Slow internet/low IP profile/high noise margin on Tesco

Hi everyone,

on Sunday (yesterday) we had a new phone line installed from the pole outside to our house, this was to fix an issue where the phone line had noise and the internet kept dropping out.

Since it was repaired we have seen download speeds from 0-15KBPS where previously we had had 800KBPS maximum. I checked the BT speed tester for our line and it reports an IP Profile of 0.14 Mbps. Below are the stats from the router:

Link Information

Uptime: 1 day, 4:59:19

DSL Type: ITU-T G.992.1

Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 448 / 4.960

Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [MB/MB]: 134,06 / 644,74

Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 11,9 / 13,8

Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 6,0 / 6,0

SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 23,0 / 15,3

So far I have been following instructions from the BT Community Forums, which say to leave the connection up for 3-5 days and by then the IP Profile should have gone up and the noise margin gone down, giving us normal download speeds.

Is there anything else that I can do? Am I even doing the right thing to begin with?

Any help would be appreciated,

Matt.

You are on the old IPStream Max service, so yes IP Profile may take 3 to 5 days to recover from a slow connection event.
Hopefully it will be quicker, keep an eye on the uptime and router stats to make sure they don't wander around too much.

Beyond that, how close to the exchange are you, as the attenuation figrues if correct suggest you are within a couple of hundred metres and even with a 15dB noise margin should be connecting at better speeds. For now don't fiddle with anything lets see if the IP profile can recover as it should automatically do.

leave it off overnight and power it up again in the morning.

Hey, thanks for the quick reply!

We are only a road away from the exchange, and @yarwell, I have been told its not a good idea to turn the router off during the 'testing period' of 3-5 days while the IP Profile is recovering, wouldn't this restart the testing period again?

Matt

I have been told its not a good idea to turn the router off during the 'testing period' of 3-5 days while the IP Profile is recovering, wouldn't this restart the testing period again?

No, that would be nonsense.

The only time the upstream systems are told about the sync speed is when it restarts, or gets picked up by an overnight sweep, as it is event driven. Sometimes turning it off for half an hour is enough, but if it's off overnight the chances of a data hygiene routine noting its absence also help.

The resync would only cause a problem anyway if the sync was a lot lower than the current one anyway.

That's strange because even on the official BT forums they were saying to leave it for 3-5 days, and I did restart the router immediately after the new phone line had been installed, and it didn't help then... I'm just interested in the technical side of how restarting it would help the exchange to notice that the line is working again.

My idea was, the exchange monitors the line and after 3-5 days when it has shown itself to be consistently working fine, it raises the IP profile, isn't this what happens?

Matt

What can happen sometimes is a modem reconnects but the message sent to the anonymous database hidden somewhere in the BT cloud can go missing, and thus it never updates the IP Profile.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/faq/sections/radsl.htm... gives more words on IP profile.

If you line is jumping around between 0.3 Meg sync and 4Meg sync then the IP profile is unlikely to ever be more than 0.25, but a resync at the same speed or within a few Kbps of the same should have no effect on slowing it down at coming back, and helps to ensure the database has a current figure in it for you.

Andrew, I read the guide you linked and it seems to be saying that it shouldn't even take 3 days to recover the IP Profile?

Also, how is the profile ever going to increase if my current download speeds remain the same? Is it more based on what the line can take, rather than what it is currently syncing at?

Thanks again

My idea was, the exchange monitors the line and after 3-5 days when it has shown itself to be consistently working fine, it raises the IP profile, isn't this what happens?

No. Each time there is a sync event, or possibly an overnight check, the sync speed is reported upstream to an invisible system that updates the BRAS with a new IP profile if the sync speed has changed and send the ISP a delta report identifying the new IP profile.

There's a rate limit on changes, but large changes (like yours) should get priority. However you need an event to start the whole process, if the last one got lost then the suggested power-off will generate one.