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I have a Wet Joint in my line which sometimes plays havoc with my Fibre connection and sometimes is fine (and by fine I mean that I only have disconnections every 2 days rather than a few per day). I�ll explain why how I know it�s a wet joint later. I�m reaching the limit of my patience as I�m self-employed, have a business line and expected to be able to work from home when I wish rather than doing it reluctantly when I have to. It�s quite embarrassing have to redial into conferences or apologise for a presentation stopping. As I�ve reached this frustration level, I think I have few options:
1. Keep reporting at Zen Support until they relent and get OpenReach out again (although I know what the problem is, it�s going to be easier). BT identified a problem before, but it stopped while they were trying things � so they had no idea if they fixed it.
2. Use Principle 4 to terminate my contract, get a new line to the house and use it for broadband. Then terminate the line I have. This is riskier as there are two points the problem could be and it depends on where the new line runs from. This will cost £140.
3. Go for FTTP � this is unlikely to be sensible as I�m 470m from the cabinet and the cost will be prohibitive (two underground sections 348m and 50m and then about 70m to the house).
4. Wait for a further degradation (same as 1, and as the weather is getting better I�m likely to be out of contract at that point � and very far away from Zen).
5. Go for mobile broadband and put an ADSL line back in for the kids � ADSL was stable on the line and 19Mb down. Needs 2. to happen.
I understand that Zen don�t want me to end up with the OpenReach charge if they don�t find anything and want to see the fault on a test they can run � but that costs pales in comparison to the 2 hours commute to my client�s site and the £13.50 parking charge� the problem has been evident from December. I don�t want to do the maths, but it�s way above the OpenReach fee.
How do I know it�s a wet joint� That took a while but fairly obvious with hindsight I had a lot of pictures, but it appears you can�t add them. So I�ll type the relevant info.
Decemeber/January
The line was dropping multiple times per day and syncing at ~38Mb
Here was a typical error rate from January (SNR was 10 downstream):
Fritz!box Error Seconds:5085 SES:3568 CRC per minute:8 last 15 minutes 803
Exchange Error Seconds:20 SES: 4 CRC per minute: 0.04 last 15 minutes: 0
The errors came in a bell curve and lasted for hours then petered out � but with this level of errors it took a few weeks of calls to Zen support to get a fault raised with OpenReach. The line at first passed tests, but then failed and the engineer replaced the drop line as the original wiring was very old. Things were fine for a few days and then the SNR Graph had wide varying minimum and maximum (up to 10 db � which is likely to explain the disconnects):
My Speed went up to the Mid 40s � then the errors came back.
I was averaging 16 CRCs per minute and had managed to clock up 16686 Error seconds with the Central Exchange.
Then the Beast from the East arrived and my SNR graph dropped by 30Db
I was syncing in the 20s, when it synced, and it dropped every few hours, so I was lucky to capture some screenshots showing the drop in SNR.
Back to Zen Support � the weather had heated up and the snow melted (not that I�d worked it out at this point)� so a forced resync put it back in the 40s and Zen weren�t going to do anything about it. I�m now frustrated, and not trusting my internet connection even a bit.
Back to the same � seeming random patterns of errors. I worked from the client�s site and listen to complaining from the kids when I got home.
Did some speed tests to see what the actual throughput was taking retransmissions into account (I have children who provide an alarm when it�s not working):
Download speeds varied from 10 to 40 Mb and the average was 33 � it appears there�s loads of retransmission going on (the screenshot really tells the story). Not the best.
April came and I went on holiday� I came back to find the connection had been at 25Mb and to top it all I�m now banded at a max of 44 (looks like the DLM didn�t like the errors), looked back at the weather forecast: snow, again from the east.
The penny dropped.
Went outside and looked at my phone line � there are two joins, both sheltered from a westerly wind and both above ground� profuse swearing.
Did some more speed tests on Zen�s site � throughput was poor, so back to Zen Support.
They agreed the speed is poor but wanted more tests. Amazingly for Scotland the sun has been out since and that�s where I realised that there�s nothing I�ll be able to do. Most of the problems are in the evening or morning and wetness can clear up now that the temperature is in double figures � the problems are likely to be condensation as much as rain (although the temperature, freezing the condensation, are likely to be another part of it).
After the dry days I compared the connection (SNR Graph), it�s substantially higher than before giving attainable of 54Mb/14Mb (although I�m now banded so won�t get any of it).
I wrote a quick program the other night which captures data in the SNR graph, the bit loading from the same page and everything I found interesting on the DSL page and stores it on a database, every 10 seconds, with the view of gathering evidence. But having been on the phone regularly from the beginning of the year to Zen support, I realise how much this has cost me in lost time and effort, and just want either to leave Zen or get a reliable connection. I�ve already got loads of screenshots, so more evidence isn�t going to help.
So � do I cut my losses or perservere?
Edited by deleted (Thu 26-Apr-18 23:35:50)
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