Ludlow Exchange

[lee]

Hi All,

My father in law was very recently persuaded by me to join idnet. He is on the Home Lite package, when we put the number in to check availability and speed it said 6.3mb. He has a Belkin wireless 4 port router and since he has been connected (3rd November 08) the fastest connection he has had is 1.4mb down and 384kb upload. On average it is around 0.5mb, he is so disappointed that he is thinking of terminating his account after the first month if the speeds arent fast enough. Their house is about 3/4 mile from the exchange, and their house is only about 4 years old so wiring etc should be pretty good. Could it be that there appears to be only one exchange for Ludlow and so it can't deliver the kind of speeds we all expect?

Here is a link to Sam Knows: http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/WNLUD with the details on the exchange and also the results from his speed test results.

Any help would be appreciated, as I feel kind of responsible that I persuaded them to get the internet and now they can't achieve what they hoped for.

Lee

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Rik]

Can you post the router stats please, Lee - downstream sync speed, attenuation and noise margin. He's still in the 10 day training period, so needs to exercise a little patience.

[lee]

Hi Rik,

I know it's in the 10 day period still, but wouldn't he have seen some activity in the higher spectrum of download speeds by now?

I will try and get the details regarding the router off him this evening and post them up.

Thanks as ever.

Lee

[Rik]

I don't know without seeing his router stats, Lee. He could have a flapping line, be on a stuck profile etc etc. If you can get him to do a BT speed test, that would also help. The important thing to remember is that no ISP can raise a fault with BT for the ten days, so I'd advise him to sit this one out until we get some clues as to what's happening. If it's fixable, IDNet are more likely to get something done than some others.

[Lance]

Of course, it is also worth remembering that the 6.3mb comes from a BT database which, on many occasions, has shown itself to be inaccurate (both over and under).

[Rik]

You left out 'many', Lance.

[Lance]

 

[Ted]

Hi Lee
At the moment i'd have to agree with the other guys, there's not much to do in the first 10 days except lay back and think of England 
When that's done and you've discounted your internal wiring (4 years old means nothing) jump up and down on IDnet. Who in turn can be "civil" with BT.
I agree that 0.5 mb is terrible for such a short line. For example, i am approx 1.3km from the exchange and sync at 7616 interleaved.
Do hang in there for a while as things can change dramatically after the initial period. 

[lee]

Okey Dokey,

I got him to run the BT Speed Test and here are the results he had. I haven't yet had the opportunity to get the router details Rik asked for but as I'm off work today with man flu.....and may not last the week...you guys know how lethal this strain is......although my missus doesn't believe me.

Any way here are the results:
Line throughput stated as 7000k.
No of threads 4.

TEST 2
Connection rate =            8096kps (downstream)
                                       448kps (upstream)
ID profile                          7000kps
Actual IP throughput =          62kps

Does this make sense to anyone?

Lee

[Simon_idnet]

you guys know how lethal this strain is......although my missus doesn't believe me.

That's because the only women who have ever caught it, died from it!

[cavillas]

OOhh SImon   Will Miriam read this? Would love to be in the office when she does.

[Simon_idnet]

I'm out the door and running - dust on the horizon.

[cavillas]

Go on Miriam, chase him.

[Rik]

Okey Dokey,

I got him to run the BT Speed Test and here are the results he had. I haven't yet had the opportunity to get the router details Rik asked for but as I'm off work today with man flu.....and may not last the week...you guys know how lethal this strain is......although my missus doesn't believe me.

Any way here are the results:
Line throughput stated as 7000k.
No of threads 4.

TEST 2
Connection rate =            8096kps (downstream)
                                       448kps (upstream)
ID profile                          7000kps
Actual IP throughput =          62kps

Does this make sense to anyone?

Lee

It looks like horrendous VP congestion at the exchange, tbh.

[lee]

Hi Rik,

Sorry...what was that in english please Are you suggesting Like I initially thought that the exchange just can't handle the traffic for the town?

Also do you know where I would tell my father in law where to look on the Belkin router to get those details you asked for. I have downloaded the router manual off internet but i couldn't see a screen shot that showed me where they would be.

He isn't that IT literate so it helps if i can tell him exactly where to look. I did try setting up Microsoft Remote Desktop management but it wouldn't connect. Does Idnet block this kind of thing as when i tracerouted his ip address it stopped at Idnets servers.

Crikey by the time all this is said and done, I'll be a IT blackbelt.

[Rik]

Have a look at this page from Kitz for the router, Lee:

http://www.kitz.co.uk/routers/belkin_commands.htm

Yes, my hunch is that the exchange is horrendously congested, a VP (virtual path) is what you connect to at the exchange, and if the capacity isn't there, ie there's insufficient bandwidth for the number of customers, then you get very slow speeds. We know there's little wrong with the connection between your FIL and the exchange as the sync speed and profile match up. The actual throughput, though, does not. Take a look at this post, you are not alone but I doubt that's much consolation.

[Rik]

I did try setting up Microsoft Remote Desktop management but it wouldn't connect. Does Idnet block this kind of thing as when i tracerouted his ip address it stopped at Idnets servers.

Sorry, missed this. IDNet don't block it, but his firewall may be doing so.

[lee]

Heh Rik,

You are a star, thanks for the details. The post you forwarded me to, is this in regards to the Ludlow exchange? Or is this another exchange somewhere in the UK? BT seem to be cousins of Pipex/Tiscali

They should all go into politics.

[Rik]

It's another exchange, Lee, but it's a pattern which is, sadly, becoming more apparent and, Ian Livinstone, the new BT CEO, seems much less interested in getting involved than his predecessor. My own view is that BT are putting all their resources into the new 21CN/WBC technology and are reluctant to invest any more than they have to in the older technology. While I can see their point of view, unfortunately, they are not delivering on 21CN/WBC, eg IDNet's order has been put back from June till November 4, and my own exchange has gone back by six months.

[lee]

So I have spoke to and emailed the gang at Idnet as the through put speed when not using the wireless function and instead using a ethernet cable only came out as 260kbps for the actual throughput.
Additionally I have had a look at the exchange details at http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges/
and the results were:
Results: Ludlow
Code:   WNLUD
County:   Shropshire
Enabled:   06 Aug 2003
   Virtual paths: Green
There are currently no known capacity problems on your exchange. There may still be an exchange problem, however BT are not currently reporting that they are aware of it. Please contact Support if you are having speed problems, who can advise further.

Record last updated: 20 Oct 08

Historical information for this exchange:

Status   Date
Green   13 Oct 08   
Green   06 Oct 08   
Green   29 Sep 08   
Green   22 Sep 08   
Green   15 Sep 08

The status checker has also said that the exchange had no outages and also the following:
Exchange Status Checker

Results: Ludlow
Code:   WNLUD
County:   Shropshire
Enabled:   06 Aug 2003
Upgrade Status
Status: Green
Good News, BT have finished enabling this exchange for Max DSL products.
Products will be available from 31/03/06.
Speeds: Our test also indicates that your line currently supports a potential ADSL Max broadband line rate of 6Mbps or greater.
BT are in the process of upgrading the majority of telephone exchanges around the UK to support speeds of up to 8Mbit/s.

The status given here is an estimate given by BT on 31/03/06

Rik the links didn't seem to work regarding the router, or my father in law is doing something wrong. really difficult to know for sure without being there.

The plot thickens

[Rik]

Sorry, Lee, I have no personal experience with a Belkin. You could try asking on the DSL Hardware board at ThinkBroadband if no-one here has any suggestions.

I don't trust BT reports on VP status, tbh. They often don't report there's a problem, or they report that the problem has been cleared when they haven't put in enough capacity to deal with demand. IDNet will give you a more accurate answer, I did alert them to this thread.

[lee]

You're very kind Rik.

Thanks for your help.

[Rik]

Happy to help, Lee, sadly I can't do much more in this case than tell you something is horribly wrong.

Afterthought: Do you know what MTU values your FIL is using?

[lee]

Hi Rik,

I'm sorry I don't speak Welsh

What's a MTU and a FIL?

[Rik]

Sorry. Father-in-law and Maximum transmission unit. The latter is what you'd expect, the largest packet of data which is sent by the computer at any time. If the router is set to a smaller figure than the computer, every packet will have to be split and sent as two, with the obvious effect on throughput. I'd set the router to 1500, and then have a tweak of Windows. The two most commonly used values with IDNet seem to be 1500, which gives me the best results, and 1458.

There's more info here.

[lee]

So I sent the BT speed details to Idnet and Andrew kindly looked into it for me.

I got two emails from him today, the first informed me that he had contacted BT and would let me know as soon as he heard anything. This was at 2.53pm.

The second email at 3.58pm said:
"Hi Lee
BT have corrected an error at the exchange, please retest and let me
know if the issue is still present
Kind Regards
Andrew - IDNet Support."

I have just called my FIL and asked him to do the test, his connection has now rocketed up to 4.5mb from 260kbps.

IDNET do it again..the funny thing here is that his neighbours have complained about slow speeds for a while as a lot of them are on BT broadband. The guys at IDNET said the problem was on the exchange and not specifically to my FIL...sooooo everyone should see a sudden increase in speed.

I think that's a rather good result all roads round!!

Thanks again to everyone for their help and patience.

[Rik]

Great news, kudos to Andrew. 

[vitriol]

Yup he's a helpful guy 

[Lance]

Great news. Good to see that IDNet support were quick and once again got a good result out of BT!

[mrapoc]

ermmm this is gonna sound weird but..

I lives in Ludlow  8)  haha

I've not experienced any issues lately, perhaps a bit of slow down but last time I checked i was fully synced

[Lance]

It could be just one MFD (?) at the exchange which had a problem, one particular set or virtual paths, or even just the one line and how it was connected.

[Lance]

MFD (?)

I've checked, and it is MDF. Kitz gives an idea of the workings inside an exchange here.

[Rik]

And I thought you just built furniture with the stuff.