person give my Plusnet profile a kick (again) its still lower than BTs.

Lenseman.

I'll go take a look. We are looking into how to refactor the updates so there is less chance of a difference between the 2 profiles.

Do you want to drop me a PM with your username, the one on your post doesn't seem to match to an account on our side.

Edited by chrisparr (Wed 10-Feb-10 15:52:24)

Can the IP profile affect connection rate of the ADSL router?

Does this mean I need a profile "kick" as well instead of the potentially expensive BT engineer call out that has been suggested?

I'm on the ADSL2+ service and used to switch the router off regularly. I stopped that and have a profile that has gradually increased the last two weeks from 4500, 5000 to 5500 (today)*. The logged Plusnet problem is that I've been having low connection rates of ~5-6Mbps (the line according to Plusnet diagnostics on the support call say it is capable of >11Mbps) and nobody at Plusnet seem to have picked up that I'm getting higher connections and higher speeds via the BT speed tester each time the profile increases.

User name is the same as on here.

* Plusnet asked me to do tests today before booking a BT engineer and I believe this caused it to drop again to an profile of 5000 according to the BT speed tester.

Your connection speed determines your BT IP profile. The profile does not determine the connection speed.

With most ISPs, but not Plusnet, your BT IP profile directly determines your maximum actual download speed.

A lower connection speed at any time triggers a rapid fall in profile to the appropriate level.

A higher connection speed at any time causes a rise in profile, but takes from a few hours to 5 days.

When your BT IP Profile changes, Plusnet are supposed to get an update of a copy of it that is held in the Plusnet system. Sometimes that update doesn't happen, so your Plusnet IP Profile can be out of date, either higher or lower than your current BT IP Profile.

If the update fails, the Plusnet copy will only be corrected by either a successful update next time your BT one changes, or by Plusnet support manually adjusting the copy.

When your BT and Plusnet copy IP Profiles are out of step, your maximum actual download speed is determined by the lower of the two.

There is a fuller description of the BT IP Profile system on this page of my website.

My belief is because of lots of manual disconnects the line profile was downgraded artificially - i.e. that it was my fault for switching off nightly, not the line having problems - and that the nominal rate of the line is above the profile I have at the moment. Do you think there's some mileage in that as I believe returning the profile to something around 7-8000 would return the line to its original state and if I can can get a better connection I'm happy for the profile to (continue to) increase over a number of weeks?

Switching off at night is normal. Only geeks like me or people worried about a low sync speed due to switching on during or before dawn don't. Though that last point could be relevant to you.

You seem to continue to think the IP Profile affects your connection/sync speed.

It does not. End of story.

Okay so I may have made a donkey's of myself in the Plusnet support call asking that Plusnet are aware that I've been having increasing profile speeds since I started leaving my router on and believed that to be the cause of the low sync speed.

Any ideas as to why my sync speed is gradually increasing again then back to a state I had a few months ago?

In reply to a post by brownb2:

Okay so I may have made a donkey's of myself in the Plusnet support call asking that Plusnet are aware that I've been having increasing profile speeds since I started leaving my router on and believed that to be the cause of the low sync speed.

Any ideas as to why my sync speed is gradually increasing again then back to a state I had a few months ago?

The most likely explanation is that way back you had a short spell of something bad happening, like many disconnections in a very short time. Thunderstorms are a very common reason, and we had a lot of those a few months back.

That can send your "target" noise margin up. That reduces your connection speed. Given good stability after that, and not switching off at night is a good idea so maybe you did the right thing for the wrong reason , then in the same way as the systems raised it, it should lower it in 3dB steps at intervals of 10-14 days. When it does that it will cause your router to re-sync at a higher speed.

That seems to describe what you have been experiencing - it didn't occur to me before due to the confusion of which is boss - profile or connection speed. Without knowing what your noise margin has been over the period we can't know.

If you read these two pages on my website I explain as well as I can noise margin and problems with it:-

How the noise margin works.
Noise margin problems.

You might also find the Ring/Bell wire and Miscellaneous Nasties pages in the Troubleshooting section useful.

In reply to a post by brownb2:

....That seems to describe what you have been experiencing...

I've copied your whole reply verbatim to Plusnet on the support call as although it's clutching at straws it sounds plausible and preferable to an engineer visit. I'll sit and twiddle my thumbs a bit now for Plusnet to catch up on my call.

Hi brownb2,

I agree that that is most likely the cause of the slow speeds on the line, which tests are showing is still apparent (there's a lower threshold breach showing on the line, you're in sync at 5706kb/s and the fault threshold on your line is set to 7952). Provided this is still apparent when the engineer turns up (and he is able to replicate the issue with his own hardware) we'll at least get something that we can use to push for resolution and at best the fault will be resolved.

If you could let us know when you're available for the engineer to visit we'll get it booked for you as soon as we can.