VDSL - "capped" lines ?

Hey

Some background. 2 years ago I took up BT's upto 40Mb infinity product. For the first number of weeks it was achieving speeds in the high 30mb's and slowed, before settling at at a speed of around 29mb. I appreciate theres a process whereby the provider finds a speed it believes is stable and then fixes you on that. Its fine, its always been a good connection and i've been happy with it. But as my kids have grown older and streaming TV is the norm, I wanted quicker.

So ... moving on 2 years, I upgraded my EE mobile and they offered me a deal on their upto 80mb fibre plus product. OK, that sounds good, maybe I'll get double at around 58mb, that'd be really nice. I'm getting the same 29mb speed I did previously. So really, I'm paying more for the top product and its the same. But actually its worse ...

They messed up my order initially, I bought an Asus DSL-AC68U router to get me online while I waited for brightbox 2. With the Asus, I was getting 29mb down and 16mb up, my previous up speed on BT was around 7mb - so great, I can actually get some faster speeds. But when I received my brightbox, I plugged it in and now I'm getting 29mb down (still) and only 3.5mb up. Somethings not right, I've complained and they tell me I should be getting around 16mb-19mb up and 56mb to 65mb down.

My question. When BT have "stablised" my line to 29mb, is this "cap" likely to still be in place? I havent changed phone number or anything, I equate it to moving electricity suppliers - i just have someone else billing me and on the end of the phone, the service hasn't actually changed one iota.

Given that i've taken the double bandwidth product and getting the exact same down speed, am i capped? Is this a profile issue? Speaking to EE, its clear they know little more about the product and how it works than I do.

Also, why is the brightbox giving me 3.5mb up, against the 16mb up in my Asus router (and the Hub 5 gave me 7mb).

Is it realistic to expect about double my original speeds (the up speed on the Asus suggests it is).

Given that the EE "support" guys seemingly know nothing, I want to know where I stand with the technicalities. I have seen my line achieve around 36-38mb when first joining BT and before "stablisation". I know my line can do more, why is it not?

Thanks for any details.

Edited by deleted (Thu 29-Sep-16 21:38:08)

Firstly, does the router you are using produce any stats ? Attention, SNR sync rate, etc.
It would be useful to see these.

Next, can you describe the set up at your house, where is the router connected, what kind of filters, etc.

Thanks for your reply.

Router is connected to master socket, which is a BT split socket with internal filter. So I have an RJ11 straight in with no external filter. No extensions, no phone plugged in.

The status screen in my brightbox router shows an ADSL connection of 29.97 down and 3.89 up. If i do a test with speedtest.btwholesale.com and then teh further diagnostics, it suggests that my profile is set to 29.98mbs.

I'm thinking this is the issue. I'm "capped" at 29.98 on the router, even though I now have the higher product of up to 80.

The only DSl stats I can see in the brightbox are

Noise margin of 6.2db up and down
line attenuation 0 up and 15.9db down

near end output power 7.4 dbm, far end 12.1 dbm

You have a few overlapping issues there, of which the most important is that there is no technical difference between the 40/10 you used to have and the 80/20 you have now. If your line could only provide 29Mbps on 40/10 then that's all it will achieve on 80/20.

The FTTC products from Openreach, which is what all ISPs except Virgin Media Cable use, are (up to) 40/2; 40/10; (new) 55/10; 80/20. The difference is that Openreach set a cap in both directions to create different market products for ISPs to sell.

That leaves us with a big question, and several smaller ones.

The big question is - should your line have been doing better even on 40/10 than it was?

The first thing I would do is plug the ASUS back in and see if you get the higher speeds again. That gives us two things.

One, if it is faster than the brightbox, then stick with it for now. Secondly, the statistics that Zarjaz requested should be easily available from it. Those statistics basically tell us both the nitty-gritty of your connection as it is now, and what it might be able to achieve if we can see problems in them.

As well as doing that, please can you also please put your phone number into this checker, and copy/paste the A and B VDSL lines. Don't worry about the formatting, we can work it out.

The smaller questions can wait. Just about maximising your throughput once we know we have the line connecting at the highest possible.

Your reply to Zarjaz wasn't there when I started typing mine . Mine still applies.

OK, I've hooked up the Asus and I'm getting :

DSL Firmware Version 1.0.2.2

DSL Driver Version FwVer:5.5.1.127_A_A60901 HwVer:T14.F7_0.2

DSL modulation

Annex mode
ANNEX_B

SNR Down
5.1 dB

SNR Up
6.3 dB

Line Attenuation Down
10.3 dB

Line Attenuation Up
0.0 dB

Path Mode
FastPath

Data Rate Down
28373 kbps

Data Rate Up
16519 kbps

MAX Rate Down
37860

MAX Rate Up
16516

POWER Down
11.9 dbm

POWER Up
9.8 dbm

CRC Down
0

CRC Up
1

That's good re the upstream, though the actual and maximum down are low for the attenuation. Please could we have the VDSL figures from the checker link I gave you earlier?

VDSL Range A (Clean)

Downstream High = 80
Downstream Low = 64.6
Upstream High = 20
Upstream Low = 19

VDSL Range B (Impacted) 65.6 35 20 8.5

Downstream High = 65.6
Downstream Low = 35
Upstream High = 20
Upstream Low = 8.5

--------

On the speedtest.btwholesale.com page (further diagnostics), it suggests that the ip profile for my line is set to 28.98 down and 20 up

Right! Thanks.

This may sound irrelevant, but was your Infinity installation a couple of years ago done by an engineer visiting your premises, or had they already moved on to self-install?

If it was an engineer visit, can you remember if it was an Openreach engineer, or a contractor such as Kelly's or Quinn's?

The reason for the questions is it seems you should be getting considerably higher speeds, and a problem with your home wiring is a high possibility.

It was an openreach engineer who came to me, I was originally getting just under 40mb which went down very gradually (over months) to 28mb. I had a standard one port master socket with a filter, I complained to BT about the decreased speed and they sent out another open reach guy who put in a new filtered master socket with an rj11 socket built in , it made no difference. I just kind of accepted that BT had "stabilised" my speed down, and it was acceptable (albeit frustrating). But now i'm on 80/20, I'm really expecting higher.

There is just the one master socket going straight out, I have a phoned plugged in as well as the modem. removing the phone makes no difference. Multiple routers doesn't make much difference (actually the brightbox gives me a slightly faster down than the asus, but only 3.5 up whereas asus gives me 16up). No socket extensions at all.