What on Earth Happened There?

Since connecting to Be (LLU) my speed has been around 6,000kb/s, resisting all attempts to improve it. It should have been 12-16,000kb/s.

I logged on today and found from DMT that I was now connected at 14,777kb/s. Great, I thought, BT have been working on the exchange and have fixed the fault! Speedtest confirmed a much faster connection.

According to my l8nc.com graph, there was a series of disconnections between 8 and 8:30bst followed by a slightly lower latency and generally nicer stats. Brilliant!

Then, at 19:40 bst the connection dropped and the same old connection came back.

Anyway, my question isn't ISP-specific or technical really. It is simply; Does anyone know of a way of finding out if BT were doing any work on my exchange today? The exchange is Lofthouse Gate / MYLOF


For anyone interested, here are the Before / During / After screendumps from DMT:

Before

During

After

the bitswap option was unticked on the fast service - coincidence ? The pics didn't show what standard was in use, are forcing it to G992.5 / ADSL2+ or leaving it at multimode ? As its Be it is LLU and most likely to be in their court not BT's, try the Be forum ?

Hello Phil.

So far as I know, the bitswap tickbox only affects what is shown on the top graph. if a channel becomes unusable or reduced bit-width it turns grey. Channels which improve are a dark blue. The improvement happened at 8am or so, while all the machines (except the modem) were turned off. I haven't noticed it have any effect on the bit rate previously anyway.

I have looked at my other screen grabs. The standard in effect was the usual G.992.5 Annex A (ADSL2+) and wasn't being forced at this end, I generally leave the modem to do it's own thing after failing to get any improvement in the past.

I have posted it in the Be internal forum and added it to the already open ticket but there is no official response yet (I wouldn't really expect one inside 24 hrs). Unfortunately I have asked the tech support people if they can do anything about the line twice now and their response has been:

"Concerning your physical line we are leasing it from BT, the same way you are, so regarding the same you should contact them if you want them to do something to improve the conditions, so we can provide you with better service. However we will not be able to request them to change your physical line as you are its owner as far as BT are concerned."

This seems to be the old "BT:It's the ISP's job ISP: It's BT's job" <repeat ad infinitum>

I mainly posted in this part of the forum on the off-chance that someone might know if MYLOF was undergoing any work on Sunday. It would be a logical day to do work certainly but there were no relevant items in the "planned outages" section of the Be forum.

Thanks again Phil, much obliged