Help! Why has my connection gone from hero to zero?

[Rik]

Which, for me, is plain crazy as there's no way I would ever see 7150 on my line...

[emvisi]

I'm hoping that BT haven't simply reclassified my line so they can claim it's operating within spec. After the past few weeks' nonsense, I wouldn't put it past them right now.

At least having established that my line to the exchange is in good nick I have a number of LLU options if BT can't get their equipment to work. It would be a shame to leave IDNet, who I believe are doing what they can for me, but ultimately they can't deliver if BT don't do their bit.

[Rik]

It's a problem hitting all the smaller ISPs at the moment.

[emvisi]

Yes, as was mentioned some way upthread, I believe. I'm surprised the consumer champions haven't got their teeth into this issue.

[Rik]

Numbers, I guess. It tends to be only the bigger ISPs who get on the radar, and since the contracts between BT and ISPs are commercial, there's little to be hyped in a consumer show.

[emvisi]

Was thinking more Consumers Association (Which?) and Guardian than Watchdog. Clearly it's not in the interest of consumer choice for independent ISPs to be driven out of business because BT aren't doing their bit to ensure a level playing field in terms of infrastructure.

[Rik]

None of them seem to understand the broadband market, though, and look at the ISPs rather than the underlying BT service. Granted that an ISP can make things worse because of over-subscription, poor CS etc, they are looking in the wrong place when they should be looking at the wholesale service that is behind the majority of connections.

[emvisi]

[Fanfare]

Line went off for ~30 mins this afternoon. Completely off. No phone, no DSL, nada.

Came back to life an hour ago and the modem immediately synced at 7247 down / 1051 up
Noise margin: 6dB down / 6dB up
Line attenuation: 42dB down / 12.5 dB up

That's more like it

Speed test shows:



but IP profile is currently 1250 kbps, so hopefully this will creep up if the line remains stable. Ping looks good, though!

[Rik]

Hopefully, it will come up within 12-24 hours. 

[emvisi]

indeed...

The trouble with an intermittent fault is that you can't tell immediately if it's *really* gone away, but I'm an optimist 

[Rik]

From the sound of it, they've done something like a lift'n'shift, so there's a good chance the fault has been fixed.

[emvisi]

 

[Rik]

Indeed.

[emvisi]

[Rik]

Well within 12 hours.

[emvisi]

Exactly 5 hours since being reconnected. Feared the worst for a minute or two, as the modem suddenly lost sync...

[Rik]

The old sweaty palm moment.

[emvisi]

It'll probably take me a while to get past that 

[Rik]

I know the feeling well.

[emvisi]

[Rik]

Can you get a BT test done?

[emvisi]

I did a BT test less than 3 hours ago, which showed my profile had been dropped to 5000; the modem re-synced shortly afterwards down to 1600 so I ran the speedtest; looks like the profile might have dropped further. I waited a bit and rebooted the router and it synced at 5205, which is where it is now.

Downstream noise margin seems to have been increased to 12dB and is currently fluctuating between 9 and 11 at the moment. I'm running routerstats to see if I can build up a better idea.

After the promising start yesterday, the noise margin dropped from 6dB to hover around 0 for most of the evening, although I didn't lose sync. Woke up this morning to find the router had resynced overnight to just over 6000, then around half 9 this morning it resynced again to around 1600, as described above.

Evidently there is still a noise problem somewhere. Your RF theory is still valid.

[Rik]

 

I really don't know what else to suggest. Unless you can eliminate the noise, you're not going to get the speed back. One possibility would be to turn the router off overnight, I suppose. Have a word with support on Monday, they'll have a clearer idea of what has gone on.

[emvisi]

Yup. Looking forward to another week on the phone...

Router resynced itself this afternoon at >7Mb/s, 6dB noise margin   

BT Speedtest just now:

Download speedachieved during the test was - 1157 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 400-2000 Kbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :7291 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 1036 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 1250 Kbps

[Rik]

Low sync event triggering a profile drop, that's all it can be. The problem will be to identify the cause of what was almost certainly a noise burst. The thing that worries me is BT turning round and condemning your line for ADSL.