Kicked off again

[old Bill]

Every night this week between 8-10.00 I have been kicked off net and my routers  sync has dropped like a stone. Is this a result of Idnets capacity problem or a line problem again. I now feel I have two choices go to a fixed rate line or leave Idnet. My sync never has a chance to stay stable over three days at the moment. This has only been happening over the last week or so.

[CreamyGoodness]

I doubt it's related to the centrals capacity thingy.  Despite all the slow downs and ping issues over the last couple of months I've never had the connection drop once.

Creamy.

[rireed3]

I had something like this recently.

This kind of disruption can only be between you and BT.  IDNet machinery is far away from your ADSL connection.

Simon and Miriam were great about this.

What I did was re-grade to 2M fixed for a while.  What that does is give you immense noise margin.  For me, on 22 db attenuation, at 2M my noise margin was over 30 and absolutely bullet-proof.

You might get the same effect by tweaking the SNR up instead of regrading.

The reason I know how solid 2M is, I used the opportunity to use the DMT SNR monitor with my 585v6 to watch the noise margin 24/7.  I can give numeric details which I figured out from the DMT debug mode.

I saw a number of occasions of noise hits between 8 db and 24 db, sometimes for hours.  I was even able to hear one on the phone when alerted.  I understand you can even get DMT to send Windows messages over the net on conditions like this.

These big bursts never even gave me one CRC error, but the monitor graph was dramatic.  I sent screenshots to CS.  Miriam made BT aware, and although they said there was no fault, the problem entirely went away, now for two weeks, in a couple of hours.

I'm still having debates with various people about whether this could have been in my exchange.

One thing to look for:  Is the attenuation affected?  If not, the physical connection is probably not the problem.  That doesn't let BT off the hook as far as I'm concerned -- who knows about their equipment?

Best of Luck,
Richard

I've re-graded back now.

******* EDIT
I shouldn't leave out all the noise-elimination stuff I did on my end -- mains, cables, routers, filters, premise wiring.  You have to do your best, but it still might be outside your house, or in the exchange.

[old Bill]

I am just very fed up. The line is fine during the day but between 8-10 I just lose sync .I spoke to C/S who told me they could not find.any fault on the line

[rireed3]

know the feeling 

Still, if the attenuation number is steady while this is happening, I think you will at least be able to get a solid connection at 2M even with big noise which is disrupting 8M.  If the attenuation goes all over the place, even with the router into the test socket, that's definitely a line fault.  If you find that's the case I think CS will work hard trying to get BT involved.

If the attenuation is steady, you're getting big noise hits.  If you're like me, you want to nail down when it's happening and associate it with a cause.  That's why I did the monitoring.

[rireed3]

forgot to ask, although you said the sync drops lower --

Do you  have a higher noise margin during the day?

I realise if you have a longer line, you may keep your margin low to get the best speed.

I'm trying to get an idea of:  If you start with a generous margin during the day, how much margin do you lose at night?

If you already have a margin below, say 8, during the day, when you re-sync at night, how much lower connection rate and what new noise margin do you wind up with?

Richard

[Rik]

Echoing what everyone else has said, Bill, a loss of sync is an issue between your equipment and BT's and would be the same with any ISP. The times you cite are fairly typical for anyone with a poor line, noise increases through RF propagation in the MW range and it's quite common for additional noise to be caused by cross-talk in the cables.

The solution of a fixed rate connection might help, or you could sacrifice some speed by asking for your target noise margin to be raised, that should give you stability.

[Inactive]

I now feel I have two choices go to a fixed rate line or leave Idnet.

Bill, why say that one of your options is to leave IDNet?  IDNet have bent over backwards to help you, moving to another ISP will have no affect on your connection.

I am no expert on connections but it does appear that you are sacrificing stability against possible speed on your poor line, why not give a " fixed rate " line a whirl, I am sure IDNet will move you back if it doesn't improve your stability.

Best of luck anyway.

PS ...I will not annoy you by telling you that my line has been up for over 6 days ..

[Rik]

You can always annoy me by telling me what speeds you get.

[Inactive]

You can always annoy me by telling me what speeds you get.

Now would I be that cruel Rik?



YES....



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6179   Down

373     Up......

[Rik]

Sadist. 2400 down 373 up. Well, at least my upstream is as good as yours.

[old Bill]

The line Attenuation holds steady at 49db all the day. D/S SNR is 6-6.5 during the day but drops to about 3.-4 in the evening. U/S holds steady around 7db all day. The only reason I was thinking of leaving Idnet was I was chating to a ISP on behalf of my parents a couple of days ago. Whilst I was talking to him I said about my line problems and he seemed to thing it was to do with the load balancing and and as the pipe was reaching max been cut off. And then resyncing. As I said this was just from talking to another ISP who seemed to know what he was talking about.

[rireed3]

The other ISP didn't understand that you were talking about connection speed rather than throughput speed -- or maybe that person didn't know the difference.  Confusingly, they can both drop at night, connection because of increased interference from cross-talk and radio interference, throughput because of increased traffic on BT and on the ISP pipes.

As far as your line is concerned, it looks like you are getting more noise than you were getting before at night.  Since you're already using 6-6.5 noise margin the extra noise is pushing you into a re-sync.

If you can tweak your router with DMT, you should sacrifice some of the daytime connection speed by pushing your noise margin up.  This has two benefits:  1) Your re-syncs at night will reduce or stop, 2) you'll be in a position to see the nature of the extra noise.

It's difficult to keep manually looking at your noise margin.  That's why I used DMT to chart it.

It's worthwhile seeing if these are isolated 'hits' or maybe more crosstalk from increasing ADSL usage in your loop's cable binder.

Watching those charts has been a revelation to me.  I always lose close to 1 db at night, but the cable is underground.  The DMT monitor chart clearly shows small steps in the average margin.  I'll lose a quarter-db (average--not all tones are affected equally) then gain it back again hours later at night.  At least some of these are from crosstalk.  One feature is a gain always around 03:20.  Sometimes there are multiple gains and losses, lasting each for an hour or more.

It helps to know whether this is fixable noise -- you would see this on the chart as intermittent.  If it is not, I'm certain, you can get stability with a modest loss of connection speed.

Richard

[Rik]

The other ISP didn't understand that you were talking about connection speed rather than throughput speed -- or maybe that person didn't know the difference.  Confusingly, they can both drop at night, connection because of increased interference from cross-talk and radio interference, throughput because of increased traffic on BT and on the ISP pipes.

Nice post, Richard, explaining Bill's options very clearly.

Bill: The other ISP you were talking to was either ignorant or lying - either way, not a good recommendation. It wouldn't matter if IDNet were so short of capacity that we were all limited to a working throughput of 64k, any capacity issue has no way of causing a re-sync, that's down to your line and the equipment at each end of it, and any ISP you go to will have the same issues as you are currently experiencing - they may just not be as willing to try and help you.

In all honesty, I believe you would be best served by sacrificing a little speed in return for stability, as Richard suggests. I chose to do that, it cost me about 400k, but I rarely see the connection drop.

[old Bill]

Lets just say that the ISP started with a A and finished with a s and there was a q in there as well. The biggest problem I have at the moment is just trying to keep sync rate steady so my profile goes back up. Not keen on losing any more speed. I lost some with the Interleaving turned on. I am downloading some big files and they are taking long time to download as it is.

[Rik]

Bill

In all honesty, it would appear from every post you have ever made, that you can't have both speed and stability with your line - ultimately, that's the way Max is designed, it pushes your line as hard as it can. By definition, that means it has a chance of falling over at intervals as ambient noise increases, typically of an evening. Unless you can move to an LLU provider or cable, then whichever ISP you use will produce the same problems. It might just be worth trying a Netgear DG834 if you can borrow one, I have found that, on my poor line, they seem to hold it better than other brands - but since Max, no-one can give you a definitive recommendation as different routers work differently on different lines. IOW, all bets are off, we have to find our own 'best fit' solution.

[Inactive]

Lets just say that the ISP started with a A and finished with a s and there was a q in there as well. The biggest problem I have at the moment is just trying to keep sync rate steady so my profile goes back up. Not keen on losing any more speed. I lost some with the Interleaving turned on. I am downloading some big files and they are taking long time to download as it is.

Bill,

As others have said many times on here, you have a very poor BT line, your only realistic solution to your line stability is to sacrifice some speed it seems, you cannot have both.

A workaround may be to get your line stable and then download large files overnight, that is how I see things.

There really isn't any point in talking to any ISP about it, because putting it bluntly, none of them can improve your BT line.

Unless you can get cable, or your exchange is LLU'd, you are stuck with what BT gives you...sorry that really is the long and short of it.

Personally I would prefer a lower speed ... and stable line, but that is your call.

All the best.

[AvengerUK]

Bill, ive had similar problems to you due to my long line. Sometimes i would get awfull profiles for up to a week! - this week i eventually gave in, and went to fixed 1meg - and alls been well since!

[old Bill]

Poor C/S they must be sick to death of hearing my voice. It looks like it could be noise spikes in the evening. It has be refered back to BT.

[Inactive]

It has be refered back to BT.

Who will just do nothing I guess Bill, apart from possibly charge you for the visit, sorry but it looks like a hopeless case to me mate.

A useless BT line, is a useless BT line, I reckon that you are soon going to just have to come to terms with it.

[Rik]

I agree with you, Inactive, although hopefully Bill won't get a bill.

I know I'm never going to do better than my 2500 profile here, unless BT re-cable. I have opted for a slightly higher target noise margin to get stability, and accepted the 1-step drop in my profile which results from that. Of course, it would be nice to see BT use a rather more refined step than 500k.

[old Bill]

I wish I had cable then I might get a decent broadband connection. Oh and I could allso watch a blank tv screen.

[Inactive]

Bill won't get a bill.

Warped humour...I creased up at that sorry, i'm still laughing.   

[Inactive]

Oh and I could allso watch a blank tv screen.

Nice one Bill, Virgin on the ridiculous..innit. 

[Rik]

Oh and I could allso watch a blank tv screen.

It's often an improvement on the broadcasts, Bill.

[Rik]

Warped humour...I creased up at that sorry, i'm still laughing.   

It's OK, I was trying to work out how to phrase it more eloquently or more humorously, and ended up where I did.

[old Bill]

When it comes to costs you have to admit that the skys the limit.

[Inactive]

It's often an improvement on the broadcasts, Bill.

Even more so now that Mr. Murdoch has had his wicked way with Mr. Branson...well stuffed.

Fancy not being able to get Sky News, what a blessing.. 

[Inactive]

When it comes to costs you have to admit that the skys the limit.

In the short term maybe Bill, once Sky have them all stitched in, it will all change just like it did with Sky TV...

Mr. Murdoch isn't about giving anything for nothing.

[old Bill]

Just had a chat with C/S BT have done a line card/card line ? reset at the exchange. It should help settle thing down but it might take all weekend . Never mind they have tried something.

[Rik]

They have been working on the DSLAMs too, Bill, see my post about dropped connections this morning, so there may be a combination of factors hitting you. Hopefully things will start to pick up again (at least, this time, BT have looked at the exchange end!).