Just upgraded to ADSL2 but can't connect

[silverblade]

832 again.

[quandam]

They do, Q, but it's the smaller ISPs where the effects tend to be more visible, as they have, historically, differentiated themselves from the big players by providing enhanced standards of reliability and customer service. BT is impacting that aspect of their business horrendously.

Newnet have overtaken IDNet in the DSL Zone ratings? Never thought this would happen

[Tacitus]

Newnet have overtaken IDNet in the DSL Zone ratings? Never thought this would happen

I think the differences are pretty marginal.  iDNet are currently being hit by the changeover to WBC which hopefully will be resolved in due course.  Problem is that although in the short term people leave, it's in the longer term that the damage is done to iDNets reputation. 

Word of mouth is the best sort of advertising you can have whilst your reputation is good, but it can be a very destructive force once that reputation starts to slide. 

[quandam]

Tacitus

Maybe pretty marginal, bur IDNet have, for the last three years to my knowledge been in the top five above NewNet by a couple of slots at least.
NewNet are a very similar business model to IDNet and have over the past year hauled themselves higher in the ratings.

As far as I know NewNet introduced WBC several months ago and despite its introduction have managed to overcome IDNets supremacy in the league table.

I just point this out for information only.

[silverblade]

Modem seems to have lost sync completely now...

What time do BTs engineers work until?

</hopeful>

[coreservers]

looks like you've got same issues I had. poor BT engineers. I sent direct emails to ian.livingstone@bt.com and dan.moss@openreach.com . and pull no punches when and if you do it. still got instablility problems, but at least I'm on.

[silverblade]

Well, looks like situation is unchanged. The modem basically gave up trying to sync until I rebooted it, at which point it went straight back to syncing at the previous speed.

Not heard anything back from idnet, left a message asking if they have heard back from BT but I'm guessing the answer will be no...

[Rik]

They'll get back to you when they can tell you something.

[silverblade]

Well, doesn't seem like BT are in much of a hurry to fix this. No news. Still no ADSL2+. Not pleased with this 'upgrade' so far.

[Rik]

We're beginning to see a pattern of people having to have their circuits re-built at the exchange, which suggests BT are using untrained staff to do the work and not testing thoroughly. 

[Sarah]

We're beginning to see a pattern of people having to have their circuits re-built at the exchange, which suggests BT are using untrained staff to do the work and not testing thoroughly. 

Hi Rik, Ive been following these threads on ADSL2+ issues with interest as my experience has been very similar to several posters here since I moved from ADSL Max a month ago. Widely fluctuating speeds or throughput as measured by the BT speedtester or the Thinkbroadband tester - from less than 1Mbps to over 10Mbps (within a very short time scale, if I run consecutive tests out of curiosity) - but with a consistent IP profile of 13000 kbps (since it dropped from 14000 after the first few days).  The average throughput seems to have been between 3 and 4Mbps (simply looking at the TBB graph).

I have been puzzled to know what to make of this as I suspected exchange congestion issues. I had thought this with my IPStream (Max) connection, which looked very similar (a consistent high profile, but low and variable speeds), only for the six months since December '08. My exchange flagged up on the Plusnet checker as due for a fix (long overdue). I now understand (from TBB forums) that the Plusnet checker only relates to IPStream, and that IPStream and WBC capacity at the exchange, are quite distinct from each other. So I would have thought if a connection is moved from ADSL Max to ADSL2+ at the exchange, that there would be no continuity in issues which reflect exchange congestion.   Yet the WBC connection (though a higher profile) has looked remarkably similar to the ADSL max one, both in its average throughput and wide variability.

IDNet knows about my connection, and it has been on their list for BT to investigate, do you know if BT is  methodically working through this list, re-testing these lines, with an option to 'rebuild the circuit at the exchange'?  I realise WBC is a whole different system to IPStream connections, and no one has been clear about the cause of some people's ADSL2+ problems (whereas others are sailing along with no issues), but your post intrigues me.

[Rik]

Hi Sarah and welcome to the forum.

The picture that is emerging gradually seems to imply that BT have a lack of well-trained WBC engineers, so that some circuits are not being built at the exchange correctly, and we see these poor throughput figures as a result. It tends only to affect people with high sync speeds (my WBC connection has been fine, but I'm down at the slow end with a 3-3.5M profile). It doesn't appear to be IDNet to blame as one member has migrated to another ISP and they haven't been able to wring a fix out of BT either, despite prolonged pressure.

To put it in perspective, last time I checked, only about 20 people of the 500 migrations at that time were affected, but that's no comfort if you're one of the 20, of course.

Personally, I think BT should be held accountable, but it seems like they've managed to make that impossible and Ofcom are of no use. I suspect that we, as users, are going to have to bombard our MPs to make this a political issue. Pressure will then come to bear on BT.

BT are, supposedly working through all the poor connections to resolve the issues, and I know that IDNet are keeping the pressure on, but there seems, so far, an inability to actually fix anything. I do wonder whether part of the problem is that BT have faild to provide adequate backhaul for the WBC orders they've accepted, but there's no way to check that.

The only consolation I can offer is that, when Max launched, the birthing pains were actually worse, so I am hopeful that, within a few months, WBC will be a good and reliable service which we can recommend with confidence.

[Ray]

  Sarah and

[silverblade]

BT engineer called from the exchange, to let me know that I should be able to connect now. At work right now, will test when I get home... At the moment though I can't get a ping response from my modem so I guess it needs rebooting...

[Rik]

 

Is there no-one who could power-cycle the router for you?

[Sarah]

Thanks for replies, yourself and Ray

[Simon]

  Sarah! 

[silverblade]

Nah. Nobody around to restart stuff. Ironically if I could connect I could reboot it remotely. Guess a dialup modem might come in useful for that if I had one...

Will see how it goes later on.

[coreservers]

it may be the case that they have got a sync on the line, but in my case I still could not see the internet (still cant every two days or so, and have to force a re sync.). they'd set up the circuit in such a way, that every time the router was rebooted, it sent a close command to the exchange and shut the circuit down.

[Rik]

Silver's in sync but, atm, IDNet can't see him. Hopefully, a re-boot will cure that, but until that's been tried, they can't do anything else.

[coreservers]

I do hope that works, but thats exactly what happened to me. I'm really not trying to be the bearer of bad tidings and all that 

[Simon]

Reality bites? 

[silverblade]

Well, just got home to find the modem's DSL light blinking repeatedly (indicating no sync.)

Turned it off and on again.
Light blinking continued.

About a minute later the light stayed on, so I went to the modem's config page and saw...

DSL Status:  Connected
DSL Speed:  855/10890kbps

...and here I am 

Not as good a speed as I had hoped for, but it's gotta be a better sync speed than 8 meg. Off to get Java working so I can run some speed tests (or alternatively, locate a large file...)

[Rik]

Phew. 

[Simon]

Hopefully it will improve as it 'warms up'.