Terrible speeds and constant disconnections with BT

Gauge

Hello everyone. I was hoping SOMEONE could shed some light on my ridiculous problems. I apologise for the length.

I've been with BT's 2mb broadband package for over 3 years now. It was fine at first, then we started having problems- the DSL light disappearing and the connection dropping. We made call after call to BT (at one stage they told us we had made the most calls to them that month!) but they were totally useless. They sent out and engineer and charged us €100 because he couldn't find a problem. When we hired our own electrician later on he discovered the telephone line was in bits because it had been placed under the carpet! And BT's own engineer didn't even notice it! He replaced the wire and ran it along the ceiling instead, problem was solved for a while.

Then it started happening again about a year ago. Broadband is ok-ish during the day, the connection might drop once an hour. After 5pm it gets worse and worse, and usually after midnight I'm lucky if I can get one page to load before it disconnects. BT are total ****, every time we ring they are just completely uninterested, basically saying it's nothing to do with them.

I'm putting it to some people who might have some brain cells to rub together instead. Any ideas? Our phone line could be dodgy, but BT's engineer said there's no problem with it. The main phone point is actually upstairs rather than next to the modem itself but we don't really have an option to put the modem there.

In addition to all of this, the broadband speeds are crap. I'm lucky if I get 60 kb/second on a 2mb line. Any suggestions for what to do? I can't even use MSN or even use YouTube any more because I can't stay connected for long enough to load a video. BT won't help, if I switched to a different provider would it still be the same? Is there anything I can do to fix this? Any help would be SERIOUSLY appreciated. Thanks. I know this is partly a Consumer Issue too so I'm sorry if I chose the wrong forum.

watty

Yes. eircom needs to fix the line.

Krusty_Clown

1) Move the router to the main phone line point (upstairs) and establish that the problem isn't related to the phone wiring between the phone line entry point (into your house) and your phone point downstairs.
2) How is your neighbours (if any) broadband connection?
3) Try your router in someone else's house.
4) Try someone else's router in your house.
5) DSL filters installed at all phone points?

Gauge

BT claim there is no problem with the line as their/eircom's technician didn't find any(this was when it turned out the phoneline was actually frayed and practically in pieces) They say they will charge us €100 if they send out one and there is no problem discovered.

Our neighbours are with Eircom. Their connection is fine.
BT sent us out two modems in case one was faulty, same problem with both. DSL filters are all installed. Any way of checking if they're faulty?

I tried the modem upstairs at the main phone point and it was still disconnecting, not as often, but still quite a bit.

Haven't tried the router in someone else's house, I will give that a try when I can.

zilog_jones

Can you post the line attenuation and noise margin readings from your modem?

Also, if it was an Eircom technician who came to your house, they're (AFAIK) only allowed to deal with their own lines, i.e. everything up to and including the main socket. Anything else (e.g. lines under your carpet) is outside their juristiction.

I'm also with BT (BB and phone) - we had a problem with our line last year so they sent out an Eircom technician, and they fixed it quite promptly. But in my case it was the line just outside the front door, i.e. Eircom's line, that was at fault. Also, it was messing up our phone calls too (no ADSL connection at all), so was probably much higher priority to them.

Gauge

Upstream
relative capacity occupation: 94%
noise margin upstream: 6.0 db
output power downstream: 17.5 dbm
attenuation upstream: 31.5 db


Downstream
relative capacity occupation: 100%
noise margin downstream: 10.5 db
output power upstream: 11.5 dbm
attenuation downstream: 27.0 db


WAN Port Statistics:
Link Status: Up
Upstream Speed: 160 kbps
Downstream Speed: 1536 kbps

Hope these are of some help. If it's not the right info, let me know, as this is all dutch to me.

zilog_jones I had no idea that eircom wouldn't check any lines that weren't their own. It makes a lot of sense now that they said there was no problem. It would have been nice if eircom or BT had told us that though.

I really appreciate the advice so thanks a lot. I got disconnected three times while trying to post this and it is driving me nuts.

zilog_jones

Your upstream noise margin is too low, and your downstream one isn't great either. From what I can see you need at least 10dB for ADSL to work properly, preferably 12 or higher. For example, I'm getting 21 up and 30 down.

As you can see on the "WAN Port Statistics", it can't even connect at the speed you're paying for, which should be 2048k down and 256k up.

Can you post the readings when it's connected to the main phone socket?

jimmycrackcorm

Are you positive about the filtering and line setup? if there are infrequent disconnects when connected upstairs that could in many cases be caused by inadequate or incorrect filtering.

Also the readings you gave, are they from the main socket or the extension? As the Z-man says, this would indicate a lot.

Ludo

BT has been in sh*t all week for me...constant disconnects. The DSL light on the modem comes on green for about 3 seconds then goes off again. I have changed nothing in my config in months and never had a problem until this week. I am on dial-up now. Tried BT customer support but cant get through. Their call back system isnt working either.

They are getting on my t*ts now!!!!!

:mad:

Gauge

Here are statistics from what turned out to be the main phone point- apparently the phone line is set up strangely in that the main phone point is upstairs, not downstairs in the hall like we originally thought. What I assumed WAS the main phone point was an extension, so I guess that could explain the constant disconnections.

Upstream
relative capacity occupation: 29%
noise margin upstream: 24.0 db
output power downstream: 18.5 dbm
attenuation upstream: 13.5 db

Downstream
relative capacity occupation: 23%
noise margin downstream: 38.5 db
output power upstream: 1.0 dbm
attenuation downstream: 19.5 db

WAN Port Statistics:
Link Status: Up
Upstream Speed: 256 kbps
Downstream Speed: 2048 kbps

So it seems they're much better there. I've left the modem there all day and it disconnected once- still better than where it was originally though.

Testing it with my laptop, download speeds are still not great- peaking at 40kb/s, more or less hovering at 25-30. Turning off the firewall makes no difference, so is this a problem with the line or something at my end?

Thanks.

zilog_jones

What are you downloading? The bottleneck could be on the other server. A real test of download speeds would be to download some large file off HEAnet - can't think of any examples outside Linux ISOs. I get about 190-200kB/s from a good server or a torrent with loads of good seeds.

Those stats look pretty good now - the noise margin is better than what I'm getting and I have no trouble. I may get disconnected every day or so but it's usually when I'm not even using the net connection so isn't really a problem.

There's a problem with the line, mine was disconnecting a few times yesterday, today and very slow load up time, turns out there is a fault with the line.

Royale with Cheese

Have BT 2mb line, download speeds are about 70k/second these days. Fairly awful stuff. Will have to get it looked at.

I had 3MB and had to recently get it downgraded to 2MB due to slow speeds, now it's been disconnecting today and yesterday
Anyway I have an engineer coming to me on Friday after getting onto the DOC & Comreg about it as my BB may be affected by recent DTT testing. He will be testing the line here and then onto check the exchange, I'll keep you all posted.

OfflerCrocGod

Gauge wrote:

Upstream
relative capacity occupation: 29%
noise margin upstream: 24.0 db
output power downstream: 18.5 dbm
attenuation upstream: 13.5 db

Downstream
relative capacity occupation: 23%
noise margin downstream: 38.5 db
output power upstream: 1.0 dbm
attenuation downstream: 19.5 db

Those figures are far better then mine and I have a 3Mb line that never has any disconnect issues it's clear that you have some crappy wiring in your home though as the jump in line quality was impressive from just changing the router connection.

zilog_jones

hellboy99 wrote:

my BB may be affected by recent DTT testing

Did you not read that previous thread about this issue? It is complete nonsense - the DTT trials use the UHF band just like analogue TV has for decades - frequencies totally unrelated to ADSL!

zilog_jones

zilog_jones wrote:

Did you not read that previous thread about this issue? It is complete nonsense - the DTT trials use the UHF band just like analogue TV has for decades - frequencies totally unrelated to ADSL!

If it were nonsense then why have both people in BT TS & Eircom TS mentioned it as a cause, and why do I have an engineer coming out on Friday after I got onto the DOC & Comreg ?
It's also very strange that the issues I've been having with my BB started round the same time as the DTT testing.

zilog_jones

It sounds really dubious, especially since no one else seems to have suggested this issue (expect people mis-reading frequencies), and no one else is reporting related problems.

I know what saying, but at the same time it's funny, 2 months of me onto TS to fix my BB, end up been downgraded. It was then suggested about DTT and that I should get onto the DOC & Comreg about it, within a matter of days of sending off emails to them I get someone coming out to investigate what the problem is with my BB.
DTT or not someone should of been out 2 months ago.

cupthehand

Gauge wrote:

Upstream
relative capacity occupation: 94%
noise margin upstream: 6.0 db
output power downstream: 17.5 dbm
attenuation upstream: 31.5 db


Downstream
relative capacity occupation: 100%
noise margin downstream: 10.5 db
output power upstream: 11.5 dbm
attenuation downstream: 27.0 db


WAN Port Statistics:
Link Status: Up
Upstream Speed: 160 kbps
Downstream Speed: 1536 kbps

Hope these are of some help. If it's not the right info, let me know, as this is all dutch to me.

zilog_jones I had no idea that eircom wouldn't check any lines that weren't their own. It makes a lot of sense now that they said there was no problem. It would have been nice if eircom or BT had told us that though.

I really appreciate the advice so thanks a lot. I got disconnected three times while trying to post this and it is driving me nuts.

Hey total novice here, but having similar sort of problems to the above poster my BB-3mB BT was flying up until about a month ago now its down to crawling speed and I have no idea why, I tried using open DNS settings for a few days but these were producing even worse speeds. Sometimes though when im d/ling a file speeds can top 350kB/sec mins later could drop way down to 60kb/sec. How do I get all the statistics and readings the above guy got?

Gauge

zilog_jones wrote:

What are you downloading? The bottleneck could be on the other server. A real test of download speeds would be to download some large file off HEAnet - can't think of any examples outside Linux ISOs. I get about 190-200kB/s from a good server or a torrent with loads of good seeds.

Those stats look pretty good now - the noise margin is better than what I'm getting and I have no trouble. I may get disconnected every day or so but it's usually when I'm not even using the net connection so isn't really a problem.

The speeds I'm getting are just for random files off the net, that kind of thing... I'm downloading Firefox now just to check and it's downloading at 55kb/s roughly... now it's just dropped to 23. Yesterday I was hovering between 5-10kb/s for random stuff which was ridiculous. The download client I use has my average download speed of what I've been downloading as 23kb/s. Turning firewalls on/off has no effect. Is this normal?

Sponge Bob

Your internal wiring is not normal mate I think BT are blameless for all the accusations made against them in this thread, its all crap internal or crap eircom external wiring.

did you disconnect these crap sockets or simply hop the router around until you found the best one?? you should disconnect the lot bar the very 1st socket you know and rewire from scratch.

zilog_jones

Gauge wrote:

The speeds I'm getting are just for random files off the net, that kind of thing... I'm downloading Firefox now just to check and it's downloading at 55kb/s roughly... now it's just dropped to 23. Yesterday I was hovering between 5-10kb/s for random stuff which was ridiculous. The download client I use has my average download speed of what I've been downloading as 23kb/s. Turning firewalls on/off has no effect. Is this normal?

It really varies depending on where you're downloading it from and to an extent what time you're downloading it. On good servers like HEAnet (try getting anything off SourceForge and select them as your mirror) I'd usually get over 100KB/s, but then there's sites that are always chronic like Download.com and the free severs on places where there's an option between free and subscriber downloads, like FilePlanet (God I hate that place :mad: ). Microsoft's servers are usually pretty fast.

hibby

Just one more person's experience: my BT Broadband was fine until last month - now it is often slow and disconnects frequently (sometimes several times per hour).

I have no way to diagnose whether this is the fault of BT's service, eircom's wiring, or internal to the house, but it strikes me as quite a coincidence that other people are reporting similar experiences.

zilog_jones

Could be your line has got damaged. Also you do have a way to diagnose to an extent - go to the statistics on your modem or router. If you tell us which one you have, someone could explain how to get to them.

hibby

Thanks zilog_jones. When I said I don't have a way to diagnose, what I meant was I'm sure there is a way, but I'm completely clueless! I will very much appreciate any help.

We use a Netgear 54 Mbps wireless ADSL Firewall Router DG834G v2.

OfflerCrocGod

hibby wrote:

I have no way to diagnose whether this is the fault of BT's service, eircom's wiring, or internal to the house, but it strikes me as quite a coincidence that other people are reporting similar experiences.

It's easy enough to do some quick tests on your internal wiring. Check SnR ratio and attenuation now where the router is plugged in and then disconnect everything and plug it into your main socket and see the differences it should give you and idea as to whether you have any internal problems.

hibby

OfflerCrocGod wrote:

Check SnR ratio and attenuation now

How?