New to Plusnet would like to share my experience and ask for some advice.

[#1]

Hi all

 As stated I'm a new user to PlusNet, having been with the likes of Freeserve, Wanadoo, Orange and then EE I thought that having been with the same company even though they changed ownerships and names for well over the past 20years would have given me some leverage due to my loyalty, but in fact quite the opposite happened to me.

Long story but ill try and keep it short as possible

I was on standard EE ADSL line  receiving around 10Mbps and thought I would ask about the Fibre EE where offering, all the checks where done and was told I would get unto 40bps as my exchange is 875 metres away and the line test done on my property was clean, well first day of service going live and I'm receiving 31Mbps of which I was quite happy about as I know that these companies over exaggerate the figures sometimes, well the very next day the speed had dropped down to 23Mbps and seemed very laggy in fact the service seemed worse than my ADSL line was, this went on a for a few days and not being happy I called EE up and asked then to investigate of which I was told the speeds I had was the maximum I could get.

Even though I had explained that the Fibre service EE offered of upto 40Mbps was not in anyway what I was getting, in fact sometimes my speed would drop down to slower speeds than my old ADSL line maxing out at 8Mbps. I was told there is nothing they could do and I would have to put up with it, as you can imagine I was very angry at this time especially after being a loyal customer so told them I wanted to cancel my contract with them as I was still within my rights to do so, I was then confronted with abuse and told if that's what I wanted they would cut me off there and then and bee left with no phone of broadband, after explaining this could not happen and the reasons why the obtuse person agreed and this is when I switched over to PlusNet of which I have been happy with so far.

I have attached a speed test graph which I carried out over the past month to show the old EE fibre and the new PlusNet connection, even though the BT cabinet has not changed I'm still on cabinet 7 and the line to my property has not changed or any modifications to my existing internal wiring the speed I am getting now with PlusNet is far superior than what I was getting with EE, how can this be, both companies are owned by BT, the cabinet is the same and no cabling has changed so could anyone please explain why this happened.

This is the info I have on my router not sure if this is good or not or if there is anything I can do to improve things.

Data rate: 6297 / 34999

Maximum data rate: 6296 / 43712

Noise margin: 5.9 / 6.9

Line attenuation: 22.1 / 22.3 

Signal attenuation: 21.9 / 19.9

Would welcome your comments and advice. 

Moderator's note by Mike (Mav): Post released from Spam Filter.

[#2]

Welcome to the community forums @sacha100

It could be due to a number of reasons, it'd be difficult to tell.

It's possible that EE use their own equipment in the exchange, whereas we use BT Wholesale equip, so the issue could lie there. Maybe there's congestion issues on EE's network. Or, the router you were using might have developed a fault.

Looking at your speed estimates, your line is actually under-performing as from what we can tell, your sync rate should be at least 43mbps. I'd run through the checks here to rule out all internal wiring and raise a fault here.

EDIT: My sources might be incorrect on EE using their own equipment.

[#3]

Many thanks for the information Gandalf, will do some internal checks, am I right in thinking that if the system disconnects more than six times it will be registerd as a fault? And that it can take up to three days to settle down.

thanks again

[#4]

No problems. I'm not sure on the exact science, but I think the dynamic line management (DLM) software analyses the connection overall not just the number of drops although regular or frequent drops won't help things.

If you're interested in learning more, a few years ago one of my colleagues created a good guide on it:

https://community.plus.net/t5/Library/FTTC-DLM-What-it-is-How-it-works/ba-p/1322799

And more info can be found here too: https://community.plus.net/t5/Fibre-Broadband/Fibre-Fault-Guides/td-p/1156188

[#5]

Thank you once again, some good info on the links provided, will need to read these a few times for it to sink in.

from the very quick read it may be a DLM on my line as I was switching the router off and can now see that this could have been seen at the exchange as a fault, will let it settle down for nine days to see if it improves before disconnecting again.

Thank you for all your help.

[#6]

No problems at all and a happy new year

[#7]

All the best to yourself, let all hope 2018 is a great year for all.

[#8]

Happy new year everyone

Been watching router information over the past couple of days and have noticed when the Noise margin drops so does the Maximum data rate, I thought the lower the Noise margin the better speeds one would get as the line is cleaner but on my router this is not the case when the Noise margin started to drop so did the Maximum data rate I could achieve drop.

This is the results so far not that different from when first posted but I did see the noise margin drop to 4.6db and the maximum data rate was something like 40430, when I looked at the home events to see what was connected to the router I  clicked refresh icon which removed a few disconnected devices, I then looked again at the helpdesk icon and noticed with just that click the noise margin had also so risen to what it is now. ( do I have a slight fault in this router )

 I have also carried out a BT speed test which is attached, it shows that my download speed was 34.42Mbps which was greater than the maximum achievable speed I am meant to get.

Thank you all again for your help.

Data rate:	6293 / 35000
7. Maximum data rate:	6292 / 43429
8. Noise margin:	6.1 / 6.7
9. Line attenuation:	22.1 / 22.5
10. Signal attenuation:	22.0 / 20.1

[#9]

Hi,

I suspect there’s a little bit of confusion here. It’s a tad complex, but I will try to keep the explanation as clear as possible.

When a line ‘syncs up’ it tries to establish sync at the fastest speed at the line’s TARGET SNRM above the then present noise. The lower the target the faster the synch speed. Having established synch, that’s the speed the line operates at until the next synch event.

During operation the ACTUAL SNRM will vary - if line noise increases the margin falls, if it diminishes the margin rises. A rising margin implies an increased theoretical speed capability compared to the current speed. Similarly if the current margin falls the reported max speed will be lower than the actual speed.

Max speed has no practical application - it refers to ‘perfect’ pootential which is not likely to be attained. Personally I do not understand why routers report it as it only causes confusion leading to people thinking that they are missing out on something which cannot be delivered.

[#10]

Thanks for the info Townman you have made me understand what is going on.

[#11]

Hi hope you can help, today saw my first problem as far as I can see and can not for the life of me see what the problem is.
all good this morning setting all the same as listed above, went out for a few hours and came home to notice this have slowed down, did a hard reset and booted up and this is now the results.
6. Data rate: 5473 / 32400
7. Maximum data rate: 6629 / 41142
8. Noise margin: 5.8 / 6.1
9. Line attenuation: 36.1 / 22.8
10. Signal attenuation: 36.9 / 20.4

you can see the line and signal attenuation has gone up considerably from what it has been.

can someone throw some light on what's going on.

Many thanks

[#12]

Do you have any noise on your line? Dial 17070 option 2 idealy from a corded phone.

[#13]

No all clear, don't no what is going on but ping is not good and as you guess speed has dropped, hopefully something is going on at BT,s end and it will sort it self out or maybe BT have connected a noisy line to the cabinet that I'm on.

[#14]

It does appear that something is not quite right, are you plugged into the test socket behind the lower faceplate in the master socket? Assuming ou have a modern master socket.

[#15]

Hi and thanks for the info, I don't want to unplug anything at the moment as I am not sure if the problem is BT DSL and restarting the router may be seen as an error I did noticed that the Signal attenuation dropped this morning to 25.5 but a couple of hours latter it has since back up to 37.5 so something is going on.