BT Infinity - poor sync speed

A friend and I finally persuaded one of his neighbours to upgrade her
broadband. She was still paying for a Fixed Rate 2 Mb/s service which
was installed years ago, even though her exchange has been both 21CN'd
and FTTC'd.

So she went for BT Infinity, and it was installed a week ago. The
installer apparently said it might take a week for the speed to
stabilise, which surprised me.

Anyway, my friend popped in to her place over the Bank Holiday weekend,
and was disappointed to see speed tests returning about 7 Mb/s.
Checking the router stats, her sync speed is 8128 kb/s. OK for ADSL
Max, not very good for ADSL 2+, very poor for FTTC.

Something doesn't sound right. I'm wondering if the installer has
forgotten to do the break-out to fibre in the green cabinet, or some
equally daft mistake. Is there anything that could be misconfigured on
either the VDSL modem or the router ? Or should she just report it as
a fault ?

--
Andrew

On 31/08/10 12:55, Peter wrote:

> Felt sure I had read that if the line failed to reach 15 Mbps then it would
> be classed as a failure and the customer not allowed to have service using
> FTTC. I was hoping that rule could be relaxed, so as to allow for people
> in rural areas to be able to see significant improvement (4 to 8 Mbps not
> 0.25 to 1 Mbps) without being 'barred' from having FTTC as consequence of
> not being able to meet the '15 Mbps' 'minimum'.

Ooo, a very good point - which I'd not thought about before. I
currently get 5 Mb/s on ADSL2+, but I'm about 800 metres from the
existing green cab. I suppose they'll only install new cabinets where
the demand is ?

> However, back to your neighbour - given there has now been sufficient time
> for the line to be 'stable' I think she should query the speed, rather than
> consider it a fault and make something of a big fuss about it (she probably
> wouldn't, but it is still early days and if the 15 Mbps rule actually exists
> then don't want to have them come and say "sorry, we'll need to downgrade you
> back to ADSL 2+ as this line/speed isn't good enough". I'd take it gently.

Good point. I reckon she's about 360 metres from the green cab, the BT
Infinity speed checker indicates she should get 21 Mb/s.

--
Andrew

>
> Anyway, my friend popped in to her place over the Bank Holiday weekend,
> and was disappointed to see speed tests returning about 7 Mb/s.
> Checking the router stats, her sync speed is 8128 kb/s. OK for ADSL
> Max, not very good for ADSL 2+, very poor for FTTC.
>
> Something doesn't sound right. I'm wondering if the installer has
> forgotten to do the break-out to fibre in the green cabinet, or some
> equally daft mistake. Is there anything that could be misconfigured on
> either the VDSL modem or the router ? Or should she just report it as
> a fault ?
>

I have no experience of ADSL over FTTC but 8128 kb/s is top whack for an
ADSL1 connection. Do you have access to the router to see what the line
statistics are? SNR margin would be useful.

At a guess I'd say something isn't set right in the cabinet and the line is
being constrained to ADSL1 rather than whatever should be used, or, the
router is at fault and can't handle FTTC speeds properly. The latter seems
unlikely as I'm assuming BT supply their own router which must be compatible
with FTTC ADSL.

Phone call to BT seems to the next step.

--

WCZ

On 31/08/10 14:21, WCZ wrote:

> I have no experience of ADSL over FTTC but 8128 kb/s is top whack for an
> ADSL1 connection. Do you have access to the router to see what the line
> statistics are? SNR margin would be useful.

Results Down : Up

Speed 8128 : 448
Noise margin 6.3 : 26
Atten 26 : 17
o/p power 19.8 : 11.9

All looks very ADSL1-like.

> At a guess I'd say something isn't set right in the cabinet and the line
> is being constrained to ADSL1 rather than whatever should be used, or,
> the router is at fault and can't handle FTTC speeds properly. The
> latter seems unlikely as I'm assuming BT supply their own router which
> must be compatible with FTTC ADSL.

With BT Infinity you get a VDSL modem which has to be plugged in to the
NTE5 master socket via a special faceplate. Then the BT supplied router
has to be plugged into the VDSL modem (the installation includes a "data
cable extension" lead between router and modem - the rest of us call it
an Ethernet lead). So BT are supplying special kit which is designed
for FTTC VDSL.

> Phone call to BT seems to the next step.

Probably, unless there's an obvious correction to make to the config
of anything in her house.

--
Andrew

"WCZ" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:i5ivko$9m4$(E-Mail Removed)...
> >
>> Anyway, my friend popped in to her place over the Bank Holiday weekend,
>> and was disappointed to see speed tests returning about 7 Mb/s.
>> Checking the router stats, her sync speed is 8128 kb/s. OK for ADSL
>> Max, not very good for ADSL 2+, very poor for FTTC.
>>
>> Something doesn't sound right. I'm wondering if the installer has
>> forgotten to do the break-out to fibre in the green cabinet, or some
>> equally daft mistake. Is there anything that could be misconfigured on
>> either the VDSL modem or the router ? Or should she just report it as
>> a fault ?
>>
>
> I have no experience of ADSL over FTTC but 8128 kb/s is top whack for an
> ADSL1 connection. Do you have access to the router to see what the line
> statistics are? SNR margin would be useful.
>
> At a guess I'd say something isn't set right in the cabinet and the line
> is being constrained to ADSL1 rather than whatever should be used, or, the
> router is at fault and can't handle FTTC speeds properly. The latter
> seems unlikely as I'm assuming BT supply their own router which must be
> compatible with FTTC ADSL.
>
> Phone call to BT seems to the next step.

I've seen a similar setup with Rutland Telecom. However the form of ADSL
used between the customer premises and the green cabinet is called VDSL and
I suspect is not compatible with any ordinary ADSL modem or router (can
somebody prove me wrong?). Further the VDSL device they supplied is an
ethernet modem, and there's no interface within it to examine line
parameters.

Initial tests showed download about 27 Mbits/sec and upload about 5
Mbits/sec. But since then performance has dropped. I can ping the default
gateway from the user's computer and see reliable replies. However when I
ping the default gateway from somewhere outside there are times when it is
very unreliable - drops 3 in 4 pings, or great big gaps. So I suspect their
backhaul bandwidth or reliability is not what it should be. The same may be
true of BT in OP's case.

--
Graham J

Andrew Benham wrote:
> On 31/08/10 14:21, WCZ wrote:
>
>> I have no experience of ADSL over FTTC but 8128 kb/s is top whack for an
>> ADSL1 connection. Do you have access to the router to see what the line
>> statistics are? SNR margin would be useful.
>
> Results Down : Up
>
> Speed 8128 : 448
> Noise margin 6.3 : 26
> Atten 26 : 17
> o/p power 19.8 : 11.9
>
> All looks very ADSL1-like.
>

well 6dB is the limit. anyway mostly. So you wouldn't get a whole lot
more on adls2..
>> At a guess I'd say something isn't set right in the cabinet and the line
>> is being constrained to ADSL1 rather than whatever should be used, or,
>> the router is at fault and can't handle FTTC speeds properly. The
>> latter seems unlikely as I'm assuming BT supply their own router which
>> must be compatible with FTTC ADSL.
>
> With BT Infinity you get a VDSL modem which has to be plugged in to the
> NTE5 master socket via a special faceplate. Then the BT supplied router
> has to be plugged into the VDSL modem (the installation includes a "data
> cable extension" lead between router and modem - the rest of us call it
> an Ethernet lead). So BT are supplying special kit which is designed
> for FTTC VDSL.
>
>> Phone call to BT seems to the next step.
>
> Probably, unless there's an obvious correction to make to the config
> of anything in her house.
>

well is the router actually SET to adsl (1)?

On 01/09/10 01:57, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> well is the router actually SET to adsl (1)?

She's phoned BT and they've owned up to having supplied her with
the wrong hardware for the BT Infinity service she signed up for.

More hardware in the post, another installation scheduled for
Friday next week....

--
Andrew

Andrew Benham wrote:
> On 01/09/10 01:57, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>> well is the router actually SET to adsl (1)?
>
> She's phoned BT and they've owned up to having supplied her with
> the wrong hardware for the BT Infinity service she signed up for.
>
> More hardware in the post, another installation scheduled for
> Friday next week....
>
You couldn't make it up..

"Andrew Benham" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:i5o7a2$pk6$(E-Mail Removed)...
> On 01/09/10 01:57, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>> well is the router actually SET to adsl (1)?
>
> She's phoned BT and they've owned up to having supplied her with
> the wrong hardware for the BT Infinity service she signed up for.
>
> More hardware in the post, another installation scheduled for
> Friday next week....
>

They not treating her well are they making her wait over a week before they
put their mistake right.
How much compensation are they going to give her?
She did ask I hope.
Regards
David

Meanwhile, at the uk.telecom.broadband Job Justification Hearings, Andrew
Benham chose the tried and tested strategy of:


> She's phoned BT and they've owned up to having supplied her with
> the wrong hardware for the BT Infinity service she signed up for.

An engineer install, and the customer has actually ended up with the wrong
kit installed? WTF?

--
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