Line deteriorating?

I have long suspected I have an intermittent HR fault on my line and things now seem to be getting worse
The problem exhibits itself mostly during rainy periods - it starts to rain and I lose sync
I had Be* check things their end and line monitoring for 24 hours showed no issues
BT voice engineer came out and checked everything and replaced the master socket as it was slightly damaged. As the problems are the same plugged into the test socket, I knew however that this wouldn't make any difference

Around August this year, things started getting worse. When first connected to Be*, my downstream attenuation was 38db. Last year, it started hanging around 37.5db, then around August dropped down to 37db and is now sitting at 36.5db. Downstream output power also used to be around 19db, but has gone to 17.5db.

I've been using a Netgear DG834GT for about 6 months to see if there was any difference and it also doesn't spontaneously restart like the Speedtouch 780WL after a large amount of FEC errors are generated. I got a slightly more stable connection at first, but things progressively worse. I have on average about 10 LOS errors a day. Connected at the test socket was just as bad, if not worse.
I normally use an extension socket. Also, in October I fitted an iPlate mostly for the sake of curiousity.

Since about August time also, my modulation keeps going to ADSL2 instead of ADSL2+. I've never had problems with the modulation dropping down to ADSL2 before this. I also only averaged 5 - 10 LOS a week even during the old, wet winter months (apart from during periods of heavy rain and storms)

Last night, I connected the BeBox (780WL) back up for troubleshooting and to be ready for Be* support. I also took the downstream SNR up to 9db. Reliabity matters more at the moment than speed for increased level of online gaming over the Xmas period.

Stats up until Iost sync earlier todayat 18:42 and lost Internet connection. After a restart, got Internet back, but was on ADSL2. Took 4 restarts of the Bebox to get back onto ADSL2+

Uptime: 0 days, 0:18:31
Modulation: G.992.5 Annex A
Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 1,325 / 7,709
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [KB/KB]: 18.00 / 69.00
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 12.0 / 18.0
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 18.5 / 36.5
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 7.0 / 8.5
Vendor ID (Local/Remote): TMMB / �
Loss of Framing (Local/Remote): 20 / 0
Loss of Signal (Local/Remote): 5 / 0
Loss of Power (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Link (Remote): 0
Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 141 / 0
FEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 19,140
CRC Errors (Up/Down): 124,331 / 647
HEC Errors (Up/Down): 1,332,180 / 591

As this has been going on for at least 3 months, I think I can rule out Xmas lights being the problem.
The router has been connected to the same extension socket for over a year, I'm using XF-1E filters and I've tried different filters. As mentioned above everything is just as bad at the test socket.

I'm on Highams Park exchange, E17 and they have been digging the roads up around here since June for Thames Water upgrade work, so it's possible this has had affect. They finished the work last week (for the time being at least) and things have gotten markedly worse

This is a a DMT graph after monitoring has been running for 8 hours
http://rapidshare.com/files/174667975/dmt20081218_1556.png.html

This is a DMT graph taken just now
http://rapidshare.com/files/174667978/dmt20081218_2119.png.html

Current stats
Uptime: 0 days, 2:26:27
Modulation: G.992.5 Annex A
Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 1,321 / 7,427
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [MB/MB]: 7.11 / 68.68
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 12.0 / 17.5
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 18.5 / 36.5
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 7.0 / 9.0
Vendor ID (Local/Remote): TMMB / �
Loss of Framing (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Signal (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Power (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Link (Remote): 0
Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 23 / 0
FEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 26,747
CRC Errors (Up/Down): 124,430 / 86
HEC Errors (Up/Down): 1,333,534 / 50


I'm away over the weekend, so am going to leave things until Sunday and if still bad will log with Be* support. At the moment I cannot get to the master socket to test from the test socket, but as it's just the same from there it really doesn't make a difference.

Just wondering in the meantime if anyone here has any thoughts

Thanks

Nicola

HR faults are not intermittent, its the symptoms an HR causes that can be intermittent. You mention that your attenuation is lowering, this is a good thing, but I suspect that its a red herring. What you need is for Be* to raise an LL5 task, and have the engineer do an end to end pair quality with a Hawk and its remote unit. If this finds nothing on the pair itself, then I don't know ....
The upstream error count looks high, have they tried a lift and shift on your circuit ?

Sorry, I did mean that the symptoms are intermittent and not the fault itself
It's extremely hard to get to Be* to get BT involved in anything - somewhat understandably since the cost to them is pretty high. Haven't hd a lift and shift but the line card has been changed

Things have gotten worse and I'm now barely able to get a ADSL2+ modulation. I can't be sure however that it isn't Xmas lights at the moment making things worse.
The house 3 doors away on the same side as me is akin to Blackpool illuminations and there are a couple of houses about 15 doors up on the other side of the street that are ground to roof with lights. There are a few others with subtle displays. Is there anyway to tell if Xmas lights are interfering without an SFI visit?

Be* allow you to tweak for reliability within their member centre, so I've gone for the reliability option setting upstream and downstream SNR to a target 9db. Has made very little difference however, although FEC error now lower, but I'd expect that

Current stats

Uptime: 0 days, 21:26:36
Modulation: G.992.3 Annex A
Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 1,213 / 7,043
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [MB/GB]: 137.02 / 2.34
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 12.0 / 18.0
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 18.5 / 33.0
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 9.5 / 9.5
Vendor ID (Local/Remote): TMMB / �
Loss of Framing (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Signal (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Power (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Link (Remote): 0
Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 10 / 0
FEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 497,480
CRC Errors (Up/Down): 2,541 / 17
HEC Errors (Up/Down): 20,896 / 13

In my experience, Be are pretty useless at raising engineer visits. My chum moved to BT Broadband to get his line fault sorted after months of persevering with Be.

Can't you get your SNR margins boosted to give more stability? Do you need the extra sync speed?

The problems started when I was with BT Broadband on vanilla 2Mb
I managed ADSL2+ after a restart yesterday for about 27 hours under sync dropped about an hour ago and it's now back to ADSL2

In reply to:

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Unfortunately, we are not able to log a SFI task with BT, since at the moment we are in a process of discussing logging an SFI task with them in general, not for your particular case.

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That's a new one! I wonder which poor engineer is going to get an 'in general', task tomorrow.

Be* won't do anything as yet, as they want me to ring them so that they can run a couple of tests first
I know exactly what as I done it all before
I cannot say it wasn't the response I was expecting

Test run and as suspected - no fault found
However I had another update today to say they had detected a progressive loss of signal and could I try an alternative PSU or plugging the PSU into another power socket
I plugged into another power socket, but as I've been using a DG834T with a different power supply and seeing the same problems with that connected, it's unlikely to be the BeBox PSU at fault