Dropouts and line speed

[#1]

Hi,
I'm afraid that I've had a long weekend (actually that's a lie, I was very glad to have a long weekend!) and have only got back into the office today and as such did not see your previous replies.
Your fault was passed back to the faults team as when the visit had completed, the ticket was passed back to the generic CSC team.
The engineer visit appears to have achieved absolutely nothing.  Could you let me know what he did when he visited?

[#2]

Hi Jameseh
Hope you enjoyed your long weekend - from what I've seen on the forums, it was well deserved.
The engineer connected his test equipment to the BT test socket in my hall, and it seemed to me that he was probably carrying out the same tests as the two previous engineers. I'm afraid I am not knowledgeable enough to know precisely what he was doing and I didn't feel it was right for me to hang around him whilst he worked - I was only a few feet away in the kitchen in case he had anything to say. He then went outside to carry out tests on the cables on the telegraph poles in the street, leaving a small device attached to the BT socket. He then inspected the cable connection on the exterior wall of my house. Then he checked the redundant telephone socket in one of the bedrooms and confirmed it was dead. (This socket was installed when my son lived at home and he wanted his own line and it became redundant when he left home.) When I first took up broadband, a shared line device (DACS) on the street pole, which I assume was there to facilitate this second line, had to be dealt with by BT before broadband could be activated. I explained this to the engineer. He then went up the road about 200 metres to the green cabinet to check things there, as I mentioned that BT had been carrying out a lot of work there over a couple of months or so and my problems began about the same time, but he couldn't find anything amiss there.
He said that everything appeared to be OK, but there were 'errors' on the line which he couldn't explain and he asked me if I knew of any radio equipment in the area - I knew of none. I asked him whether my DECT telephone could be responsible but he ruled that out.
He then removed the faceplate from the socket in the hall and fitted an SSFP socket in its place to see whether it made any difference, but there were still intermittent errors. He explained that no separate microfilter is needed as a filter is built in.
Then his two hours time slot ran out  and he had to leave, apologising for not being able to rectify the problem, and said a further visit would be necessary. He said to ask PN to adjust the BRAS profile to see whether that would work as sometimes it 'gets stuck'. I reported all this in the update to my ticket.
I hope all this helps, and await hearing from you.

[#3]

Oh, and I forgot to say to you that the engineer said he had moved my line to another cable.

[#4]

Hi,
Thanks for the update and I'm sure that it's frustrating that no further progress has been made.
To be clear - we can't change your bRAS profile, nor is it going to help you in the slightest.  Your connection is continuing to connect at an extremely slow rate, preventing your from downloading at a faster speed.  It's extremely likely the the errors (combined with your long line) are causing this extremely slow rate.
Let me know when you're free for visit #3 and I'll speak to BT and try and get your case escalated.

[#5]

Thanks Jameseh. It will be visit #4. I can be here all day, any day this week except Thursday 22nd. If BT can be persuaded to spend as long a time as is necessary to trace the fault, perhaps we might get somewhere this time. They have already spent 6 hours here and I feel sure they must have been going over the same ground each time. Also, perhaps they can gen up on the problem and what has been done already before they come here. They might then know what else needs doing - for each of the 3 engineers I have had to explain the problem each time - they don't appear to have been briefed.
I understand what you say about the errors and my long line, but when the exchange is only 3 miles or so away, and I can drive there in about 10 mins, it's difficult to accept that is considered a long distance. It's not as if I live in the back of beyond - I had reasonable speeds up until this problem arose. I have explained to each of the engineers that a near neighbour had problems with his Tiscali broadband earlier this year, and BT discovered that the line to his house was 'wrongly routed around the village' and that when this was corrected his connection was much more stable and much faster than it had ever been, but I just got blank looks each time. When a neighbour has a similar problem it is natural to think that your own problem might be similarly caused.
Anyway, let's hope for a solution this time, and thanks for your efforts.

[#6]

Thanks again.
I've called BT again and I've booked an engineer for tomorrow morning.  Although as I've just mentioned to you on the phone, I'm going to cancel that as your sync speed has gone up overnight.  When I checked it yesterday, it was still stuck at 160Kbps, however, checked just now it's gone up to 1344Kbps!
I'll keep an eye on things and we can always rebook another engineer visit if the problems start happening again, but hopefully, you should see an uplift in your profiled speed in the next 24-48 hours.

[#7]

Hi Jameseh
24 hours after your last post, I have just gone to My Broadband Speed which reports 129 Kbps Down and 374 Kbps Up, so no improvement (surprise, surprise), but will keep monitoring.
My initiaI delight yesterday when you rang about your speed test has now sunk without trace as I have just recalled that when the first engineer came, he said his equipment, connected to the test socket, achieved a rate of 1.4 Mb which I mentioned in my comment to question on 6th Oct. When the second engineer came, he said his equipment was at 1.6 to 1.8 Mb, and the third engineer got, if I recall correctly, 2.1 Mb. Hence all the puzzlement and scratching of heads, especially as in this village our maximum broadband speed has always been much lower than that. So, perhaps your measurement yesterday morning was not so unusual after all.

[#8]

Bah, it's back down to what it was again
Are you still connected into your test socket?  If not, can you please reconnect to it so that I can retest?  If you are already, let me know and I'll try to book an engineer for tomorrow or friday, whichever is preferable.

[#9]

The router is connected to the new SSFP socket installed by the engineer last week. Do you need me to take the new faceplate off and connect to test socket?

[#10]

I've just tried the BT Speedtester.

Quote

Test1 comprises of Best Effort Test:  -provides background information. Download  Speed 83 Kbps   0 Kbps 250 Kbps Max Achievable Speed Download speedachieved during the test was - 83 Kbps For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 50-250 Kbps. Additional Information: Your DSL Connection Rate :160 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 Kbps(UP-STREAM) IP Profile for your line is - 135 Kbps

[#11]

Please - If you could go directly into the test socket, it just helps me rule another thing out before I go book another engineer.

[#12]

OK, router now connected to test socket via a microfilter.
Tomorrow not suitable for BT visit but am available all day Friday.

[#13]

Keep it in there please!
Looks like the SSFP might be faulty - you're syncing at 1.5Mbps now.

[#14]

My Broadband Speed result this afternoon:-

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Date              Download Speed          Upload Speed  Today 15:05 129 kbps (16.1kB/s) 371 kbps (46.4kB/s)

BT Speedtester result this afternoon:-

Quote

Download speedachieved during the test was - 87 Kbps For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 50-250 Kbps. Additional Information: Your DSL Connection Rate :160 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 Kbps(UP-STREAM) IP Profile for your line is - 135 Kbps

[#15]

Hi birdman,
Is this with the router still plugged into the test socket?