2 Broadband Lines - Vastly Different Speeds.

[Kheldar]

As some of you will know i have about the worst broadand line in all of Christendom !

I've had a work VPN/ braodband line for sometime which has until recently been a fixed 512k. Recently we changed companies who provide this service and suddenly the work line now gives me around a 4mb connection !

Compared to about 1.5mb on my own home line.

Whats likely to be causing this ? The fact that the work line is 'new' installed earlier this year by BT and the home phone line is obviously much older ?

The reason for this post was spotting Alf's thread http://www.idnetters.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=4109.0

Looking at that site and typing in my Line Attenuation I get the following back on my home phone line



Estimation of your maximum rate adaptive adsl speed         
Downstream Attenuation  50 dB Approx
Line Length  3.62 km  (other sites say it;s 3.11 km)
     
dslMAX  4832 kbps      IP Profile 4000 kbps
       
adsl2+  5152 kbps       Throughput 4560 kbps


yet my router tells me :

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 1760 kbps 448 kbps
Line Attenuation 50 db 15 db
Noise Margin 15 db 24 db


And BT profile thingy says :

Test1 comprises of Best Effort Test:  -provides background information.
    IP profile for your line is - 1250 kbps
    DSL connection rate: 448 kbps(UP-STREAM)  1760 kbps(DOWN-STREAM)
    Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 1148 kbps


Does this mean if i had a new piece of string for my own phone line into the house it would improve to the same level as the other connection ?

[Rik]

The probability is that you have a wiring issue, Steve. The thing to do is identify whether it's internal or external. If the former, and you call BT out to it (through IDNet), it will cost you £160+ for the fix. If it's external, you may get switched to a different exchange pair, to give you a shorter route back to the exchange, or simply a better one. I had this happen, as a result, I get 2 - 4x the speed of my neighbours, but even that isn't fast.

[Kheldar]

Can i ask BT via Idnet to check it out ?

[Rik]

I wouldn't. If you do, the chances are they will send out an engineer and if he/she finds a fault in your wiring, you will get a bill. Better, initially, to check out your wiring yourself.

[Kheldar]

hmm dunno what to check to see if its internal or not.

just that with the 'new' line now showing around 4mb it just feels like the 'old' line need replacing !

[Rik]

Can you trace the master socket, Steve?

[Kheldar]

not sure !

i think i know where it is - but all sockets in house are old style not with the bottom half you can take off for test socket.

so sorta guessing !

[Rik]

Well, in that case you are not going to be able to make absolutely sure. The best thing you could do is buy an IDC tool from Maplin or B&Q, then look at each socket in turn until you find the master (it will have extra components inside it. If the wiring all branches off from there, gently remove the connections to the extensions (terminals 2 &5) and the ringwire, if fitted (terminal 3). Then connect the router to that socket. See if your stats improve. If they do, re-connect the wires to terminal 2/5, see what happens to the stats. The problem comes if the wiring is in star-topology and the master is just at one end of a branch. In that case, you really need to be able to isolate the wiring at the 'starring' point, and that may be something you'd prefer to have BT do?

[Glenn]

Take a look outside your home for the phone cable, whether overhead or where it comes out of the ground, then trace the cable into the building, internally, this will normally be next to the master socket.

[Rik]

Good point, Glenn. because mine comes in 'underground' I forget that most people can do a visual trace.

[Den]

The master socket is the one with a large capacitor inside. Slave points do not have this.

[Glenn]

Rik mine is underground too, and waterlogged according to the last BT eng that came around 2 or 3 years ago.

[Rik]

I know how it feels. What I meant about underground entry is that the cable is laid straight into the house, it doesn't have an entry point into the wall that's visible. Plays havoc with tracing it!

[Lance]

Mine is also underground but it comes up at the side of the house in a tall plastic cover and into the side of the house. I guess this is how they used to do it!

[Rik]

This house is 25 years old, Lance, so whether it's peculiar to us - maybe a builder installation - I don't know.

[ducky22]

Do IDNet definitely pass on the cost of an Openreach engineer?

I know other ISPs, BT Business for one, does NOT pass on this cost even if a fault is not found.

[Lance]

If the fault is on your side of the master socket, then BT charge to fix it and this charge is definately passed on to the user (they may even have to pay it direct).

If the fault is BT's side, they fix it and no charge is generated.

As far as I know, the vast majority, if not all, consumer ISPs pass on the cost. When it comes to business ISPs, I imagine there is more money involved and therefore the ISP is more likely to pay it in order to keep the customer.

[Kheldar]

thanks all.

from memory when someone had a look at the house a few weeks ago as I need the pc socket moved to another room to make way for the nursery all of the sockets in the house appeared to be masters.

ie iirc they all had capacitors in them ?

i'm hoping that the socket is going to be moved this week so i'll ask him to have another look around before deciding to contact Idnet / BT.

its just incredibly frustrating to find i can have more like a 4mb conn on one line and not the other.

[Rik]

from memory when someone had a look at the house a few weeks ago as I need the pc socket moved to another room to make way for the nursery all of the sockets in the house appeared to be masters.

ie iirc they all had capacitors in them ?

That could be part of your problem. BT might fix that for £30, "Regularisation of illicit master socket".

[Kheldar]

in what way part of the problem ?

£30 ? to do what exactly ?

[Rik]

If you have a bunch of master sockets, they are all putting a capacitor across the line which will, in turn, affect the impedance and, therefore, the attenuation.

The £30 would be a direct payment to BT (report the problem via 151, not IDNet). The price is buried somewhere on this page I am told - though I've never found it.

[Kheldar]

what would they do for the £30 ?


so are you saying Rik i should get sockets converted to being slaves and not masters to maybe improve line quality ??

[Rik]

The £30 charge, reputedly, covers the conversion of an illicit master socket to a modern NTE5. I've never known anyone who actually had this job done, but it appears in a price list somewhere. All they would do for that is to replace the current master socket with an NTE5. If you want anything more done, the charges scoot up. However, with an NTE5 in place, it becomes reasonably straightforward to fit your own extensions, replacing any wiring or sockets which are causing problems.

Should you get it done? It's difficult to say it will improve things, but there's a fair chance it would. It would also get you a test socket so that you could establish whether your internal wiring is an issue or not.

[Kheldar]

okies that makes sense and quite possibly is worth £30.

[Rik]

The big trick is to get BT to accept that they can do it for £30!

[Den]

If you have capacitors in all the sockets you do not need BT to sort it out. The first socket (where the cable comes into the house) has a capacitor and is the master. All other sockets should be slaves and the only change from a master is the capacitor. Get a pair of wire cutters and snip one or both ends of the capacitor. You will have then converted them into slaves.

[Kheldar]

so what i really need is a new nt5 thingy master socket.....

The big trick is to get BT to accept that they can do it for £30!

you saying they won't do this for £30 now Rik ?

[Gary]

If you can find the information to show them it might help Kheldar, I had to fork out £120 but that was a couple of years ago for a line check and NTE5 socket, its about £160 now, I got most refunded from Orange as it was them not getting BT out to check my line that was the issue. Basically BT will charge about £160 unless you can show them proof its a £30 job I reckon.

[Kheldar]

hmm thats a totally different ball game then if its £160.

£30 was not a problem.

[Kheldar]

spoken to bt who say i gotta go through idnet.

[Simon]

The thing I don't like about the £160 charge from BT is that it's such a gamble, and what's stopping them claiming the fault is with your equipment, when it isn't?

When I moved house a couple of years ago, I wanted to take my phone number with me, so gave BT all the info, date, etc, and sure enough, when I moved into the new place, no phone.  I argued with them for a week that the fault must be at their end, but they wouldn't have it, and kept wanting me to have an engineer out, at a possible charge of something I can't remember now (about £100 I think).  What didn't help was trying to speak to someone in somewhere like Calcutta who only had the most tenuous grasp of the English language, and was obviously just reciting scripts.  In the end, I said I would have an engineer out, but only if they agree to pay me a day's loss of earnings if it turned out to be their fault.  Later that day, my phone miraculously started working! 

[Ann]

I had similar when I moved house some years ago.  Phone wouldn't work and I called BT from a call box daily to complain.  They threatened me with a huge charge if it was my fault and said to get a new phone.  So I bought a new one and still no joy.  They eventually sent an engineer and found it was their fault.  They had turned outgoing calls off for the previous owner and hadn't turned it back on for me.  They did pay compensation.. so much per day of no connection but I was cross as I had bought a new phone that I didn't need and they wouldn't pay for that.  It's the fear of the big bill that holds things up.

[Rik]

you saying they won't do this for £30 now Rik ?

The charge does exist, under the description I gave you. Persuading someone that it does can be tricky. When you try to, don't mention broadband, as you have found they will promptly bounce you off to your ISP.

[Kheldar]

could not find that charge in the link Rik - but there are loads of sections to look through which will take me a while.


i've raised a fault with Idnet and already had an e-mail response from them about it 

[Rik]

could not find that charge in the link Rik - but there are loads of sections to look through which will take me a while.

That's always been my problem, but I know it exists and I know of people who've got BT to do the work.

i've raised a fault with Idnet and already had an e-mail response from them about it 

Keep us posted.

[Kheldar]

will do 

[Conrad1]

Just referring to something Rik mentioned earlier:  You probably all know this anyway, but disconnecting the "ringer" loop gave me a HUGE improvement to my line stats when I was with my previous ISP - and as long as you don't have a really old telephone, you won't notice the difference anyway!  Something to do with that loop acting as an arial for random noise which makes a mess of the broadband signal.

Either that, or re-wire your modem extension from the main socket with shielded cable (I have mine on order from Maplin as we speak in readiness for my line activation due on the 5th of November! WOOHOO!)

[Kheldar]

Cheers Conrad.

i'm told that the ringer wire/s are disconnected.

shielded cable re-wiring ?  sounds techy    Rik knows i dont do techy 

i've had a new extension socket installed a few days ago as we have to move the study to make way for a nursery.

the pc should move next week so then i will be able to see if anything has changed between 2 internal sockets ?

meanwhile i still have an outstanding fault report / issue logged with Idnet.


Rik : how long should i expect to wait for a response from Idnet ? I supplied them the info they requested last week.....but only on thursday iirc.....

not heard from them since but assume it takes a few days for them to get BT doing something useful

[Rik]

Rik : how long should i expect to wait for a response from Idnet ? I supplied them the info they requested last week.....but only on thursday iirc.....

not heard from them since but assume it takes a few days for them to get BT doing something useful

Did they say what they were going to do, Steve? If they get BT to do deep testing of the line, it can take a couple of days. If you haven't heard anything by Thursday, give them a ring.

[Kheldar]

they were going to contact BT.

i supplied them with some info from the bt speedtest which i ran 3 times.

[Rik]

Sounds like they are going for deep testing then, Steve.

[Kheldar]

is that related to deep pan Rik?   

[Rik]

You and food, Steve. You're having a bad effect on me, I've gone from wanting chocolate, to wanting cheese on toast to wanting pizza - all before elevenses!! 

[Kheldar]

u have elevenses !


i'm waiting for KFC which we're having tonite

[Rik]

OMG - more food! Get thee behind me... 

[Kheldar]

large bargain bucket, beans and some hot wings..........

[Rik]

Et tu, Steve?

[Kheldar]

its shakespeare time !

[Rik]

I was just caesaring the day.  8) 8)

[Kheldar]

you having salad for lunch then Rik 

[Rik]

 

No, I was thinking of a nice Red Leicester/Red onion/Mayo sandwich, in freshly baked wholemeal...

[Kheldar]

had a reply from support.

usual bt response.

nothing wrong from what they see. internal wiring / filter.

if they come out and find something not on 'their' side they will charge.

[Rik]

I'm not surprised, Steve, I do suspect your wiring myself. If you could find the first socket, and filter from there, it might help.

[Kheldar]

i'll see what andrew suggests.

i'd still like a new style nt5 or wotever fitted in the house.

[Rik]

NTE5. You may be able to get it by telling BT that you want to wire some etensions, but can't because you don't have one. I have heard of them fitting NTE5s foc in that situation, but since Openreach, things have become much less 'flexible'.

[Kheldar]

cant wire extensions cos we dont have a nte5 ?

[Rik]

Yup. The older masters were not 'consumer facing' in the way NTE5s are.

[Kheldar]

hmm okies.

i'll see what andrew from support suggest is the next step.....

[Lance]

Being very bad, could you not play about with the master, maybe loosing a cable or two and then get BT out. While the engineer is there, ply him with a bacon sarnie and coffee and ask for a NTE5 then. Hopefully he would fit it, and because the fault would be the BT side of the master socket the call out would be free of charge too!  

[Kheldar]

in your experience then Lance, BT engineers are susceptible to a bacon sarnie and coffeee bribe ?

you do live an interesting life, pray tell us all more......   

[Lance]

I've never had a BT engineer round myself, but I have seen it mentioned a few times before!

There is nothing interesting about my life, just work, study and sleep at the moment!

[Rik]

... and knowing how to charm a BT engineer (and it does work).

[Kheldar]

exactly Rik.

he's gone all quiet on us after mentioning how to charm one