Problem with "upgraded" line

Hi all,

Haven't posted on here for ages, but I remember everyone being really helpful so I'm hoping someone could enlighten me here! I'll try and keep this as short as possible, but I may ramble on a bit!

Last month I got an e-mail from Enta saying my line was being upgraded to 21cn. After some back and forth with them and Vivaciti, I was told it would happen on, or around, 22nd November. The original Enta e-mail said my line would go down for around 10 minutes. Last Monday (21st) my line did indeed die at around 11pm... and never came back. Thus began my Broadband week from Hell.

Left the router off all that night and rebooted in the morning... nothing. Left it for a few more hours... nothing. Decided to call Vivaciti to see what was happening. Chap checked my router to make sure it was ADSL2+ compatible and it was [is]. Changed some settings, no-go. Chap did a line test, all seemed fine. Tried the BT test log-on, nothing. Chap said he'd contact BT and I should call back later. Called back, and another bloke told me BT were doing a cease and re-provide on the line as it was a PPP issue and I should wait again. Called back at the appointed time as nothing had changed. Was told a BT engineer would be sent the following day (Wednesday). Told nothing else could be done.

Got a call from BT engineer Wednesday afternoon; he told me he couldn't do anything as BT were doing some work or other and he said I should call Vivaciti again, which I did. Was told to wait until the end of the day for the work to complete. Called back at 18.30 and had a very heated discussion with a very rude man who point-blank refused to book an engineer as he didn't consider 1830 to be the end of the day! So had to wait until Thursday to call back!

Called Thursday PM and was told BT had finished all their tests etc. and an engineer would be booked for the following day.

Engineer arrived at around 0830 on Friday morning. Did some stuff in the house and then went to the exchange. Got a call from him about half an hour later saying there was nothing wrong with the exchange and I needed a new router! Went out to buy one, but the local independent had sold out, but the two men there said it sounded unlikely to be a router problem as a PPP issue would be server-side. They told me to re-contact Vivaciti and get them to change the username and password. Did that Friday afternoon, all to no avail; chap at Vivaciti said it was absolutely my router and I had to buy a new one.

Went out Saturday and spent £80 on a brand new Linksys X2000. Got home, plugged it in, set it up... nothing! Argh! Massive... waste... of... money!

Called back (gotta be my 20th call by now!) and booked another engineer for this morning. Chap turned up at about 0830 again (different chap this time) and spent about four hours trying to sort it out. Even took both of my routers to the exchange to check them... nothing wrong with either of them! There's definitely something wrong with the line. BT did another cease and re-provide, but still no luck *sigh*. Engineer was stumped, so back to Vivaciti. Now I've been told the only way I'll get any internet access is if they drop me back down to ADSL1. So I've said OK to that because, at this point, slow broadband is better than no broadband.

I know a lot of you guys are really up on all this. I know a little, but not enough to consider myself well versed on the subject (Doctor Who, yes! Broadband, not so much!), so I wondered if anyone could see something I'm missing? I know I'm right at the end of my line, so on ADSL1 I've been getting 1.5meg, so I wasn't expecting great things from the new line, but I was hoping to be able to actually use iPlayer! My friends keep asking me to join them online so we can play Ghostbusters in co-op and I would have loved to say "Yes!", but it looks like I'm doomed to spend the rest of my life lingering at the bottom of the Broadband food-chain *cry*. Is this right? Is there really no chance of my ever being able to get on to ADSL2+? I find it really strange that other users on my street can get internet access from the likes of Talk Talk but I can't get it from Enta at three-times the price!

I'm currently using my Orange Mobile Internet which, being in the Back of Beyond and in a ditch, is slow as all get-out because I can't get 3G here, and it's costing me a fortune! So I'm out a BB connection, umpteen phonecalls, Orange credit and £80 for a router I never needed. I'm not a happy bunny right now. I can't help thinking I've been fobbed-off again; I've spent a week being pushed from pillar to post and now I get the feeling Vivaciti have washed their hands of the whole debacle.

Anyway, sorry for the psudo-rant, but I hope someone out there can help me out a little. So thanks for reading and thanks in advance for any advice.

Edit: Was just about to post the above and thought I'd do a quick router reboot and, lo and behold, I have a connection again! Very disappointing speeds though:

[img]http://www.speedtest.net/result/1618349010.png[/img]

So I have some connection, but not what I'd hoped for. The question remains then, is there any chance I could get on the ADSL2+ line?

Cheers all,
Ex.

Go to this link: http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange_search

It may tell you more about what is going on @ your local BT Exchange.
Also, I'm sure the really experienced guys on here will react more constructively to your cry for help in the more social hours of the day

Good luck!

What's the router stats to go with that speed test?

A sorry tale. If you were advised to buy a new router even though your own was fine I'd be asking for compensation.

It sounds like your line is one which performs better on ADSL than ADSL2.

If getting 1.5Meg before then sorry to say, if you'd asked here people would have advised you that ADSL2+ would bring little or no benefit.

Notice that your upstream is better, which may help with gaming, though a 1.5Meg, 0.4Meg up line should have ran games fine anyway. Online gaming was fine even in the days of 0.5Meg connections.

The upstream speeed pretty much confirms you are on the 21CN WBC network now.
The key to whether you can expect more is in the line stats from your router. It may be you have a line that is underperforming due to wiring, but don't know it. This can be spotted from the router stats.

john2007,

Don't ISP's normally request using another router (plus a different filter, adsl lead and plugged into the test socket) to establish that there is not a problem customer side of the nte5?

Fairly common practice, as it is not unknown for a router to fail, though if other work has just been undertook on a line then that would normally be the first suspect. Alas depends on the call script.

Advice is

1. Borrow a router from a friend
or
2. Take your router around to somewhere else and see if it can see the ADSL signal.
or
3. trawl ebay for a cheap ADSL2+ router, that you can keep setup as a spare, for that day when lightning breaks the sacrificial component in the router.

Thanks for all the replies everyone.

In reply to a post by shrimper1:

Go to this link: http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange_search

It may tell you more about what is going on @ your local BT Exchange.
Also, I'm sure the really experienced guys on here will react more constructively to your cry for help in the more social hours of the day

Good luck!

What, 1am isn't social?!

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

What's the router stats to go with that speed test?

I'm not 100% sure what stats you want, but there's this:

Downstream Rate: 2400 Kbps
Upstream Rate: 672 Kbps

It's changed a bit from before they messed everything up as downstream was 20xx (can't remember exactly).

In reply to a post by john2007:

A sorry tale. If you were advised to buy a new router even though your own was fine I'd be asking for compensation.

It sounds like your line is one which performs better on ADSL than ADSL2.

I've already asked them about compensation and the bloke basically said, "Not my problem" so I don't know. I'm going to write to Vivaciti today though; at the very least I want a refund of the bill I paid last Monday and some money back for the 0845 dial-up number they so generously gave me and all the telephone charges. At the end of the day, instead of faffing about like they have been doing for the past week, they could have downgraded my line last Tuesday and I'd have been happy... ish. At least I wouldn't have missed out on a sale I was desperately wanting to buy some stuff from!

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

If getting 1.5Meg before then sorry to say, if you'd asked here people would have advised you that ADSL2+ would bring little or no benefit.

Notice that your upstream is better, which may help with gaming, though a 1.5Meg, 0.4Meg up line should have ran games fine anyway. Online gaming was fine even in the days of 0.5Meg connections.

The upstream speeed pretty much confirms you are on the 21CN WBC network now.
The key to whether you can expect more is in the line stats from your router. It may be you have a line that is underperforming due to wiring, but don't know it. This can be spotted from the router stats.

The thing is, I e-mailed Enta in October when I got their first e-mail specifically asking what was going to happen and this is a direct quote from the CS rep:

Hello,

I can confirm that this upgrade has been initiated automatically by BT
and is of no extra cost to yourself. This will improve the current
speeds that you are currently receiving.

Any questions, please ask.

So, in fairness, if this comes directly from Enta I, as a customer, expect this to be correct information. To be told this by one person and then go through a week of hell is just bad customer service in my book.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Advice is

1. Borrow a router from a friend
or
2. Take your router around to somewhere else and see if it can see the ADSL signal.
or
3. trawl ebay for a cheap ADSL2+ router, that you can keep setup as a spare, for that day when lightning breaks the sacrificial component in the router.

The problem here is this assumes:

a) You know someone who has a compatible ADSL2+ router, which I don't. I've lived in the Back of Beyond for five years now and all my neighbours are either middle or old aged. I do know someone in the next village, but he only had sealed boxes of ADSL2+ routers (he's a PC repairer) so I'd have had to buy that from him anyway. I know your advice is sound and I in no way mean to sound bratty about it, but not everyone has the luxury of having friends on their doorstep; mine all live in Milton Keynes and Cardiff!

b) See a)! Could have taken it to said friend's to test, but then I fear the people at Enta would have suggested that it was a different problem. I don't know, I'm so confused with all of this!

c) But then there's a good chance I would have bought the same make and model as I already have (as I know it's reliable) and so that would have been wasted money. I really only expect to buy a router if and when the existing one breaks. It's just all too coincidental that it was working perfectly well at 11pm and then stopped working at 11.10pm.

And, again, when a BT engineer and your ISP tells you you need a new router, you assume they're right because it's their job and they [allegedly] know better than you!

I would just like to say one thing in praise though; the BT engineer who was here yesterday worked like a trooper to fix the line. He was extremely thorough and very nice. He was very keen to get my connection up again, so much so that he even phoned back today to see if I was up and running! So, if you're a BT engineer in West Norfolk by the name of Trevor and you're reading this, thank you!

In reply to a post by Exinferis:

I'm not 100% sure what stats you want, but there's this:

Downstream Rate: 2400 Kbps
Upstream Rate: 672 Kbps

Also Attenuation, Noise Margin (SNRM) & Power all Down & Up please?

In reply to a post by 4M2:

john2007,

Don't ISP's normally request using another router (plus a different filter, adsl lead and plugged into the test socket) to establish that there is not a problem customer side of the nte5?

I'm sure they do, and if the end user has the diagnostic devices and knows how to use them it works out well.

As a naive customer though you have a problem and want it fixed.

If an ISP has asked for diagnostic equipment (and time) to be expended which has not helped I think they should pay for it. If it has helped they should also pay for it.

I'm not sure why people treat a service like ADSL different from gas, water, electricity, etc.