Hi all, I have been having a real bad time with the internet recently. I moved in April and I have been trouble shooting with the ISP ( IDNet ) ever since. The property is a year old so internal wiring is good plus when the young chap from BT came over to activate the line, no service had ever been put on the line before we moved in, I got him to test every socket and the master socket to the exchange. He came back with it being perfect. I was told I had about 800m of cable to the exchange. Previously I had lived the same distance from the same exchange, I literally moved 400m across the road. With IDNet I got 16mg down, 1mg up and a ping of 25ms. After initial activation the line was fine but I had an ADSL 2 package so it was upgraded after a week. BT carried out the work and broke something, they killed my line and after another week they had 'fixed' there mistake. I was getting a good 12mg down, 1mg up and ping of 25ms. Alas I kept dropping sync. I was having to resync every day or get the other half to reboot the router when I was not in. Contacted support, put the router on the master socket and we both monitored it for 24 hours. It went down but all they could see from their end was me manually dis and reconnecting not the drops. My description of the drop out is that the DSL light on my router went red. If I went into the console it said it was still synced but I could not access the internet. I tried three routers I have, DGN2000, DGN3500 and DG834G v5. Admittedly all Netgear but two of the routers worked fine at the previous property. I got the same drop outs on all of them. IDNet have decreased my sync speed to increase stability, still dropping out. IDNet decreased my speed further and put interleaving on the line. The line is now stable but I not get 4mg down, 0.5 up and pings of 50ms. I have run a simple VBscript to ping my internal IP, my static IP, my primary IP and a google server IP. I get a lot of no replies from the DNS and google. I am basically rather annoyed at the situation. I am paying for an up to 20mg package that I was getting close to at the previous property but this time around it is naff. Can I get a new line to see if the one I have has an issue, would this connect me differently at the exchange to fix any issue with where I am connected there. ( I have no knowledge of how been connected at the exchange works ) Any help in trying to improve this situation would be greatly appreciated. Regards Ed
I'm going through the very same thing as you with Virgin , been 4 weeks of arguing with them. get your ISP to do a trace route test to see if there's a problem on the line, also ring a ping test with "pingtest.net" and see how much packet lose you're getting. It would also be worth swapping the rj45 cable, modem and the filters , just in case you've got a dodgy lead.
Can you report back with the noise margin and line attenuation your router is reporting ? May be somewhere in the router config. IDnet (never heard of them) have just lowered the sync on your line to stabilise it. Its not a fix as such just way to get round a poor line. Sounds like BT have reprovisined a crap line for you. I imagine the new lines laid for the new house(s) were what you were intially given but then when they fixed whatever they broke you got an old/poor line. Also dont forget when you get a new broadband connection there is a 11 day training period on the line. This is where the exchange continually tests your line to sync at the optimum speed. Often you find in this period your line will drop then resync. It sounds a bit like what is happening. Ideally to speed up this process you can turn your router off and on upto 3 times a day (no more !). It forces the exchange to resync your line quicker. DO NOT turn your router off/on more than about 3 times because if you do the exchange thinks there is a fault on your line and runs tests and then tries to resync again. Basically I take it your line is underground. It just goes to the exchange and in there will be a line card that is then carried off to your ISP's equipment which is also in the exchange. BT are responsible for the bit from the line card to your house and your ISP is responsible for the rest. However its upto IDnet to get BT to do faulting on the last "mile". One thing you could check is if your house has the bell wire. Normally there are two wires in your phone cable running from the master socket. These are wires 2 and 5. Often (but usually in older houses) wire 3 is the bell wire. This is a legacy connection for when telephones were the old dial type with a bell ring. If you disconnect wire 3 from all your sockets including master socket (and any others leaving just 2 and 5 connected) it decreases the noise on your internal wiring and often you will find your sync increases by upto 1.5mb. check this website for further info http://www.dslzoneuk.net/socket.php?type=html
Hi Thank you for the replies, I will pop up further details, router specific when I get in tonight. I have replaced all, ethernet, filters, rj11 cabling and I get no change. All my routers have built in modems and I have tried three.. This has been an ongoing issue since mid April so the line is not in the initial stages of syncing though I may well have resynced a few times due to having to reboot so darn often. Some Quotes from my emails with support... ''We can see some disconnects on the circuit, BT have changed the margins on the line to bring the speed down slightly and stabilise the connection for you. Please monitor the connection over the next few days.'' ''I can confirm your regrade order has been submitted and will complete 22/04/10, there may be up to 2 hrs downtime on this day while the engineer completes his work.'' It was after the 22nd that I started getting issues. BT admitted there was an unrelated fault that started to occur at the exact same moment they upgraded me..................... I deleted the email that IDNet got from BT, I think it just stated a common fault, ie were not telling you what we broke. I will pop open the master socket later and have look for this wire you suggested investigating. Regards Ed
Line atten is what you would expect if you are 800m from exchange but the SNR (Noise margin) is a little low would have expected it to be slightly higher. I can see that IDnet have lowered this to make your line more stable but even so you are synced at 17mb. Can't see any issues with those line specs for performance. I thought you said you were getting 4mb down and .5mb up ??? The router shows you have 17mb down and 888k up ??
What a router shows and what you acutally get are 2 completely seperate things especailly with ADSL my friends router used to say 3mb down and 0.3 up but what he actaully got was around 1mb down and 0.2 up. i never trust waht the router reports for speed or the stupid bt speed test which always lies on the download. We had issues with our work line and were getting less than 1mb proved by speedtest.net and backed up by the fact that remote desktop barely worked, spotify buffered every 10 sec and youtube just sat buffering. however the bt speedtest reported back that we were receiving 10mb down and 1mb up
I know sync speed will always be higher than the actual speed you receive. My actual speed does seem to be all over the shop, when I posted this is got 4m / 0.5m but last night I got 11m / 0.7m . ISP states that it does not shape traffic etc, any way to actually test this. So how do I figure out where in my route to the interweb that I am having an issue? It would be great to tell them I know that there is an issue at ........... get BT to fix. Done a bit more reading, I will always get time outs every now and then with adsl it will always go down but usually it is so fast to come back up that you would just notice a page taking a bit longer to load etc. Anyone tried this tool http://www.microsoft.com/windows/using/tools/igd/default.mspx IDNet also lease my line, as a posed to getting one straight from BT. If I were to cancel both my phone line and broadband package would I get a new line and possibly a stable connection if I joined another ISP and line provider ? Sorry I have many many questions ED
The speed on the router is the sync speed on your line, this will be accurate but the actual bandwidth is always slightly less. If you DSL is continually dropping you have a fault on your line. Just as an example my DSL has been up for 9 weeks now and that is only because 9 weeks ago I changed some settings on my router and rebooted it. If your DSL is dropping as much as you say there is a fault on your line, plain and simple. Coupled with the fact its syncing between 1mb to 17mb suggests to me the line card in the exchange is faulty. Get it reported to IDnet one more time, if they dont fix it tell them tough and go somewhere else. You will probably find the fault "just goes away" Reason I know all this is because I work for a Business ISP provider.
9 weeks is pretty damn good as far as keeping a connection up goes imo - 2 weeks is what I get on average between WAN dropouts.
Sounds like a bit of an average line. I do believe you though as in my experience its a bit of a lottery over the condition of the line you get. Never mind what the news says if you live within a mile of the exchange you have a better chance of a decent line. After a mile it drops considerably and some of the lines I have seen you are lucky to get 512k and its not rural either. It can also depend on the router too. I had terrible trouble with linksys in the past when I lived in Thirsk, North Yorkshire it would drop all the time and I could see the exchange from my lounge window it was literally 50 yards across the road. Two different linksys routers too. Changed it to a cheaper unknown brand I got from aria.co.uk and it was stable for weeks plus my sync went up by 2mb.
Hi Cheers for the suggestions. Is there any way I can prove where the fault is, ie prove it is the line card? Do you also know what they do when they upgrade you from adsl to adsl 2+ etc, do they change the line card or other kit at the exchange. I was on adsl for a week till i get upgraded to adsl 2+ but for that week I was 100% stable. When BT did there thing it was broke so what would they have physically changed at the exchange ? Regards Ed
Hi k4p84, There isn't really a way that you can prove that it's the line card causing the issues. Fault resolution such as this is really up to IDNet and BT to provide so keep pushing them! As for traffic shaping, if your ISP say that they don't do it then that's probably the case. Regardless, traffic shaping would not impact your sync speed, only your throughput with particular applications. Your sync speed is simply the speed that your router has managed to negotiate with the equipment at the exchange based on line capabilities. The change to ADSL 2+ would probably have involved your line being hooked up to IDNet's equipment in your local exchange. With ADSL your line would enter the exchange and connect up to BT's voice and data equipment. The transition to ADSL 2+ involves connecting between BT's equipment which terminates your line in the exchange and IDNet's equipment. There could be an issue with the actual line, BT's termination equipment, IDNet's equipment or the connections between them. Just provide IDNet with as much information as you can and they should be able to resolve this.
Hi k4p84, the speeds you are reporting, are these from speed tests or are they sync speeds? If they are speed tests, then the drops in speed are probably due to the bandwidth available from your ISP, especially in the evenings. To test these, try doing speed tests after midnight or before 08:00 in the morning. If you always get decent speeds at these times then it's just a case of your ISP not being able to provide full speed at all times.
I would also post your problems in the forum here: thinkbroadband.com The people there pretty much know everything there is to know about ADSL.
Cheers for the responses, I am using speedtest.net. I do expect dips during peek times but 8meg difference is a lot. I pop a post up on thinkbroadband and we shall see where we go from there. Cheers Ed
