Just jumped ship from O2....

[Rik]

Has your target noise margin increased, ie the figure you see immediately after a re-sync? It mght be worth testing with the DECT base unit disconnected and turned off.

[tredders]

Well, got up this morning and the red "no line" light was on the front of the router, so there was no connection at all.  I rebooted it (at around 07:30), and the line stayed up for an hour.  It's since dropped to about 1MB connection speed, so no Youtube streaming, lots of webpage timeouts etc.

I've tried 2 different routers, 2 different ADSL filters, disconnected everything else from any phone port in the house, had BT check the line, and it's still the same: decent performance for a short period of time (anything from 5 mins to an hour this morning), and then it drops to unusable speeds (even though the 1MB I'm seeing now is better than the 0.2 last night)...

Really not sure what else I can do now.  The noise levels haven't changed, nothing else is connected to the phone, BT are saying it's a problem at the ISP's end (what a surprise, BT saying it's not their fault  ), and nobody is on support from IDNet until Monday.

Biggest issue with this is that I work from home, so really need a decent connection.

[Rik]

Call support, no connection is classed as an emergency. If you had a no line light, though, it sounds to be between you and the exchange.

[tredders]

Call support, no connection is classed as an emergency. If you had a no line light, though, it sounds to be between you and the exchange.

Thanks Rik.  I did contact support, who checked the line remotely, and asked me to do a BT Speedtest.  I'd just rebooted the router, so I got 2.5MB (from a profile of 3500), which was about normal.  The support guy said that there wasn't much else he could do, as the line was up, and it wasn't classed as an emergency.

I've just come back home after a couple of hours out, and re-run the BT Speedtest.  It's now showing 337k downloads, which tallies with the 0.3 I was seeing last night.  Weird.  I know that if I reboot the router, I'll go back to max possible for my profile.  Go figure.

I'll check again with support on Monday when they're back online, but unfortunately this hasn't been as smooth as I hoped, to say the least...

[Simon]

I'm afraid you seem to be a victim of Sod's Law, Tredders.  If it's going to go wrong, it will be at the weekend. 

[tredders]

I'm afraid you seem to be a victim of Sod's Law, Tredders.  If it's going to go wrong, it will be at the weekend. 

Yeah, and always to me 

It's not the end of the world - I've been quite impressed with support so far, so I'm sure it'll get resolved sooner rather than later.  Could do without the hassle though, and I'm concerned there's a chance of getting caught in the middle of Bt saying it's an ISP problem and IDNet saying it's a line problem.   We shall see.

[Rik]

That shouldn't happen with IDNet.

[davej99]

.....  I'm concerned there's a chance of getting caught in the middle of Bt saying it's an ISP problem and IDNet saying it's a line problem. ....

Hi Tredders welcome to IDNET. Sorry to read you are having problems. By way of reassurance, there are many thread here about problems that fall in the middle between the ISP and the customer. One of the reasons I always recommend IDNET is because they work with the customer in the middle ground, to help diagnose and resolve problems. It seems like part of the service and I urge you to speak to them and follow their advice.

You probably have done this, but I have always resorted to connecting directly to the primary BT socket, with the half faceplate removed, thereby disconnecting all external cables, phones and filters. There is  a test point under the half faceplate, if you have one. Having eliminated the house loop, secondary filters, phones, sat boxes etc., and wireless by connecting with cable, you only have the router filter to swap out with a known high quality good one to show a line or router problem. You tried the 2-wire but have not mentioned the "no line problem" with it. May be the Netgear is less tolerant. But don't rule out Sod's Law and the new router.

[tredders]

Hi Tredders welcome to IDNET. Sorry to read you are having problems. By way of reassurance, there are many thread here about problems that fall in the middle between the ISP and the customer. One of the reasons I always recommend IDNET is because they work with the customer in the middle ground, to help diagnose and resolve problems. It seems like part of the service and I urge you to speak to them and follow their advice.

Thanks for the welcome    IDNet's support has impressed me so far, so I'm sure it'll get sorted tomorrow when support are back online.

You probably have done this, but I have always resorted to connecting directly to the primary BT socket, with the half faceplate removed, thereby disconnecting all external cables, phones and filters. There is  a test point under the half faceplate, if you have one. Having eliminated the house loop, secondary filters, phones, sat boxes etc., and wireless by connecting with cable, you only have the router filter to swap out with a known high quality good one to show a line or router problem. You tried the 2-wire but have not mentioned the "no line problem" with it. May be the Netgear is less tolerant. But don't rule out Sod's Law and the new router.

Yes, I tried the primary socket - in fact, the out of hours support chap I spoke to yesterday also suggested it.  The 2-wire also had the no-line issue with it, and I've tried 2 different filters, so I'm a bit stumped by it at the moment.  Last night's speedtest went down to 7k, which took me right back to my old US Robotics modem years  .  However, today has been a constant 3.5MB, which is the maximum the current profile will allow.

You can bet your bottom dollar that if there's an obscure problem to be encountered, it'll be with me  .  I'll post up my findings tomorrow evening after speaking to support.

[Rik]

 

We'll be here.

[davej99]

You can bet your bottom dollar that if there's an obscure problem to be encountered, it'll be with me  .  I'll post up my findings tomorrow evening after speaking to support.

Sounds like you are on top of the issues that are your responsibility. There have been issues with ADSL2+, 21CN, WBC, exchange congestion etc, none of which I understand, and it will depend on your exchange whether you are affected, but again tech support will be on to it if it is relevent. Tech support seem happy to help customers fix problems however caused and it is very unlikely they will walk away. These guys are not premium rate script monkeys. One bit of advice though; if IDNET think there is a physical line problem then trust them. This might mean calling in BT and they will tell you there is a risk you might be charged if it is a false alarm. Do not be too worried by this. BT are not the horrors some would have you believe and IDNET seem to have a good relationship with them. Please post the outcome because this helps others.

[tredders]

Hi again chaps,

Just a quick update... line problems continued over the weekend, and also yesterday (got up to find the red "no internet") on the router, which was cured by a router reboot.  I was out all day yesterday, so ran a BT speedtest before leaving for the office this morning, and it hit the heady heights of 170K/sec!  The weird thing continues to be the fact that a router reboot (either the Netgear or 2-wire) temporarily fixes the speed issue...

Called IDNET support when I got home today at 3PM, and they said they'd speak to a couple of people at BT who they have a good relationship with, and would contact me, which I would guess will be tomorrow now.  I'd kept screenprints of the results of all of the speedtests over the weekend, and support were glad of those for proof of the issues.

Hopefully some news tomorrow....

Tredders

[Rik]

 

They'll do their best for you, Tredders, rest assured of that.

[tredders]

Hi again

A quick update... didn't hear anything back from IDNet support, so called them, and was told that the issue was with BT, and that I'd be given an update later that day.  Another 24 hours passed and I'd heard nothing so called them again, and have now been told that the capacity at my exchange is being upgraded, and will take up to 10 days, hence the speed issues.

Funnily enough, neither of my 2 next door neighbours (both with different ISPs, both of whom connect to the same exchange) are suffering any performance issues.  I'm not sure if I'm just unlucky here, or being fed a line!

I'm off to the US with business for a week next week, so will check out the status when I get home.

Apologies if this sounds like a whine, but it's been a week since I switched, and I've had no internet access since then - my replies have been either via my USB dongle (GPRS, yawn) or iPhone.  As I work from home, I've had to drive to the office every day in order to do my job.  The weekend support chap last weekend clearly checked nothing, since he just told me that the speed issues were caused by the new connection trying to sync at the best speed, and I've had to chase normal support twice to get any sort of update during the week.  Factor in that both my neighbours have perfectly good internet access, and you can probably appreciate my frustration at the moment.

Hopefully things will get sorted soon (I should set that as my forum signature!), but at the moment I'm not holding my breath...

Tredders

[Rik]

It's bad that no-one got back to you, Tredders, but what you've been told is not that strange. Different lines connect to different DSLAMs or MSANs, and also use different VPs, so one person can suffer while others don't.

[miriam_idnet]

Hi Tredders,

I'm sorry you feel your experience to date has been less than exceptional. Unfortunately our initial response was delayed as having raised the issue to BT we were awaiting their report which took 24hrs to come back. I do note however that your email specified a contact mobile number for updates but an email update was sent to you on 11/11/09 17.05 instead which i do apologise for, this email confirmed the case was in hand and we would be in touch as soon as we received BT's response.  On 12/11/09 having received the report back from our contacts in BT my colleague James called you on your mobile to inform you that the VP you are connecting to is heavily congested and is in the process of being regraded, this can take 10 days to complete i'm afraid.

Again, I am sorry you feel you were not kept updated in a timely manner, in your case BT did take longer than usual to report back to us but we did try to assure you your case was in hand.

Do let us know if there has been no change after the VP regrade, if this is the case we can push for a tie pair modification to move you to a different VP entirely.

Kind regards,

Miriam
--
Miriam Ball
Technical and Customer Services Manager
IDNet

[Rik]

Thanks, Miriam.

[cavillas]

Hi Miriam, Nice to hear you on here.  Hope you're keeping well.

[davej99]

Great post Miriam. I would be very pleased had you done that work on my account. 

[tredders]

Hi Miriam

Thanks for posting on here.  Apologies for the whine yesterday - a combination of no internet connection for a week, and having to drive an hour into the office to do stuff I normally do from home kind of caught up with me, and I'm afraid it came out on here!

Appreciate that there are many factors involved with resolving the problem, and BT taking their time coming back to you didn't help matters.  It sounds as though it should all be sorted by the time I get back from US, so let's wait until the end of next week.

Cheers

Tredders

[Rik]

Nice post, Tredders. Have a good trip. 

[tredders]

Hi again,

I thought I'd post an update, for anyone still interested 

Got back from my week-long business trip, and my connection is the same - just ran a speedtest and got 8k/sec.  Called IDNet support and they checked their records and the VP upgrade should have happened by now.  They need to request the latest status from BT, to check if it has happened, and we'll take it from there.

I was hoping that all of this would have been resolved whilst I was away, but unfortunately it looks as though I'll be driving into the office every day this week rather than working from home.  All a bit frustrating, as this will be my 3rd week without any usable internet connection.

Mark.

[Rik]

If it's any consolation, mine is running between 580k and 3.6M.

[Sebby]

You need to go LLU.

[tredders]

If it's any consolation, mine is running between 580k and 3.6M.

I dream of 580k right at the moment, Rik