Please explain line stats during outage

Last week all week at work the internet dropped to a crawl and our IT Department sent out a mail saying BT had an issue in the area they had not yet resolved. I live seven miles from where I work. On Tuesday my internet dropped to a crawl too and stayed that way all last week. You can see the point it started here:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/0e82bee0a69...

It lasted until this afternoon where you can see it recover here:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/4b794859970...

Yesterday Saturday I contacted Uno and asked them if they were aware of the BT issue in our area and when it would be resolved. They said they weren't aware of any issues and could I send line stats.

I sent them the following stats:

Update Counter : 84767
Modulation : G.Dmt
Annex Mode : Annex A/L
Line State : up
Lan Tx : 227696709
Lan Rx : 127555962
ADSL Tx : 1687797
ADSL Rx : 2488966
CRC Down : 11
CRC Up : 311
FEC Down : 2
FEC Up : 0
HEC Down : 247
HEC Up : 3
SNR Up : 9.0
SNR Down : 14.0
Line Attenuation Up : 31.5
Line Attenuation Down : 39.5
Data Rate Up : 64
Data Rate Down : 1408

I received the standard reply, it must be your equipment etc, please go through the usual plug your router into the master socket blah blah blah, done it a thousand times now for every ISP and every address I've ever lived at.

Now that my connection has recovered the line stats look like this:

Update Counter : 3157
Modulation : ADSL2+
Annex Mode : Annex A/L
Line State : up
Lan Tx : 772414
Lan Rx : 440654
ADSL Tx : 294321
ADSL Rx : 510009
CRC Down : 0
CRC Up : 2
FEC Down : 0
FEC Up : 2
HEC Down : 2
HEC Up : 0
SNR Up : 12.7
SNR Down : 12.3
Line Attenuation Up : 9.1
Line Attenuation Down : 17.0
Data Rate Up : 895
Data Rate Down : 13838

I haven't changed anything with my settings or equipment but the stats are clearly different. Isn't this evidence the problem was with the line during the outage and not my equipment?

The first obvious difference would be that one set of stats see the connection as 'normal' dsl G.DMT, up to 8 meg as it was sometimes called. The second shows is as ADSL2+ .... so my guess would be something going on at the exchange.

I see the attenuation figures were significantly higher in 1st set of figures. Maybe a cable fault/breakdown

So do you think my ISP should have told me there was something unusual with the line or were they right to tell me to go through an equipment test. Even I can tell there's something wrong with the line stats with my low level of knowledge so why didn't my ISP spot it.

I don't they should have said it must be your equipment based on one set of data. Certainly correct of them to ask you to do some diagnostics your end before pursuing with their their suppliers si as to avoid potentially unnecessary charges.

Completely agree with what Ribble posted.

Okay thanks both of you for your help. I'm surprised to hear that given that the outage started so suddenly and the stats are so widely different. I guess in future I will always expect to be asked to go through the usual checklist regardless of how obviously I feel you can see it's a line fault.

I have to say that attenuation variation like that would normally point to a line fault.

But...

That doesn't mean the fault is outside your house, and your description also points to it being an intermittent fault.

If an engineer arrives to deal with an intermittent fault, then the odds are reduced that the problem will be visible during the time of the visit. If the fault doesn't show in his testing, but there is any hint of a problem with things on the internal wiring, even if it is nothing to do with the main fault you're (intermittently) experiencing, you might find yourself being charged for the visit.

ISPs know that people raise hell if they get charged ... so they attempt to pre-empt that.

The two of you are working to different priorities. You are wanting your line fixed ASAP. Your ISP wants to make sure that they don't have to deal with a charge from Openreach, and then your subsequent complaint.

That explains it very well thank you. I've been with a number of providers and when things go wrong it always seem like BT OpenReach are the cause of the problem.