TalkTalk upload sync issues since Pipex takeover

Hi folks,

I've been with Pipex for the better part of 10 years and never really had any major issues but for the past couple of weeks I've been getting slower and slower upload connection speeds. I had a fault ticket opened with Pipex towards the end of November and over the course of a few days I got texts/calls letting me know that they'd fixed the issue. They hadn't, of course, and 'escalated' my ticket each time. Come the start of December I call in to check on my fault status and I'm through to TalkTalk, the rep in India had no record of my fault or any of my previous calls with anyone that said they were from Pipex.

I think I spent around 30 minutes explaining the situation, very slow upload speed and seemingly random periods of no connection at all. It was when I told her that I was using two routers that I'd bought myself that she said it was impossible to log a fault with the line because I'm not using a TalkTalk sanctioned router. Now I have to wait up to 7 working days for them to send me a router (at a cost of £15) before I can tell them I have an issue. The sales rep I had to talk to even had the nerve to suggest I could get the router for free if I renewed my contract for 12 months.

I've tried the BT user test credentials on the master socket and swapped out filters/removed other telephony equipment but there is no difference in connection speeds. I'm using a Netgear DG834N with the DGTeam firmware (V1.02.15 - DGTeam Rev. 1018 - I installed that to see if it made any difference, and it didn't so haven't bothered reverting it back). Also I have available a Zoom 5690G router, which I bought to see if it was just my Netgear router acting up. The Zoom worked for around 3 or 4 days at fantastic speeds (2300kbps down and 800kbps up) but now doesn't get any ADSL sync at all.

I'm hoping someone out there can either relate to a similar experience or at least shed some light on to what might be causing my issue.

Here are some stats from my Netgear:

/usr/sbin/adslctl: ADSL driver and PHY status
Status: ShowtimeRetrain Reason: 1
Channel: FAST, Upstream rate = 64 Kbps, Downstream rate = 1522 Kbps
Link Power State: L0
Mode: ADSL2
Channel: Fast
Trellis: U:ON /D:ON
Line Status: No Defect
Training Status: Showtime
Down Up
SNR (dB): 13.8 13.5
Attn(dB): 62.5 36.5
Pwr(dBm): 13.5 11.8
Max(Kbps): 2948 128
Rate (Kbps): 1522 64

Edited by deleted (Sat 03-Dec-11 17:37:06)

Apologies for the double post but the edit time has expired.

A friend advised I force the Netgear router to use 'ADSL' mode rather than 'ADSL2'. Unticking 'ADSL2' in the Advanced ADSL settings on the Netgear (presumably only available due to the custom firmware) puts me on to G.DMT mode with a much improved downstream rate but no change in upstream:

/usr/sbin/adslctl: ADSL driver and PHY status
Status: ShowtimeRetrain Reason: 1
Channel: INTR, Upstream rate = 64 Kbps, Downstream rate = 2400 Kbps
Link Power State: L0
Mode: G.DMT
Channel: Interleave
Trellis: ON
Line Status: No Defect
Training Status: Showtime
Down Up
SNR (dB): 6.6 8.0
Attn(dB): 63.5 31.5
Pwr(dBm): 17.2 10.1
Max(Kbps): 2688 192
Rate (Kbps): 2400 64

Well what do you expect welcome to the joke that is Talk Talk

In reply to a post by 1Gopher:

Well what do you expect welcome to the joke that is Talk Talk

You have posted here 12 times newbie and not one of them is about talktalk so tell us you negative experiences as a talktalk customer or are you just another in a long line of bandwagon jumpers?

And to balance your biased view have a read of this thread with actual customers posting in it --

http://www.talktalkmembers.com/forums/showthread.php...

Edited by Jack_Hackett (Sun 04-Dec-11 12:53:04)

Trust me I'd be on any kind of fiber line if it were available to me. I just live too far from my exchange.

Does look like a line fault, and based on what you say you appear to have ruled out the extension wiring.

On the sanctioned router, if you've tried a few models, then just tell support you borrowed a neigbhours talktalk router (good idea if you can) and the same situation. Then they can arrange the engineeer - of course the caveat of it the engineer finds the fault on your side of things, or his hardware works fine you will get billed for the visit exists. Though that would be the case with the TalkTalk supplied router too.

The zoom not syncing suggests that it cannot sync the upstream, and most common cause would be a noise bleeding in from the voice side, and this could be the wiring in the exchange, if you have checked all your wiring and filters out at your end.

What is odd though is that the sync is low, but still spare noise margin on the upstream, so the issue may be burst noise.

Interestingly enough since TalkTalk stuck their nose in, regular voice calls have been very very quiet on my end - more often than not I offer/get offered to call back on my mobile.

I'm with BT for line rental, TalkTalk (Pipex) is just broadband.

Edited by deleted (Sun 04-Dec-11 13:54:14)

The trick to judging an ISP is to balance the good and bad.

Some people will always say bad, and some will always say good things. Most people who read reviews for many products will be adept at filtering out both sorts of comment.

In terms of this poster, the issue would most likely be a painful one to deal with on almost all providers. If the original poster gets nowhere in the next week, they are free to email me and I can pursue TalkTalk managers.

Poor upstream alone, is so rare that it is little surprise to find call centres have difficulty handling it, and the ex-Pipex aspect does not help.

In reply to a post by mikelouth:

Interestingly enough since TalkTalk stuck their nose in, regular voice calls have been very very quiet on my end - more often than not I offer/get offered to call back on my mobile.

I'm with BT for line rental, TalkTalk (Pipex) is just broadband.

What do BT say about the quiet voice calls?

I haven't actually reported it with BT, I suppose I can get them to check the line for faults too?

Try this...

Unplug everything to do with broadband from your phone line, including microfilters.

Is the call still quiet? If yes report as a voice fault to your line rental provider. Poor voice and poor upstream are closely linked, but often easier to get voice side things looked into, as easier to know whether you have or have not fixed it.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

The trick to judging an ISP is to balance the good and bad.

Some people will always say bad, and some will always say good things. Most people who read reviews for many products will be adept at filtering out both sorts of comment.

In terms of this poster, the issue would most likely be a painful one to deal with on almost all providers. If the original poster gets nowhere in the next week, they are free to email me and I can pursue TalkTalk managers.

Poor upstream alone, is so rare that it is little surprise to find call centres have difficulty handling it, and the ex-Pipex aspect does not help.

MrS i may not have made it very clear but my post was not at the OP but at the comment "Well what do you expect welcome to the joke that is Talk Talk" i have no problem with customers or recent x-customers coming here to tell potential customers the problems they had its the ones that come here to say "i wouldn't touch them with a barge pole" that have just read comments in forums and form an opinion that irritate me, we all know forum users rarely post positive feedback and the lack of it can give a very one sided view that is why i post the "happy TT customers" thread to balance that view.
I am not saying TT are perfect in fact they are far from it but they do have happy customers as well as unhappy ones, i also think they deserve a little credit for washing their dirty linen in public by having a forum which anyone can read, they could quite easily make it a customers only forum and not allow non customers to view the threads/posts.

Edited by Jack_Hackett (Sun 04-Dec-11 17:52:00)

Surprisingly the TalkTalk router arrived this morning, it's a D-Link DSL-2680.

Even more surprising is I'm getting a downstream rate of 2919 kbps. Never seen such speeds!

Not so surprising is my upstream rate of 88 kbps.

Today I'll be testing voice calls with different combinations of equipment and reporting an issue with BT. I'll take whatever they say and then call TalkTalk with an update that it's still the same with their router and filters.

Thanks for the posts everyone so far, your help is appreciated.

Updated stats with TalkTalk Router:

Mode: ADSL2
Type: ANNEX_A
Status: Showtime

Downstream Upstream
Rate (Kbps): 2919 kbps 88 kbps

SNR Margin (dB): 6.2 11.5
Attenuation (dB): 66.0 36.5
Output Power (dBm): 17.3 10.3

Super Frames: 83425 83438
RS Correctable Errors: 63297 0
RS Uncorrectable Errors: 3764 0

HEC Errors: 22151 0
Total Cells: 85307 90103
Data Cells: 413140 90137
Bit Errors: 0 0

Edited by deleted (Mon 05-Dec-11 15:41:07)

Hi,

If any customers do have support issues feel free to tweet us @talktalkcare or visist the talktalk members forum where we can provide full account support and fault management



Regards

Mark
TalkTalk Online Community Department

Just an update!

Voice calls seems to have cleared up on its own, I'm no longer quiet to the other person. I suppose this was related as I'm now connected at 729 kbps upstream!

I'm back to what I was before which I'm happy with - although during my research in other ISPs, O2 have said that on their 'The Works' package, I'd be able to utilise a full 2000 kbps upstream connection, purely because I can connect at 3000 kbps downstream - is there any truth to this?

Thanks again to everyone that posted!

In reply to a post by mikelouth:

O2 have said that on their 'The Works' package, I'd be able to utilise a full 2000 kbps upstream connection, purely because I can connect at 3000 kbps downstream - is there any truth to this?

I don't believe you were told this! To benefit from 2+ Meg upstream (Annex M) you need to to connect at a very high downstream speed (not sure of exact figure, but probably > 16 Meg) on ordinary Annex A, and then you will lose a bit on downstream.

At your Attn, you'll never get Annex M

Edited by XRaySpeX (Wed 07-Dec-11 17:25:50)

If you want to email me the O2 details I can pass this onto their management and ensure that staff are trained better to avoid such mis-selling

conisdering annex M uses more frequencies for upload at the bottom end of the range, do you really need 16mb down to benefit?
Would it be more realistic to say it increases your upload by 70% ish (twice as many tones but maybe not as many bits on each higher frequency tone) as long as your download is above 4mbit on annex A?

I've had ~ 1mbit up and 4-5 down at 3 properties now using annex A, but I didnt try annex M as I didn't want to lose any more DL

I'm not backing this up with any evidence btw , it just seems logical from an electronics point of view

In reply to a post by Myth:

conisdering annex M uses more frequencies for upload at the bottom end of the range, do you really need 16mb down to benefit?

It just indicates the maximum line length that Annex M works over. The problem is that your router has to power the upstream and they just aren't powerful enough to get a better speed on a long line.

I see