Just switched to Zen...

When I first got FTTC, BT reckoned that this line would only do 9.9Mb which meant that Zen wouldn't offer FTTC. I'm not sure why, but there it is. In fact, every line on the cabinet was supposedly only able to get 9.9MB down 1Mb up, according to BT. Even the ones five metre from the cabinet. BT would not accept that this has to be wrong.

The line initally synched at 39.9Mb but after a few days dropped back to the mid 30s, where it has stayed more or less ever since, creeping up with firmware updates in the modem.

I was with ICUK, and the line performance seemed OK, but there were so many admin resets and NAS errors that I decided to switch to Zen a few weeks ago. BT had finally revised their line speed estimates to something a little less ludicrous (25.7 down) and Zen seem more relaxed about long lines anyway.

I had expected better reliability from Zen, but I hadn't really expected much better performance.

As this line has a SamKnows monitoring box on it, I do have a clear record of the performance before and after the switch. And my goodness you can see the difference!

Latency has gone from the mid 35's (but ever-varying) to a steady 15.6ms

Downstream Throughput has gone from 30Mb to 36Mb

Upstream Throughput has gone from 6.4Mb to 6.67Mb

Packet loss has gone from zigzagging between 0.35% and 1.7% to between 0.06% and 0%

Jitter has gone from around 5.5 to less than 0.5

This is the same hardware, the same phone line, and even the same synch as far as I know. The router had new username and password, but the modem wasn't restarted.

Why on earth didn't I switch a year ago?

Hi,

Welcome to Zen, please let me know if i can do anything for you.

If you could persuade BT to roll out vectoring to my Huawei cabinet: the moden firmware was upgraded to support vectoring months ago, but it seems they've not yet upgraded the firmware in the cabinet!

More realistically, is there any way to see the synch / profile rate in the portal, so I don't have to depend on speed tests to see what the sync speed is?

In reply to a post by hoopla:

If you could persuade BT to roll out vectoring to my Huawei cabinet: the moden firmware was upgraded to support vectoring months ago, but it seems they've not yet upgraded the firmware in the cabinet!

There is nothing that ISP's can do about this. It's BTw decision and don't think BTw aren't interesting of doing vectoring upgrade anytimes this year.

In reply to a post by hoopla:

More realistically, is there any way to see the synch / profile rate in the portal, so I don't have to depend on speed tests to see what the sync speed is?

Click on View Detailed Usage and then click on View Line Data (bottom right on second page). You will then see your detailed line data.

In reply to a post by lexden16:

Click on View Detailed Usage and then click on View Line Data (bottom right on second page). You will then see your detailed line data.

Above the Data boxes it says "Your current line technology is GEA FTTC."

All the data boxes say "No records to display."

In reply to a post by adslmax:

There is nothing that ISP's can do about this. It's BTw decision and don't think BTw aren't interesting of doing vectoring upgrade anytimes this year.

ISPs are more likely to be able to persuade BTw than anyone else. And vectoring would improve BT's "superfast" "reach" significantly.

I'm not sure if hardware is needed or if it is just a firmware change needed on Huawei cabinets, but if they really aren't interested in vectoring, why have they upgraded Huawei modems to support it?

In reply to a post by hoopla:

All the data boxes say "No records to display."

They don't now. When there was a resync it showed the before and after

Unfortunately, the resync took the speed down by 10%

Can't see why, but there it is.