Some help please

[#1]

Hi All,

So I was previously with Sky Fibre on 80/20 FTTC. Sync speed was always at 80/20, throughout the whole contract and regardless of how many reboots and power failures I had. This did not fluctuate at all. Yes definitely one of the lucky ones, the cabinet is literally outside the house.

Moved over to Plusnet January of this year, sync speed was always at 76.32/ 19.9 with a Maximum Data Rate 87/28. I did not mind too much and thought this might eventually creep up, especially as the connection showed it can connect up to 87Mbps. But it did not. As more people are using the internet in the house now I thought I'd contact Plusnet to see if they can do a dlm reset to try push it back to 80/20. So spoke to someone very unhelpful from customer service, she said as my speed exceeded my estimated speeds, there was nothing she could do and I should be grateful for getting better speeds than estimated.

• Estimated Download Range: 65 - 72Mbps
• Estimated Upload Range: 17 - 18Mbps
• Minimum Guaranteed Speed: 60Mbps

Anyway since that conversion, 2 weeks ago. The sync speed has dropped to 73.6/19.9 and the Maximum Data Rate has dropped to 77.8/ 26.7 and it feels like someone at Plusnet has reduced it on purpose. What are your thoughts? Could someone please calculate what speeds I should get based on the Noise Margin and Line attenuation. 

Current stats:

Product name:	Plusnet Hub
2. Serial number:
3. Firmware version:	Software version 4.7.5.1.83.8.263 Last updated Unknown
4. Board version:	Plusnet Hub One
5. DSL uptime:	2 days, 10:27:18
6. Data rate:	19999 / 73600
7. Maximum data rate:	26705 / 77844
8. Noise margin:	10.1 / 5.1
9. Line attenuation:	11.6 / 11.8
10. Signal attenuation:	11.3 / 11.8

Thanks

[#2]

Thanks for your post @Rav1985 and welcome to our Community Forums.

Testing your line isn't showing any issues or anything we can raise to Openreach for investigation.

This is a difficult one because speeds can drop for a variety of reasons like cross-talk or some sort of issue on the line however as you're well within the supplier estimated speed range and there's no issues found from our tests, then there's sadly nothing we'd be able to do because your line would still be running within expectations.

Your line profile is "Downstream: 0.128M-80M5dB with Retransmission (High). Upstream: 0.128M-20M with no error protection" so we can't reset your line because we can't request a DLM reset for FTTC. 

What we can submit in terms of a reset is known as a 'caution counter reset' and all that does is make sure you're on the highest banding for the product you've ordered, in this case you're already on "0.128M-80M".

I've attached a copy of our testing if you'd be interested

GEA Test Detail
Circuit ID	NA	Service ID	[redacted BBEU]

Test Outcome	Pass
Test Outcome Code	GTC_FTTC_SERVICE_0000
Description	GEA service test completed and no fault found .
Main Fault Location	OK
Sync Status	In Sync
Downstream Speed	73.6 Mbps
Upstream Speed	20.0 Mbps
Appointment Required	N
Fault Report Advised	N
NTE Power Status	PowerOn
Voice Line Test Result	Pass
Radio Frequency Ingress	Not Detected
Repetitive Electrical Impulse Noise	Not Detected
Cross Talk	Not Detected
Estimated Line Length In Metres	305.6
Upstream Rate Assessment	Very Good
Downstream Rate Assessment	Very Good
Interference Pattern	Not Detected
Service Impact	No Impact Observed
Home Wiring Problem	Not Detected
Downstream Policing Discard Rate	0.0
Customer Traffic Level	Upstream and Downstream traffic detected
Technology	VDSL
Current 15Min Bin Retrains	0
Last 15Min Bin Retrains	0
DP Type	External
Profile Name	0.128M-80M Downstream 4dB, Retransmission High - 0.128M-20M Upstream, Error Protection Off
Time Stamp	2021-10-13T15:15:00

Parameters	MIN	MAX	AVG
Down Stream Line Rate	76.8 Mbps	79.9 Mbps	78.9 Mbps
Up Stream Line Rate	20.0 Mbps	20.0 Mbps	20.0 Mbps
Up Time	807.0 Sec	900.0 Sec	899.8 Sec
Retrains	0.0	1.0	0.0

Current and Last 15 Minute Bin Performance
Parameters	Last Traffic Count(Upto 15 mins)	Current Traffic Count(Upto 15 mins)
Start Time Stamp	2021-10-26T13:46:56Z	2021-10-26T14:01:56Z
Ingress Code Violation	1	0
Egress Code Violation	0	0
Errored Seconds	0	0
Severely Errored Seconds	0	0
Unavailable Seconds	0	0

[#3]

Hi Gandalf,

Many thanks for your reply.

Ok so, what would explain the sync speed difference between Sky and Plusnet? And what can all of a sudden start causing cross-talk issues? As mentioned in my post, I was with Sky for 18 months and always connected at 80Mbps.

Also is there anything that can be done to lower Ping levels by Plusnet? With Sky I averaged 8ms with Plusnet it tends to fluctuate between a nice 2ms, shooting all the way up to 49ms. I would say majority of the time it is in the 20s, which is pretty noticeable during online gaming.

Thanks

Paramjit

[#4]

Hi Paramjit, thanks for getting back to me. 

What’s suggesting there’s cross-talk? Our tests aren’t detecting any although that’s not definitive. I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion at this stage though unless an Openreach engineer’s told you that is the case.

It’s possible you were on a 3dB profile with Sky and when you move between providers, a DLM reset is automatically carried out, resetting the profile to a default 6dB target. The higher dB generally the lower the speed.

Earlier this month it went down to 4dB so if you allow a little more time it’s possible you’ll get the 3dB target back and hopefully your speed along with it.

I’d say a latency of 20ms is perfectly fine but I appreciate when you’re gaming, the lower the better. Regardless though this isn’t something our suppliers would investigate if there are no other issues detected. I’d say retransmission high as a form of error correction similar to interleaving won’t be helping your latency and with time again you may see it automatically removed but we can’t request this to happen sadly.

Feel free to let me know if you’ve got any further queries and how things go.