Plusnet BB speeds & reliability

Yorkie1

Mentioned this briefly on another thread on the Internet board, but thought I'd start my own thread rather than hijack that one.

For years, my Plusnet BB has been pretty reliable. I occasionally watch iPlayer / listen to the radio, but generally just surf the web. Recently, I've been almost or completely losing connection by about 7pm. Pages on here take minutes to load, if at all.

My question is what can I check out / eliminate locally before raising a ticket with Plusnet?

Speed test this morning was about 0.87 Mbps download and 0.7 upload. This evening it has dropped to about 0.1 each way.

I've tried switching the router off and back on as per computer diagnostics, but that doesn't improve the situation for long.

I know that competition for lines at the local exchange can reduce speeds, but mine are just ridiculous. Is there anything else I need to do to eliminate the possibility that the problem is with me, or to try to fix it myself, before raising a ticket?

Using a wi-fi router which is probably about 3 years old, from a laptop.

flashg67

My Plusnet has had similar problems is the past few weeks.
Have you run the BT speed test from here http://speedtest.btwholesale.com/ then run the 'further diagnostics afterwards?
Have you downloaded the Plusnet assistant from their website? I raised a ticket from this, but if possible, you'll need to have tried another router if you have one, tried another microfilter, plugged the router into the test socket on your BT faceplate, and connected your laptop by ethernet cable to the router, rather than wirelessly because all these can affect speeds.
Annoyingly, despite their good reputation, the first response I got from Plusnet was 'whats the problem' and a load of stats showing my line was ok. When I replied assuring them that I wasn't just raising a ticket out of boredom, they acknowledged the issue and must have reset something at their end because since last weekend, it's only dropped once.
So I'd try the tests above before raising a ticket, and don't let them fob you off if they initially tell you all's well!

Yorkie1

Will work my way through those things, many thanks f67.

Edit: failed at the first hurdle. How do I disable (and then re-enable) Avast as per instructions on the speedtest site ?

Flat_Eric

I can't offer any help (sorry) but I thought this thread (that I started) might be of interest to you.

We have had issues with our internet this month - and when we investigated found that it was on go slow because we had exceeded our monthly download limit within about 7 days of our internet month starting. Its still not been explained but they are investigating now so hopefully they will be able to explain what has happened.

flashg67

Yorkie1 wrote: »

Will work my way through those things, many thanks f67.

Edit: failed at the first hurdle. How do I disable (and then re-enable) Avast as per instructions on the speedtest site ?

Sorry, I don't use Avast, but found this? -

AVAST
Right- click on the avast! icon in system tray (looks like this: but orange in color starting with v5). Select avast! shields control and there will be options to disable avast for 10 minutes, 1 hour, until the computer is restarted or permanently.

macman

Retest using ethernet from the BT test socket (behind the master socket split faceplate) to rule out wi-fi issues. If that cures it, change the wireless channel.
But if it's OK until about 7pm then it does sounds like a contention issue on the BT network, which nothing will cure except a switch to an LLU provider.

letsbehonest

I had similar problems for a couple of years until I pushed the issue with plusnet and after all the obligatury testing which was fair enough, they arranged for a BT BB engineer to visit my home and to check out this problem. The main cause was that the cabling in my area consited of old aluminium type and although I only live 3.5 km from the exchange the routing of the cable was nearly 7 km, this guy actually went to the exchange and changed the routing swapped over to a copper cabling run. Problem solved with a connect speed gain of about 45% measured on his test rig.