Bras Profile Stuck ?

I have synced at over 5696 for over 5 days but my throughput is limited to 500 kbs.

Before my ISP will pursue this with BT they require me to undertake 3 tests logging direct to BT's site to confirm my throughput.

I have done several speed tests with http://speedtester.bt.com/ through my ISP and this confirms 'IP profile for your line is - 5000 kbps' although the throughput is less than 500 kbs.

Logging on to the site direct using the URL or IP Address and bypassing my ISP brings up an Error Message 'Only Tap 1 Tests enabled - Log In as Tap1 User'.

Any advice as to what this means.

Also since my ISP has a value of 500 kbs as the speed BT expect me to achieve can they access the tests I have completed and confirm for themselves that BT have a figure of 5000 kbs and pursue this with BT based on this evidence.

I assume the figure of 500 kbs my ISP has is limiting my throughput.
Edit: This value has now been increased to 2000 'to see if it makes a difference'.
It appears to have had no effect.

After many weeks of waiting for a fault to be found and fixed I'm now stuck on 500 kbs throughput to say nothing of a Target SNM of 15 db.

My ISP is pursuing this but getting answers and making progress is painfully slow.

Edited by deleted (Tue 03-Oct-06 22:55:16)

Just to verify, 500kbps or 500kB/s ?

Either way, it's either a bit slow, or really slow !

500kbps is too fast for a 0.5Mbps profile (would be closer to 460kbps).
I've also not heard of a BRAS profile stuck that low.
Who is your ISP?
Do they offer a capped 0.5Mbps connection (that may use ADSLmax)?
Sounds a bit like your ISP is limiting your speed, certainly doesn't sound like BT (as they think your profile is 5000kbps, which should give a maximum speed of around 4700kbps).

Actual throughput is 500 kbps

MaxDsl

ISP - Plusnet.

Wow! That's bad.

As your ISP is Plusnet, I don't rate your chances of getting any meaningful support.
You haven't used up your download limit, and had your speed reduced (or maybe they've reduced it by accident)?

PAYG - no limits

I was on a throughput of 160 kbps for most of the past 6 weeks.
This increased to 230 kbps three days ago and then to 500 kbps this morning.
No idea why considering I power the Router down overnight and have maintained 5696 plus for over 5 days.

Edit:

I've just completed one Test on the BT site which gave a download of 4122 kbps.

On logging back to my ISP the speed on two alternative sites gave 1.95 mbps.
These I suspect are being limited by the setting of 2000 which my ISP manually entered yesterday.

Hopefully Plusnet must be able to make some progress with this now.

Edited by deleted (Wed 04-Oct-06 01:01:45)

My Bras was stuck at 100k for about a week

miller75, did it just sort itself? Mine's stuck at 2500k

no, i had a week of banging my head againts a wall with tech support

They've manually increased mine twice so far.

Don't know how widespread this is, with PN, but they are still trying to find out why mine isn't updating automatically - at least I hope thats what they're doing.

In reply to:

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I have done several speed tests with http://speedtester.bt.com/ through my ISP and this confirms 'IP profile for your line is - 5000 kbps' although the throughput is less than 500 kbs.

In reply to:

---

That says to me that your profile is not stuck at all, but more than possible that your ISP is limiting your speed.

Each time you've connected to the BT test has it shown your actual sync rate and have you rebooted the router/modem at all? If you haven't rebooted the router/modem, then it's certainly worth doing.

Edited by deleted (Mon 09-Oct-06 07:41:11)

My ISP manually increased my Data Rate well above the correct level at their end and this did increase my throughput.

I then dropped down a Bras level and immediately synced back up again where I've been ever since.

My ISP confirms BT's figures mirror that change in level and that everything now is ok.

At one point they confirmed they suspected the problem was not with BT and all the evidence confirms this.

Considering my Data Rate with my ISP is still above the correct level and has not changed, I'm not entirely convinced they have any reason to be confident their systems are now working properly.

I have been re-booting the Router although I'm certain the problem lies with my ISP.

Edited by deleted (Mon 09-Oct-06 09:57:28)

If your ISP are the ones increasing your throughput, then the problem lies fairly and squarely at their feet as they are traffic shaping your connection rather heavily. If it was an issue with BT, then your ISP couldn't increase your throughput at all, which means they are traffic shaping/capping you, which is not a good thing at all.

I would appreciate some clarification on some terminology.
Is my following understanding correct:

BT Downstream Line Rate is the lowest sync speed for a given Profile.
Sync speeds between 5696 and 6208 relate to a BT Downstream Line Rate of 5696 and a Data Rate / Stable Rate of 5000.

The wording on one of Plusnet's pages is:
'This is the speed that the network supplier is telling us you should expect on your line. If your hardware is reporting higher speeds, you can try and automatically update this speed by disconnecting and reconnecting once a day for 3 days.'

'Kitz' actually link to this page on their site and refer to it as Data Rate.
Plusnet's own link includes the wording 'stablerate'
I regard this value as Stable or Data Rate.


I am syncing at 5696 or slightly higher.

Plusnet have manually increased the value on their Web Page [Data Rate - Stable Rate ?] to 5500 and assure me this corresponds correctly to BT's Downstream Line Rate value of 5696.

Is this correct ?.

Edited by deleted (Sat 14-Oct-06 18:05:38)

ATM Line sync speed
IP Data Rate
from 288Kbps 0.25Mbps
from 576Kbps 0.5Mbps
from 1152Kbps 1Mbps
from 1728Kbps 1.5Mbps
from 2272Kbps 2Mbps
from 2848Kbps 2.5Mbps
from 3424Kbps 3Mbps
from 4000Kbps 3.5Mbps
from 4544Kbps 4Mbps
from 5120Kbps 4.5Mbps
from 5696Kbps 5Mbps
from 6240Kbps 5.5Mbps
from 6816Kbps 6Mbps
7392Kbps 6.5Mbps
7968Kbps 7Mbps
8128Kbps 7.15Mbps

Your sync rate will give you an actual speed throughput of 5meg (naturally actual speeds will depend on the time of day). If you were to sync at 6240 then your BRAS profile would be 5.5meg... and so on. The above table is the easiest thing to refer to as you can check your sync rate against it and be able to tell without any extra waffle what you're supposed to get providing you've synced at the required rate for 3 days or more.

Thanks I did have access to the table that you refer to, thats where I got my figures from quoted above.

As stated previously my ISP has been limiting my throughput in the past and are now manually adjusting settings supposedly to try to match BT's figures.

You're right cutting through the waffle is exactly what I'm trying to do.
Without an understanding of some of the terminology, my ISP quote things which are difficult to follow if not meaningless.

My ISP quoted:
'It is the Downstream Line Rate that is relevant to your service speed and not the MSR.
Our system sets it to the nearest 0.5MB increments so with your current line rate a setting of 5.5MB would be correct.

I've no idea why they brought the MSR into it.
I've never heard of 'service speed'.

I still assume BT's Downstream Line Rate is the lowest sync speed for a given Profile and suspect this is the figure my ISP quote on their Web page ie 5.5 MB corresponding to a Data Rate of 5 MB.

This would suggest to me that the link on 'Kitz' web site to my ISP's Web Page isn't the Data Rate after all as Kitz state but is the Downstream Line Rate. As stated above the page it links to gives a value of 5500.

Edited by deleted (Sat 14-Oct-06 23:09:09)

Your provider is basically giving you info that you don't need to know about at all as you only need to know your actual throughput rate/Profile rate. Going by what your provider are saying, they seem to be saying that your actual sync rate is your 'service speed' (if I read that correctly). Why they are telling you things you already know, I can only assume they are hoping to blind you with rubbish and adding in different names for things will certainly not help. All you want to know (which you already know) is what your actual speed is.

What you need to do with your provider is to basically ask them to stop capping/restricting your connection because they are the ones who are physically stopping you get close to the 600kBps actual download rate that you should be getting when things are quiet on your exchange.

Since it's not a BT fault, your provider should just lift the restrictions and stop the messing around. They can set you to the proper rate in one go as there's no need for this incremental increase rubbish.

>>> 'Only Tap 1 Tests enabled - Log In as Tap1 User'.

Pressumably... You've not logged into the Performance tester correctly. You need to put your phone no and username@isprealm
eg. [email protected]

alternatively if using via the speedtest domain login try speedtest@speedtest_domain ?

but the performance tester is awfully buggy and slow anyhow atm

>> This would suggest to me that the link on 'Kitz' web site to my ISP's Web Page isn't the Data Rate after all as Kitz state but is the Downstream Line Rate.

The page linked to on the portal should show you your Data Rate, which should mirror your bRAS profile set by BT.

You have to sync for 3 full days at a higher rate before your profile is increased.
Just one bad sync during that period can mean right back to the beginning again :/

After 3 full days of syncing at a higher speed, BT then set a new bRAS profile and send a report to your ISP (Delta report) advising them of the new profile.
So we are now on day 4.. and it may take a few hours before your ISP actually processes them (I believe they are only done at certain times of the day).

Therefore there may be an overlap of up to a day before both figures are equal?

An isp can manually overide the automated system and increase their datarate, which they do sometimes do in cases where it may be a suspected bRAS profile. However this only increases throughput on their side, and wont actually do anything in the event of something going wrong with the BT side of things.

*** If they have increased your data rate you must reconnect before you will see any speed increase ****

>> BT Downstream Line Rate is the lowest sync speed for a given Profile".

BTw define the line rate as the speed which you sync to the exchange at at (or last sync'd at).
quote

Downstream line rate

----

ooooohh  

Im going to give you some more "waffle", but Im hoping that its going to explain and clarify a few things for some people. (or maybe not).

IMHO the IP profile attained from the BTw performance tester may confuse some people, and its something I mentioned when beta testing the performance tester that perhaps wasnt followed up on properly.

AFAIK the IP profile stated from the performance tester is an indication of the maximum throughput speed you are likely to see after allowing for overheads.

Take for eg my own line
~ I sync at 8128 kbps and have never synced at anything other than 8128 kbps.
~ My Data Rate is 8000 - (& aside from a couple of stuck bRAS profiles its always been at 8000).
~ My IP profile however is 7150 kbps - The BTw performance tester says its 7150.

In the early days of MAX I received several speedtests in the region of 7260kbps
(dont get that now - contentions kicked in 24/7).

During early testing of the performance tester it used to say
"Your configured download throughput speed for this service is 7150 k"
"Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was 6009 kbps

I believe theyve changed it, exactly what I dont know, because since its gone out into *the public domain* its always busy and Ive not been able to access it.

Anyhow, I repeat the IP profile on the performance tester is a guide to the maximum throughput speed... ie anticipated maximum speed after allowing for overheads.

IP profile != DataRate/bRAS profile.

>> then the problem lies fairly and squarely at their feet as they are traffic shaping your connection rather heavily.

I think conclusions have been jumped to here? Look at some of the facts

~ Stuck at <500 kbps what ever time of day??

~ If PN were traffic shaping 6Mb connections at 500kbps on http dont you think there would be a hell of a stink in _all_ the forums? Even more so that this is a PAYG account.

~ PN certainly aint gonna be the ones increasing the Target SNR Margin up to 15 db either are they?

~ Something else has been going on here.. What was the 230 and 160 profiles all about too??

The fact that they are trying to increase the data rate on their side of things, and because they can - doesnt point to traffic shaping.

Dont ask me what though cause I aint going to go jumping to conclusions.
However, I have recently heard of stuck low profiles.
I am also wondering about if delta reports have been received >> acted upon, and the overlap time inbetween this period.
Then remember it takes a reconnect to see the speed increases.

Looking at the facts as you say and what the op posted it most certainly does look like capping/shaping.

This post shows that he's getting the speed for his profile through BT..
Link

In reply to:

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I've just completed one Test on the BT site which gave a download of 4122 kbps.

On logging back to my ISP the speed on two alternative sites gave 1.95 mbps.
These I suspect are being limited by the setting of 2000 which my ISP manually entered yesterday.

Hopefully Plusnet must be able to make some progress with this now.

---

Or this bit: Link

In reply to:

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At one point they confirmed they suspected the problem was not with BT and all the evidence confirms this.

---

Next time maybe you should read the whole thread before making comments. I was actually keeping away from the fact that this is Plusnet with whom so much dirt has flown over the last year, but the facts speak for themselves on this one.

Edited by deleted (Sun 15-Oct-06 09:41:16)

In reply to:

---

Pressumably... You've not logged into the Performance tester correctly. You need to put your phone no and username@isprealm

---

I have seen that said a few times now - but it's not what I have to do? I connect to http://speedtester.bt.com/ and it asks for my phone number. There is then a pause (reading the page I would guess it is doing a speed test between the tester and my ISP) and then it goes straight into the speed test/show results sequence.

At no stage do I have to enter a username

Ian
(stuck on a 500Kbps profile for a line syncing at over 6000Kbps for well over 3 days now)

mhmmm if you look at my last sentence

"I am also wondering about if delta reports have been received >> acted upon, and the overlap time inbetween this period.
Then remember it takes a reconnect to see the speed increases."

Something restricted him... he was stuck at 500.. what caused it to go down that low.
Then say, if he gets an increase-profile .. and it can take up to a day to kick in.

But what happened to the delta report that BT are supposed to send.. why didnt that get increased in the first place?

Then.. a bit later he physically logs off to perform a btw speed test.. upon reconnection he gets the higher profile of 2Mb.
Why did it take a login to another realm before the increase to 2Mb kicked in?

Why havent PN now got notification of a new higher 5000 profile from BT yet?
They manually tried to change that.. its showing on the portal that they have changed it.. but why hasnt that yet kicked in. **

**May be worthwhile the OP trying a login to the btspeedtest realm again to see if that kickstarts the new higher profile.

I really dont know whats going on here, and why his connection isnt reacting immediately to any increases in the datarate.

But whatever.. its not traffic shaping...
if PN were doing that kind of shaping there would be 10s of 1000s of users screaming about that.
IMHO its something to do with the bRAS >> ISP datarate profile thats capping the speed somewhere.

and wth happened on that line to get such a poor profile in the first place... what caused the Target SNR Margin of 15dB (- that one aint PNs doing). ??
Like I say something weird happened on that particular connection.

-------

btw.. in May this year I got a stuck bRAS profile
- It wasnt the usual brand new max stuck profile - I already went through that in April, and Id already been on max for several weeks.

I had a hell of a time trying to get BT to remove it.. I knew it was there cause I was consistantly flat lining at the same speed.

Raised tickets with PN... showed them tests Id done.. but BTw kept insisting that it wasnt my bRAS profile. I provided PN with shed loads of stuff to back up what I was saying.. they could see I was obviously profiled somewhere.
It was BT that kept denying it... and PN played ticket tennis with BT - who kept chucking it back saying I wasnt. PN kept chucking it back at BT, who would chuck it back at PN saying I was profiled at 8000.. and this went on for several days before BTw finally did something about it.

If you dont believe me.. there will be a post in the PN forum somewhere where I mentioned having had a pig of a time about it.. and I even made a joke about it in there about BT hating me.. cause theyd done it more or less to the day of the anniversary when I first took them on about contention.

In the end it turned out theyd done some work on my exchange the night it all happened... and I later found out Id been reRASed (yet again).
but nope it wasnt BTs fault.. and nope they hadnt wrongly profiled me in a way that it wasnt showing anywhere - - - yeah rite!

In a similar way I see problems cropping up where ISPs are trying to get interleaving turned off and BT are insisting that its off, and refusing to acknowledge that despite users routers showing them its on - and the profile being that of interleaved.
Ive known someone struggling for well over a month now on this.. and Ive also seen tickets from a virgin support agent who was literally tearing her hair out over trying to get BT to believe that yes interleaving was on on a particular line, and can they please turn it off.

So the morale is... that sometimes the ball lies in the ISPs court.. and sometimes it is BT .
How long did it take them to accept there was such a thing as a stuck bRAS profile in the first place?

>>> have seen that said a few times now ...........

this is the sorta thing I get

http://www.kitz.co.uk/temp/validification2.gif

Edited by kitz (Sun 15-Oct-06 10:02:19)

Thanks Reme8488

This is why I'm trying to sort out the terminology because I can't argue it out with my ISP if I don't know what they are talking about and may end up using totally wrong terminology myself which they can just throw back at me to further confuse the situation.

Thanks very much Kitz:

The crucial thing to me, I think, is the Data Rate.

Having synced at just over 5696 for a good many days, the link from your Site to PN gives a value of 5500 on that page which is why I assumed something was wrong since I believe the Data Rate should be 5000.
PN manually entered this value on 4th October.

With apologies I think the error is not in your referring to this as Data Rate, its that PN must have the wrong value on their page although they seem to insist everything is correct.

They seem to be adamant '..Our system sets it to the nearest 0.5MB increments so with your current line rate a setting of 5.5MB would be correct'.

I assumed this 5.5 MB refers to the page that your site links to ie Data Rate.
Perhaps it refers to Line Rate / Profile of 5696, in which case they may well be correct in what they say.
PN increasing the Data Rate above its correct value ie 5500 as against 5000 could simply be ensuring that their setting of Data Rate is not limiting the throughput.

I suspect that the Profile has never been stuck at BT's end but by my ISP, albeit 'unintentionally', who I have twice had to prompt to raise this value up to 2000 and then 5500. Having synced at 5696 for many days they raised this value on one occasion 'to see if it would make a difference'. The actual values were down to them of course.

NB this all began with a BT cable fault hence the sustained low sync speeds and Profiles referred to initially.
*** If they have increased your data rate you must reconnect before you will see any speed increase ****
They neglected to mention that.

Edited by deleted (Sun 15-Oct-06 17:21:43)