zen internet

[censored] useless. as useless as bt openworld was 12 years ago. zen 21029.


took you weeks to open a fault, WEEKS. tang hope your proud.

Edited by deleted (Sun 26-Jan-14 01:20:28)

so apparently contention with the exchange is the issue, no mention of this before today. someone here might be able to shed some light on this but i always thought if contention was an issue slowdown would occur but not to the extent that my router test page shows the internet disconnecting, gateway disconnecting and no dns on both 212.23.6.100 and 212.23.3.100

i cant even stream internet radio on the lowest settings without buffering. 75mb/19mb connection when it's testing ok then dropping off to nothing. nothing nada not a single kb going either way. yet the bt openreach modem doesn't drop and the adsl light doesn't go out on the 582n that's still in warranty.

point blank refusing to swap out the router they supplied me back in April stating it's not their responsibility im quoting the last tech guy i spoke to 45mins ago.


so lets see what the fault manager has to say when he calls me back within the hour. only another 10 mins to wait till that callback is missed like numerous times before. don't tell me someone will call me back within the hour if you have no intention of doing so.

how the hell did you lot get a witch guide recommendation?

its been since around the 27th of december since this problem has been ongoing and it's either your router or BTs problem. you took another £35.40 out of my account on the 5th feb for a service that i cant use without problems.

iv'e had enough, either give me a service that works or release me from my contract- i'll find a supplier that's interested in getting me an internet service. you and i both know if this was a 1 month rolling contract i'd have had a mac code off you 3 weeks ago.

anyone got Richard Tangs email addy? i just found Gavin Pattersons.


edit : so another 20 mins without internet after i clicked "post" that's just decided to right itself and of course no callback from the fault manager at zen.

paul just called back to let me know fault manager is dealing with it. both fault and complaints dept will ring me back within the hour. lets hope the complaints dept don't shut at 5pm eh.

thank you Paul for getting back to me just now, router being sent out and bt will have an update on vp capacity issues at the Bangor (nw) exchange in morning.

Edited by deleted (Mon 10-Feb-14 17:16:24)

In reply to a post by bigbadpirate:

how the hell did you lot get a witch guide recommendation?

witch guide

Edited by Ripley (Mon 10-Feb-14 18:16:11)

In reply to a post by Ripley:

In reply to a post by bigbadpirate:

how the hell did you lot get a witch guide recommendation?

witch guide

And the point of your post is? Other than you can "spell"

i just replied to one of his posts on the WHICH isp residential forums something i would probably not have done till he posted here.

Suppose its all down to individual users experience with a particular ISP.

Hope you get it sorted soon.

Have you tried it with the modem connected directly to your computer?

Take your router out of the equation and see what performance you get...

thank you i hope so too. I'm still going to push for an early end to my contract because of all this. i have no wish to be a customer of Zen internet any more. i don't really care if it is BTs fault, I've felt like I've been fighting to get Zen to do something about this - they would have let BT close this fault weeks ago if i hadn't insisted they didn't. when i spoke with technical on the 31 Jan they were told that if this issue was not resolved by now what the consequence would be and what i wanted if this wasn't resolved by now.

yes tried pppoe directly to the openreach modem and all seems ok - technical are still adamant that the router is not at fault yet at the exact times im reporting problems they can see packet loss and i suppose an increased latency when they ping my router. so maybe they are right that its a contention issue at the exchange which leads me to - how the hell are BT being allowed to pile so many people onto an exchange that it makes the internet unusable for some people for 30 mins at a time. the cynulliad down in cardiff paid quite a lot of money to BT to roll out fibre in this area and this is what we end up with a few months later!

Zen only found out that the problem might be with vp contention on friday. they have had all this information from my connection for weeks, surely someone looking at all this info at zen could have worked that out long ago and pointed it out to BT as a possibility. anyway zen are sending out a router so we can at least remove that possible problem from the equation fun-illy enough just after i posted here today, probably a coincidence or at least i hope so.

pulsenet exchange checker shows my exchange on green as of a report on 31 jan but looks like a few others have "checked" my exchange as its close to the top of the list so other people are checking - for a reason i suppose. that's on 20cn- no idea if that's what fibre users get put onto.

Edited by deleted (Mon 10-Feb-14 22:40:35)

In reply to a post by bigbadpirate:

Zen only found out that the problem might be with vp contention on friday.

For the sake of accuracy, there is no such thing as a vp (virtual path) on 21CN. That is a part of ATM which hasn't been used for a long time.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asynchronous_Transfer...

The 21CN network is all IP.

I'm only repeating what I've been told. might have miss herd I'll check later (i think he called me on the mobile - call recorder on that)

what would cause speed test download ranges from no connection at all at 9.42 am this morning to 3Mbps about 15mins later then increasing to 41Mbps after a couple of mins, then a further test at full speed of close to on 70 + Mbps. it cant be contention can it because BT are still accepting orders on my exchange.

im flat out at 76Mpbs for most of the day and evenings when i really would expect contention to creep in exept for what would seemingly be spikes that totally disconnect me - they can happen at any random time throughout the day or evening. I'm going to be so [censored] off if it does turn out to be the router because it was the first thing i suggested back in December.

i'll ask the fault manager as soon as he gets back to me - must remember to ask if any other zen customers on this exchange are having the same problems.

Edited by deleted (Tue 11-Feb-14 10:28:33)

In reply to a post by bigbadpirate:

I'm only repeating what I've been told. might have miss herd I'll check later (i think he called me on the mobile - call recorder on that)

I'm just correcting the terminology you were given. Congested VP's is old school.

In reply to a post by bigbadpirate:

what would cause speed test download ranges from no connection at all at 9.42 am this morning to 3Mbps about 15mins later then increasing to 41Mbps after a couple of mins, then a further test at full speed of close to on 70 + Mbps. it cant be contention can it because BT are still accepting orders on my exchange.

im flat out at 76Mpbs for most of the day and evenings when i really would expect contention to creep in exept for what would seemingly be spikes that totally disconnect me - they can happen at any random time throughout the day or evening.

Contention/congestion would not make BT stop accepting orders on an exchange.

What you are experiencing doesn't sound like congestion to me however. You would expect congestion in a residential area to be noticeable between around 18:00-22:00. This is when most people are home using their Internet connection.

I don't suppose you have access to the modems stats do you? If so do they change dramatically when you are experiencing issues? Looking for things like sync speed, SNR and Attenuation.

In reply to a post by bigbadpirate:

I'm going to be so [censored] off if it does turn out to be the router because it was the first thing i suggested back in December.

This can be easily proved by connecting your PC to your modem. You implied you had done that already and the issue remained?

I don't have any stats as i cant get into the bt openreach fibre modem and the 582n doesn't give any stats. I have connected directly to the openreach modem and as far as i can see there are no problems. The fault manager called me back this morning and it is being escalated within BT I'm told - they have admitted to a fault now. tried to escalate the fault into a complaints procedure but got fobbed off a bit. I've just noticed that the fault was closed on wed 29th Jan and not reopened till tue 4th Feb. no wonder this is taking so long, nearly a week where bt were not even looking for a problem yet Zen are telling me they are doing everything they can to get this resolved.

I will escalate this problem to a manager as per your (zen) complaints procedures, I want answers. More importantly I want to get away from you as a company, end my contract i've lost all faith in you. IVE HAD ENOUGH.

Edited by deleted (Tue 11-Feb-14 15:26:43)

The speed test at http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest.html

Does two download tests
tbbx1 is impacted by congestion
httpx6 should with its six threads get past most congestion if that is the issue

Given it appears to be fine when doing the connection direct to the PC suggests maybe the router is the issue, maybe try a different router.

We assume you have ensured that its not someone nicking the bandwidth via wireless, i.e. changed the encryption key etc

OK update time.

New router was swapped out at 1pm yesterday but the connection had been behaving since the last drop (i say drop but it wasn't a physical drop in the connection rather than packet loss on BT backhaul i'm told) i noticed on Monday at around 9.42 am when i was here posting. Apparently quite a few people on this exchange were suffering and BT admitted to some kind of fault/congestion on their back haul. Some people on other isps were moved sooner as their lines were dropping out completely. I was left on there as my connection looked to be stable (and it was most of the time until packet loss kicked in and I'd be unable to do anything for 20-30 mins). Jason managed to get someone at BT to move my line over on Tue night before the next block are moved over in two weeks - as a test.

Up till now all seems good and my line has never tested better. My latency is in the sitting in the server room range.

Thank you MrSaffron i have been using the Zen speed tester (powered by you i think) extensively since having this problem. 95% of the time my connection would be ok, the only times i would see congestion is in the first 30 seconds when my router/connection seemed to right itself after one of these packet loss outages that lasted 20-30 mins - my 582n or the openreach modem wasn't dropping sync. like in previous posts it started testing at 1-2 Mbps then crept up on further tests till it was at maximum again over a period on a few mins - Zen could see the packet loss at this point because they are pinging my router and the times i told them this was happening correlated. Everything wifi was removed from the network and key changed weeks ago.

To be fair to Zen this original problem started the end of last year between xmas and new year. Before any engineers were called out it was agreed we (Zen and myself) would test the line further as to not incur any possible BT charges. The fault persisted intermittently then on the 15th jan when there was a BT engineer working in next doors house (small bt openreach van so i assume fibre engineer) my router logs showed my connection dropping and my sync speed dropping from 76Mbps to approx 50Mbps and i could physically hear crackling on the line, at this point i opened a voice line fault but continued to seek help from Zen technical. The voice line fault seemed to clear itself so Zen advised me to close the fault with BT voice and they would open a fibre/broadband fault, this happened on the 18th jan. First engineer came out and blamed the original fibre installer for fitting 2 face plates - still no improvement in sync speed and still intermittent fault so i insisted that Zen reopen the fault with BT when they tried to fob us off with the speed drop. The speed had dropped below a certain threshold within a time period so we were within out rights to refuse the fault being closed - thank you for finding that out Jason. Another engineer came out and tested and fixed the line back to the green fibre box lifting all the underground pavement boxes and checking all the joints, i was moved to the best spare pair he could find and the line synced at 66Mbps (within their % drop threshold from the original speed so as far as BT were concerned fault closed) but still intermittent problem. I'm still left wondering why a line that held solid connection (no drops) from April 2013 until Jan 2014 suddenly became one that dropped constantly at the exact same time an engineer was working next door.

Anyway i lost it a bit that's why i came here and posted (Think angry BT man, search it on youtube if you've not seen it - i warn you there's a lot of swearing). Zen technical have been as good as ever but i was getting to the stage where i knew them on first name basis i was on the phone with them so much. In hindsight and with a clear head knowing what i know now i would have insisted technical open the fault with BT and risked the BT charges back in Dec/early Jan, it would have shortened this process by approx 3 weeks. They shouldn't be held at fault for my penny pinching. Let's hope this is the end of it.

I still hate BT with a vengeance because in this day and age no one company should have the monopoly they enjoy. They have everyone by the short and curlies and while there are many more good people who work there than bad, that's when the wall goes up and ranks close. They are not accountable to anyone outside of the company. They do seem better and more open today than the arrogance I encountered 10-12 years ago with BT openworld so maybe they are improving. Jason at least managed to find someone that would help after the problem was escalated.

Anyone from within BT I'd love to know what the engineer who was working on cab 27 Bangor (NW) exchange at between 10 am and 12am on the 15th Jan did to actually screw my connection further. Not much chance of that though is there? closed ranks. Still in two minds whether to email Gavin Patterson about it as from talking to one of the engineers who visited here I might have been up for an engineer call out charge if he hadn't found anything wrong even though the fault on the 15th was 99% caused by one of their own engineers. I'm really beginning to wonder how many faults their own engineers cause.

Thank you Jason and all the other staff at Zen I've dealt with. I regret coming here now and posting what I did because basically all you were doing was trying to help even though it didn't seem that you were doing your utmost at the time you probably were. It didn't help that more problems were added in my opinion by BT in the process of eliminating the original problem.

Edited by deleted (Thu 13-Feb-14 14:18:56)

Hi,

For information, the BT FTTC network in and around Bangor is currently screwed.

See: https://community.bt.com/t5/BT-Infinity-Speed-Connec...
My post on this subject is: https://community.bt.com/t5/BT-Infinity-Speed-Connec...

This will affect Zen too as they run on the same hardware. It does not affect LLU Sky.

I think in this case I'd give Zen the benefit of the doubt as BT have also been difficult to deal with. Some of the engineers are aware of the packet loss issues but there is no 'overall' message going out from BT about the problem. It's even been closed as an issue by BT without any fix, then reopened. Plusnet even are having the same fault and you can see on their status page they've had to reopen the issue with BT.

The problem is at the Bangor exchange and affects a huge area, including some other exchanges 'downstream' from here.

I have this issue on my BT Internet FTTC line. I do not have it on my Sky line despite coming down the same cable bundle. My Zen line is not in Bangor so can't compare.

Edited by nOw2 (Sun 23-Feb-14 12:55:13)

I see it affects Plusnet the same. I wonder if TalkTalk is unaffected too?

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

I see it affects Plusnet the same. I wonder if TalkTalk is unaffected too?

If sky and talktalk are not affected, but Plusnet and BT are, then I guess the problem is in the BTwholesale WBC network rather than the Openreach FTTC infrastructure.

sad to say ill be opening this fault with zen again in the morning. packetloss and the speed tests are consistently below the % drop threshold again so sooner it's opened up again the better. last night netflix would only stream at lowest sd setting, i don't spend money on a quality isp hd tvs etc to put up with this [censored].

edit :and it's about time someone from the cynulliad got involved since they paid so much taxpayer money towards getting this part of the country superfast broadband. BT again, this has been ongoing now for over 3 months. They took the money and ran didn't they?

from reading now2 link to bt forums some people are all good now, just like i was until a few days ago. looks like the vp i was moved to a couple of weeks ago is getting congested and the packetloss problem is back at peak times but the connection isn't dropping out like it was, it's far from acceptable though. they are just moving more people onto this path instead of fixing the original problem so fault will be reopened before it goes too long and it becomes an acceptable level of service.

3 months to upgrade the capacity at this exchange and it's still not fixed. 3 MONTHS and how the hell are BT even allowed to over sell to such an extent that these problems occur. Gavin Patterson do something about this.

Edited by deleted (Mon 03-Mar-14 02:36:54)

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

I see it affects Plusnet the same. I wonder if TalkTalk is unaffected too?

If sky and talktalk are not affected, but Plusnet and BT are, then I guess the problem is in the BTwholesale WBC network rather than the Openreach FTTC infrastructure.

i dont give a [censored] what the problem is and i don't want to hear any excuses all i know is zen need to get it sorted, it's them i pay money to for a connection that by bts own definition does not come up to scratch.

edit speeds are back to normal now but it is 2am. will check again tomorrow evening.

Edited by deleted (Mon 03-Mar-14 01:52:59)

PM me when you call support please so I can monitor the Faults progress.

All the best,

i will do, decided to wait and monitor the problem this evening in case the problems im seeing currently are BT working/upgrading on equipment in the exchange (sat and sunday night? who knows how they work). speedtests 8pm onwards last night were very variable sometimes less than 10Mbps but it's the packetloss that's the annoying thing. It's been ok so far today.

the main reason i decided to wait is i found this snippet from a post dated 1/3/14 over on the bt forums n0w2 kindly linked.



"I had another update from Plusnet yesterday which pretty much echoes StephanieG's post from yesterday i.e. faults have been found with two core links at the exchange. They acknowledged that whilst some customers (like n0w2, Crib and myself) have seen a big improvement over the last few days, many customers are still having problems. They asked me to contiune monitoring packet loss and connection speed whilst they continue to work on the problem. They also mentioned "Should this be the cause then extensive engineering work will be carried out overnight in the early part of next week".



So, whilst it's not resolved for everyone yet, they are now working hard to figure out what the problems are and we do seem to be getting somewhere."

so they might actually be working on the problem, lets hope so. i wont jump to conclusions just yet but the packetloss and problems i have been seeing since around the middle of last week looks suspiciously like contention problems, let's see tonight. as long as it's a temporary thing while they are working on the problem i'm ok with it.

Edited by deleted (Mon 03-Mar-14 15:11:54)

Please do keep me posted as you go along. If I can help I certainly will.

hi, you have llu right? how do you connect to the core links.


im nosey.

Edited by deleted (Tue 04-Mar-14 19:57:58)

I'm on the New LLU platform. I connect straight through the MSAN and from there to our AR's and in.

This is the same setup for all the new LLU platforms.

it was more of a general thing. to see how BT are slacking. they swapped it out now.


how do you as an isp connect into the bt backbone. seems sky was ok on this exchange so it only boils down to [censored] BT again. im wondering why it took so long to diagnose and repair (and how you allowed it to happen). i want answers. i dont pay you for the service i have had since xmas. it's now nearly 3 months later, disgusting. someone needs to answer and payup for it.

the sooner you bring in 1 month rolling contracts the better. anyway the [censored] i put up with your technical staff at the start when we had this problem i have more or less decided to move when contract is up anyway.


Till September is a long time to be grinding my teeth, let me go early? i didnt take any compensation you offered but i am unhappy with the service you gave so let me go to someone that can do what you used to do. send me a mac code. refuse and i will force the issue.

Edited by deleted (Sat 08-Mar-14 18:12:15)

I don't want to comment on the OP's case per se; that said, I can sympathise with the situation that he finds himself in. What I would like to do is to say something positive about Zen Support. On Thursday evening, I replaced a router and lost CHAP authentication. I switched back to my original router and again the router would not authenticate. Yesterday morning I contacted Zen Support and did a PPPoE check to a laptop which authenticated. Zen offered some advice but quite rightly (but somewhat frustratingly) said the problem was at my end of the connection. I spent the morning switching routers etc but despite having a DSL synchronisation I just couldn't get any of my 3 routers to authenticate. I then connected my laptop again directly to the OR modem and called Zen again for advice. This time the laptop would not authenticate. Zen took me through various tests with different usernames and passwords- all to no avail; they then agreed that there was a fault that would have to be referred back to BT. Within 10 minutes a Ticket had been raised followed by further updates as required. Authentication was re-established in the early hours of this morning. Zen are continuing to monitor the line. I am not sure that any ISP would have done more.

I appreciate that our 2 situations are not like-for-like.

So there are 2 different ways for an ISP to connect you to their network.

The first way is via LLU. An ISP puts a DSLAM into the exchange. The copper pairs that run to your house are then connected into this DSLAM. The ISP must then put connectivity into the exchange to connect the DSLAM back to their network to a BNG device (BNG stands for Broadband Network Gateway. This is also referred to as a BRAS, an LNS or a gateway).

The second way is via a wholesale provider. The most common of these is BT Wholesale, but talktalk as well as a few others also offer wholesale services. The wholesale provider install and manage the DSLAM. They then put connectivity in back to their network. The ISP then connects to the wholesale provider in a more central location straight into their BNG. BTWS have 20 locations in the UK where this occurs, and I believe this is a fairly poorly kept secret.

Zen have rolled out LLU connectivity to approx. 200 exchanges in the UK. From your description it doesn't appear that you are on one of these exchanges, so you are probably using BTWS to connect back into Zen's network. I would imagine from what you are describing that BTWS have congestion in the link from your exchange into their network.

Apparently BTWS are having this problem at a number of exchanges at the moment. Hopefully they will sort this problem out soon.

Edited by Geordish (Mon 10-Mar-14 10:27:59)

Are you saying Zen has 200 exchanges offering LLU ADSL2+ services, or as I understand it Zen has rented or installed its own backhaul network into some 200 Fibre Handover nodes (modern name for an exchange) and thus is able to transit GEA-FTTC traffic for a lot less cost in many urban areas.

Would it not make sense to do both?

Probably not ADSL2+ is a dying beast, slowly but the growth is in the GEA services.

ADSL2+ will be around for a long time. Plus, the cost of DSLAM equipment is getting cheaper. BTWS is very expensive for traffic. It makes financial sense to move customers onto your own equipment in the footprint you have.

Zen have chosen to do this in the 200 exchanges they went to. They also offer other services from the exchanges they have a presence, again because its a lot cheaper to use their own backhaul than someone else's.

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/llu/zen

http://www.zen.co.uk/latest-news/zen-internet-invest...

Edited by Geordish (Mon 10-Mar-14 16:51:10)

A POP is a different matter to offering ADSL2+ via a MSAN the Zen article talks of "local exchange POP network to deliver Ethernet services" which is very different and I suspect the SamKnows is just listing those pops rather than where ADSL2+ is available.

Certainly if ADSL2+ is at the 200 locations from a Zen MSAN, then why is there not an unlimited ADSL2+ product, like there is for FTTC?

No idea. If it was me, I would just offer the 3 products across all backhaul technologies.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

A POP is a different matter to offering ADSL2+ via a MSAN the Zen article talks of "local exchange POP network to deliver Ethernet services" which is very different and I suspect the SamKnows is just listing those pops rather than where ADSL2+ is available.

I can confirm the Samknows list is accurate and shows where we have deployed our own DSLAM.

And are providing ADSL2+ services from the DSLAM?

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

And are providing ADSL2+ services from the DSLAM?

Yes.