My fibre upgrade story.

Booked the upgrade in the 8am to pm slot, woke up nice an early in case they arrived at 8am :-/
they eventually turned up up at 3:15pm, better late than never.

He asked where the pack was assuming i was with BT, i told him i was with Zen and just needed the modem,
annoyed he said they are supposed to tell him things like this, i got a bit worried thinking he might not have a modem
leaving me without internet (he'd already gone to the green cabinet to switch things over).
luckily he'd came back with a modem and got to work switching over the face plate.

the modem doesn't come with an ethernet cable meaning i had to use one of my own, i have plenty but someone
else in this situation might not be as prepared so this really needs sorting out.

happier this morning after a lay in and getting 73Mbps down and 18Mbps up, from reading other story's on the net
this is something to expect with BT contractors.

Edited by Deadite66 (Tue 19-Aug-14 12:24:22)

In reply to a post by Deadite66:

the modem doesn't come with an ethernet cable meaning i had to use one of my own, i have plenty but someone else in this situation might not be as prepared so this really needs sorting out.

Presumably if you buy the router from Zen then that comes with an ethernet cable.

Presumably if you buy the router from Zen then that comes with an ethernet cable.


Correct.

I dont think i have ever seen an FTTC modem come with a RJ45 cable. Where the EU is providing there own router, they should also provide the ancillary equipment. EG cables!

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

Presumably if you buy the router from Zen then that comes with an ethernet cable.

and then what would you use to connect the router to a pc?

Edited by Deadite66 (Tue 19-Aug-14 13:46:49)

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

In reply to a post by Deadite66:

the modem doesn't come with an ethernet cable meaning i had to use one of my own, i have plenty but someone else in this situation might not be as prepared so this really needs sorting out.

Presumably if you buy the router from Zen then that comes with an ethernet cable.

The Openreach modem does come with a cable. I assume what's happened there is the guy happened to have one on his van, but he was assuming it was a BT integrated install, where he wouldn't need one. Given my experience, most BT engineers think Infinity is all that exists because everyone has been duped into believing they are the best choice and/or often only choice.

You prob just had what he had floating around.

I had bigger problems when I had an install at home three weeks ago. I'd already replaced the master socket (don't tell BT!) with a new NTE5A and installed a VDSL Mk2 interstitial filter and was running ADSL though it quite happily.

The engineer, from Kelly, realized he didn't have a huge amount to do as I'd already got sync at 79987/19999 and a working connection by the time he was outside as he did the cabinet side first.

He was curious to see what equipment I was running (Cisco 887VA-M-K9 wihout an Openreach modem into a 19" rack mount hardware firewall) so I showed him my comms cupboard. Well, he took one look at it and told me that although he had a degree in telecommunications engineering he hadn't a clue how to set up anything like I had and could I teach him?

He then made it very clear he wanted me as his girlfriend . After about half an hour of chatting on matters scientific and religious, I think he finally had the good sense to give up on me as he was happy-clappy god squad and I'm really rather not

After sorting out an annoying PMTU black hole problem (which I don't get on other Zen connections which have Zen backhaul - mine has BT) I left things running. After a brief drop in sync speed because of all the ups and downs in the first day while I diagnosed the black hole problem it's back at 79987/19999 and has remained synced at that speed for two weeks;

DS Channel1	  DS Channel0	US Channel1	  US Channel0
Speed (kbps):	          0	       79987	         0	       19999
SRA Previous Speed:       0	       72534	         0	       19999
Previous Speed:	          0	       72534	         0	       19999
Reed-Solomon EC:          0	           0	         0	        7012
CRC Errors:	          0	        3413	         0	         193
Header Errors:	          0	        2335	         0	           0
Interleave (ms):       0.00	        0.00	      0.00	        0.00
Actual INP:	       0.00	        0.00	      0.00	        0.00

Active    Idle
  Line           User               Service       Time      Time
  vty 8          sarah              VTY           00:11:02  00:00:00  
  Vi2            dsl2.wh-man        PPPoE         2w0d      00:00:04

Apart from my latency, which is dreadful compared to the other Zen connections I run which have Zen backhaul, I'm very happy.

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3671120538

As for engineer time keeping, I asked for a PM slot, which was confirmed, and he rang me just before 11am to say he was already at the cabinet.

Edited by caffn8me (Tue 19-Aug-14 17:35:45)

In reply to a post by caffn8me:

He then made it very clear he wanted me as his girlfriend .

I think Openreach should be concerned about this. It's obviously a hazard in all walks of life for women. I see policemen are being currently reprimanded for sending friend requests to victims of crime

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

In reply to a post by Deadite66:

the modem doesn't come with an ethernet cable meaning i had to use one of my own, i have plenty but someone else in this situation might not be as prepared so this really needs sorting out.

Presumably if you buy the router from Zen then that comes with an ethernet cable.

The Zen router had two Ethernet cables � white with red plugs and white with yellow plugs to match the colour coding on the TG789vn3.

The modem didn�t appear to come with an Ethernet cable � the BT engineer asked me if I had a cable so I used the white/red cable. Don�t know if I had said �no� he would have got one from the van, but I didn�t want to take the chance he would leave before I checked everything was working.