BT option three (24mb - 'unlimited') is fairly useless

slasher_65

Lets run down some of the problems we have been having with BT in the last few weeks.

1. Every morning (and I don't mean Some Morning. I mean every single day of every week) the router gets disconnected from the internet. I need to log into the router and click "connect". Every morning.

2. My 24mb line is on average, about 3mb. This is HALF what I was regularly getting with eircom on a 7 mb package.

3. Uploading is awful. Painful. Unless it is to speedtest.net, in which case I'm getting 250kb/s or so.

4. Bittorrent is horrific beyond belief. Have been trying to download and seed the SXSW 6gb of legal music through Bittorrent, have been maxing out bittorrent at about... maybe... 100kb/s. Max. Eircom could get me about 600k'bs on an average day. Seeding is about 5.6kb/s on an average day.

5. Their support phone number is never open at the times they claim it is. They say it opens at 8AM. They finally open at about half past nine. They also close an hour or so early, regularly as far as I can tell.

6. Their "Report a fault" yoke on their site doesn't work. Because their "ordering system is down". What the hell?


On the upside, the ping is ok...



Any ideas on how to sort some of these issues out?

jor el

Can you post your line stats?

Terra

7. There unlimited usage is capped at 80 gigs and then you get throttled.

8. Your better off with UTV then these shower and that really sad.

slasher_65

Click for full size - Uploaded with plasq's Skitch
These are the linestats as of this morning.

cpu-dude

slasher_65 wrote: »

Click for full size - Uploaded with plasq's Skitch
These are the linestats as of this morning.

Your line can't handle anywhere near 24MB with that attenuation, contact BT and ask them to drop your profile to about 10Mb for testing purposes and repost your line stats, they should be able to lower your profile straight away. Also, ask them to increase your noise margin too.

minotour

Similar problem with 3MB package, nevermind the fact that Im paying for 6mb, they told me they could only do 3mb and then have only delivered 1.5 at best. Thats interesting that someone can extrapolate useful info from the line stats page, I'll have a gander at my own stats when i get home. POint I wanted to make was this, i spoke with the tech sup guy this morning and directly asked if they are throttling me, he said they werent and if they were I would only see about 100kbps on P2P. For your purposes you should try the glasnost site which will test for P2P throttling. Not sure how reliable this is but worth a shot...
http://broadband.mpi-sws.org/transparency/bttest.php

cpu-dude

minotour wrote: »

Thats interesting that someone can extrapolate useful info from the line stats page, I'll have a gander at my own stats when I get home.

Noise Margin and Attenuation can give you a bucket load of information about a persons line, for instance this customer most likely has poor wiring internally (HEC errors usually indicate noise on the line or a telephone extension cable) and is approximately 4KM's away from his local exchange (easiest way to judge this is to take 1dB in attenuation as c. 100M)

smellslikeshoes

cpu-dude wrote: »

Your line can't handle anywhere near 24MB with that attenuation, contact BT and ask them to drop your profile to about 10Mb for testing purposes and repost your line stats, they should be able to lower your profile straight away. Also, ask them to increase your noise margin too.

Eh? It doesn't work that way, you can't just ask them to increase you noise margin. Your noise margin is based on the quality of your line and the speed coming along the line, Higher the speed and attenuation the lower the noise margin, is more complicated than that but will leave it at that for this post.

cpu-dude

smellslikeshoes wrote: »

Eh? It doesn't work that way, you can't just ask them to increase you noise margin. Your noise margin is based on the quality of your line and the speed coming along the line, Higher the speed and attenuation the lower the noise margin, is more complicated than that but will leave it at that for this post.

Actually yes you can, you can't with Bitstream (G.dmt) as it's fully dependant on the condition, speed and quality of the line but with LLU (ADSL2+) you can increase your Noise Margin remotely (by BT) which works especially well for situations like these, they can test if it's necessary.

Sponge Bob

cpu dude is substantially correct except that he does not go into the ridiculously low BT noise margin for some odd reason, it should be 8+ not 5.8 , nor does he offer solutions

OP

disconnect everything , filters and all from that line

plug in modem only ..nothing else no filters even

now what are your line stats like ....before you contact BT

cpu-dude

Sponge Bob wrote: »

cpu dude is substantially correct except that he does not go into the ridiculously low BT noise margin for some odd reason, it should be 8+ not 5.8 , nor does he offer solutions

OP

disconnect everything , filters and all from that line

plug in modem only ..nothing else no filters even

now what are your line stats like ....before you contact BT

I can back that up too - ADSL2+ doesn't interpret Noise Margin the same way as with Bitstream either - it's more so directly related to the profile it's on (not the line quality or interferrence etc). I'm looking at the line statistics of a 20MB ADSL2+ profile right now and the Noise Margin is 6.9 dB. Contact BT, you need to lower your profile I can guarentee it and request a Noise Margin increase because your line seems unstable.

An Attenuation of 44 dB would give a Bitstream customer approximately 3, maybe 4MB depending how good the loop quality is - with ADSL2+ it would give about 8MB, maybe more - that's why I suggest you drop it to 10MB and see if that's any better, if not - stick with a stable 6MB.

Also, you need to put filters on every single phone / fax / alarm / sky in your house because something is giving you all those errors. Do this, and your line will be very humble. Are you using a telephone extension cable to the router or is it the short one (c. 6ft) that came with it?

CutzEr

That ping is actually quite bad..

I'm with BT's 3MB package and this is what I am getting:



So my ping is better than your'es.. And apparently, your broadband is over 6 and half times better

Bohrio

The attenuation shown is 44 dB but I wouldnt trust this as is probably not the real value. Once slasher_65 corrects his internal setup the line stats will change and show a more accurate reading.

BTs target noise margin is set to ~6 db. BT, as many other providers, have the possibility of increasing this target noise margin, this is handy when dealing with unstable lines. In this case the line is struggling to mantain that target and is falling below the safety threshold. That should not happen on normal conditions. Again, once, whatever is causing this is sorted (all is pointing to an unfiltered device or an extension) the noise margin will increase.

On average, a noise margin of 6 db should be enough for most lines.

In regards the problem with your modem not reconnecting after 24 hours that's due to noise on the line, and is always due to an internal problem.

Cpu-dude explained it quite well...

So I am afraid you are going to have to work it out and get your internal issue sorted. There is a firmware version available that might help with your reconnection problem but improving your line speed is up to you

cpu-dude

CutzEr wrote: »

That ping is actually quite bad..

I'm with BT's 3MB package and this is what I am getting:



So my ping is better than your'es.. And apparently, your broadband is over 6 and half times better

The OP is on up to 24MB and he is actually only capable of about 8-10MB if he's lucky (especially with his poor internal setup).

Your pings look good to me, especially considering the Irish average. Your gettting a bang on 3MB package, be happy