Poor Speeds And Dropouts

[#1]

HI Guys,

I recently renewed my contract at the start of the month, however over the last few weeks near on every day I have been getting poor speeds at various times of the day, sometimes the whole service drops out.

Every time this happens I have to re-boot my router just to get things back to normal again.

I use my own router, a TP Link Archer VR2800

This has only started happening since I renewed my contract, everything was fine before then.

Any thoughts or ideas on what might be going on?

I would just like a nice stable connection like I used to have before my renewal.

Kind regards,

Derek 

[#2]

@DerekW 

Your question 'Any thoughts or ideas on what might be going on?' is difficult to answer, because we have verifiable data to work from. In its absence, I suggest we start with the basics:

First thing to check: Is your phoneline clear? Dial 17070 (preferably from a corded phone), select option 2. Once your phone number is confirmed, there should be silence on the line except for the regular 'Quiet Line Test' message - any other noise, report a PHONE problem via: https://www.plus.net/help/report-a-problem/phone/

If the phone test passes, report a broadband problem via: https://www.plus.net/help/report-a-problem/broadband/

Let us know the result - if the tests come back as clear but you still have a problem, we need to investigate further.

[#3]

I have never had a telephone plugged in since I had the service installed.

I guess I am going to have to purchase a corded phone, "I think" I may have a cordless phone in a box somewhere.

Just seems strange that this only started happening after I renewed my contract, everything was just fine before that

[#4]

IF you find the cordless - use that - if it is a voice problem, the phone will be noisy, the corded suggestion is merely to avoid the 'noise' some cordless ones can introduce.

Plusnet have no control over the OpenReach network, which is where I suspect the issue is - difficult to be certain with a lack of statistics - it is just pure coincidence. What service are you on?

[#5]

HI John,

Thanks for your reply and assistance, it is very much appreciated.

I found the cordless phone and chucked some new batteries in, did the line test and there is some "static" but I can not be sure if that was cause by the cordless phone or not, going to have to get a cheap corded one I think.

I also came across a thread further down the page where someone was talking about bufferbloat, so I did the test and got a big fat "F" so not good.

I also noted in the same thread about smart devices etc. and I had my electric/gas usage gadgets sat next to my router so I have now moved that - although I do not think that was causing a problems because everything was working fine until recently.

Kind regards,

Derek

[#6]

@DerekW I suggest you forget the 'bufferbloat' issue - that is not going to be causing your problems.

To be honest, the best way to approach this is to provide some data from your router - specifically DSL uptime, noise margins and connection speeds. I assume your router can supply these. Also, does it have a readable event log?

[#7]

Hi,

I have uploaded an image on my DSL stats - The logs get reset each time I reboot, next time this happens I will be sure to save the log file first before re-booting the router

[#8]

Thanks for that information. As the DSL uptime will reset on a reboot - an hour  ago? - it is a little academic, but shows you have had to do it recently. One statistic on there which I would be querying is your D/S noise margin, but I suppose with the low attenuation, it should be OK.

The other 'interesting' figures are your connection speeds as reported - if you are losing connection on a regular basis, I would expect the 'current rate' to be lower. That, plus your noise margins, has got me a little confused, as I would expect DLM to raise the margin and reduce your speed in an attempt to stabilise your connection.

The error logs may give us some further clues, though.

[#9]

Well that's part of the issue, my speeds studently start to drop and on some occasions the whole connection drops

Each time that happens I am having to reboot the router to get my speed/connection back up.

[#10]

OK. As  I said, the error logs may give us an idea, but your connection speed on that post looks very good.

[#11]

@DerekW   what else do you have connected to the router?

It could be either a Wi-Fi problem, or something on your network hogging the bandwidth. 

Could there be something backing up to the cloud or similar?

[#12]

I have two things hard wired, my main PC and my house alarm base station (Ring)

The only other connected device is my mobile.

[#13]

@DerekW 

What contract do you have now, Unlimited Fibre Extra or Fibre (SOGEA no landline phone), both are VDSL (FTTC)

If you have this error again it is worth checking the routers Basic Status page, does it read the Internet Status is disconnected, do you see a message which reads something like

"Check the DSL settings....... . Contact your Internet service provider to confirm if your line is in good condition."

Also Advanced Status page the Errors (pkts) downstream count, is it a high figure?

With regards to the System log file, Select "ALL" and Level "Debug".  Attach the saved log to this thread, random screen shots are not really that helpful.

HTH

[#14]

@DerekW 

Ignore the WiFi connected devices for a start. Does your wired PC slow down when you have this problem. If not it's not a Plusnet problem, it's a wireless issue.

If the wired PC is slowing down and dropping then what are the lights on your router telling you?

It will be interesting to see the results of the stats if you get this slowing down on the wired PC. The current  stats show that your downstream SNR is on the minimum limit. It may be that this is stuck and trying to support a line that can't support this level due to REIN on the line.

Regarding your contract renewal suspicion, there is no connection whatsoever between the two. If you think about it, random faults can appear at any time, over a 24 month contract period, 1 in 24 of all faults will therefore occur within 1 month of contract reneal

[#15]

Well this is a curious problem, slowdowns on a connection that looks awesome !

Having a downstream SNR margin of 3.1 and upstream SNR margin of 6.3 would suggest a great connection.

At 3.1, it looks like DLM is in control and isn't struggling, I can run mine down to 1.0 before problems occur.

I would want to see that same status page just BEFORE a reboot is required to check if the error counts are high.

If it was mine, I would start by checking if the TP Link Archer VR2800 is running the latest version of firmware,

probably "Archer VR2800(EU)_V1_220512" according to https://www.tp-link.com/uk/support/download/archer-vr2800/#Firmware , as the associated change log includes "updates to ISP profiles".

I would then run the Plusnet broadband 'troubleshoot by text',  as that will quickly establish whether there is an identifiable external fault or not,  and until you know that there is "no fault found", then we are just left with guessing.

While I agree that bufferbloat is unlikely to cause the symptoms described, a score of 'F' is so bad that it's actually quite difficult to achieve on a good connection.  A score of 'F' indicates the line latency is worse than 400ms,  so either the connection upstream is completely saturated with uploading traffic (such as an iPhone doing a cloud backup), or there is a massive error-correction retransmission problem on the DSL connectiion.

Referring to the router's handbook from here - https://static.tp-link.com/1910012125_Archer%20VR2800(EU)_V1_UG.pdf 

Navigate to the "QoS" page, that should look like this -

For the purposes of debugging try setting the following -

• Tick the QoS 'Enable' box
• 'Line Type' to 'DSL'
• 'Upload Bandwidth' to 15 Mbps
• 'Download Bandwidth' to 65 Mbps
• Leave 'IPTV QoS' unticked
• Then press the [SAVE] button

Then try re-running the bufferbloat test on a wired PC, and see whether that improves anything ?

With QoS enabled, if there is a rogue huge upload saturating the upload path, the connection should at least now be usable.

.