Are you aware that BT owns Plusnet?

Yes I am, have to say that discussions I had with PlusNet have not been very helpful but so far BT have been pretty good.

The brand new router I bought I used to do various testing including the BT TAP 3 test (unsuccessfully) and then I did a factory reset before installing it using the PlusNet settings and I have that installed currently

Edited by deleted (Sun 14-Jun-15 19:23:03)

Then you'll know that the Plusnet part of the exchange is the BT part of the exchange.

Not according to both PlusNet and BT.
PlusNet have a separate number of cards/servers etc. for their customers. As do the other sub users of a BT exchange. Although they are part of the same company they sublet the services from BT.
The BT engineering manager that I know gave me quite a detailed explanation of how it all works as well as the types of issues they have, especially from people who say that plusnet and madasafish etc. are all part of BT and therefore it's all BT equipment.
How much is true how much is company spiel? Your guess is as good as mine but he was pretty clear about who gets connected to what. Roll on the 23rd and I'll probably find out!

Given that BT owns Plusnet, whatever Plusnet owns is owned by BT.

As you can imagine, having a pretty much useless broadband and no light at the end of the tunnel on how to get it sorted is pretty frustrating!

Yes indeed, let us know how things go i.e. stay the same/improve/get worse when you've been connected up to BT retail BB.

That's utter bilge I'm afraid.

BT Wholesale, Sky, TalkTalk, and C & W/Vodafone are the main Communications Providers (CPs) at the exchange.

You are connected to a BT Wholesale port>>card>>MSAN at the exchange and a migration between any of the hundred or so ISPs that use BT Wholesale requires no moving or physical change of your connection. It's all done in the routing software. Swaps between hardware only occurs during migrations between the four above. (Zen is a special case where things are a little unclear).

From the exchange your connection disappears into the BT Wholesale "Cloud" of WBC/WBMC. At the other end of that cloud is where things split out between the various ISPs, via MSILs. (Sorry about the jargon but it's time for me to find something to eat ). I've got a lot more explanation on this page.

If I've understood your connection correctly it will be IPStream Connect, explained on that page.

It is MSIL capacity and deeper into the ISPs' own networks that capacity problems normally arise. I'm not aware of any that would cause your issue 24/7, so as we think we have ruled out anything your end it's almost certainly a fault at the exchange. From the exchange onwards your traffic is no longer running on hardware unique to it. An analogy is that it becomes one fish of the shoal moving in the same water pipe.

Plusnet use WBMC for 21CN traffic, whereas BT Consumer may be using direct access to the world through BT Wholesale for that. Not even going through the WBC/MSIL route. What BT Consumer do with IPStream Connect I don't know.

So your friend is either talking out of the back of his head, or he is confused about where the split of the traffic takes place. It's at the MSILs.

Having said that, it is likely a full reset of your line will be done when your migration takes place. If there is anything screwed up in those settings, (similar to how we sometimes need to do a factory reset on a router), then your problem may go away. Let's hope so . But it won't be because your connection has been physically moved.