Poor adsl, next step?

spud17

I'm trying to help someone with their poor rural broadband.
Until recently they had a fairly reliable 1.2 Mbps, it's now dropped right back.
I've lent them an old corded phone and shown them how to access the 'Quiet line test' via option 2 on 17070.
They have an intermittent fault, and will now call BT when they find noise on the line, also told them not to mention broadband.
They have complained before, but have always been told that the line is performing as expected.

http://speedtest.btwholesale.com gives

Download speed achieved during the test was 0.23 Mbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 0.05Mbps-0.25Mbps
Additional Information
Your DSL connection rate: 2.18 Mbps (down), 0.45 Mbps (up)
IP Profile for your line is 0.25Mbps

The only route stats from the BT HH4 have to be dug out from the router log.

16dB upstream
9.1dB downstream
448 Kbps up
2176 Kbps down

Is there any way of getting this looked into?
It looks to me like the line is in really poor condition with lots of noise.
No bell wire to remove and approx 2.5 miles from the village exchange.

kwikbreaks

Your DSL connection rate: 2.18 Mbps (down), 0.45 Mbps (up)
IP Profile for your line is 0.25Mbps

The chances are this was a one-off noise event (nearby lightning strike maybe). If there isn't a recurrence then the DLM should raise the profile and it will all be good again. At least until the next time.

The other stats shown are probably the noise margins and do not indicate noise on the line. The 9dB downstream noise margin is above the default 6dB - the router need to be resynced and the stats rechecked to see if the default 6dB margin has been raised to 9dB by DLM - if it has then that suggests there have been other blips.

spud17

kwikbreaks wrote: »

The chances are this was a one-off noise event (nearby lightning strike maybe). If there isn't a recurrence then the DLM should raise the profile and it will all be good again. At least until the next time.

The other stats shown are probably the noise margins and do not indicate noise on the line. The 9dB downstream noise margin is above the default 6dB - the router need to be resynced and the stats rechecked to see if the default 6dB margin has been raised to 9dB by DLM - if it has then that suggests there have been other blips.

It's never been good.
The tests were carried out following the instructions on the bt speedtest page which tell you to reboot the router.
I have another set of figures from a frustrated user reboot at 8 am 22/06

15dB up
9.1dB down
448 Kbps up
2016 Kbps down

They claim that they do not routinely reboot the router, only when the connection is totally unusable i.e even slower than above.
In 18 months they have never seen a speed above about 1.3 Mbps.
Now that they know a bit more about testing, they are now going to keep an eye on the line via the quiet noise test, then hassle BT when noise is apparent.

Strider590

spud17 wrote: »

They have an intermittent fault, and will now call BT when they find noise on the line, also told them not to mention broadband.

That is very old advice, it used to be true, but now BT take their broadband very seriously.

It used to be that broadband was this ugly thing they added to their more important phone services, they didn't really understand it and they didn't have the support infrastructure to deal with it, even the old guard of the BT "engineers" used to hate and detest this "new" technology, but now they're all dead and BT has outsourced it's stuff to Openreach, they do tend to deal with stuff quite quickly.

kwikbreaks

The sync rate is shown as ~ 2Mbps and the way BTw IP profoling works that means with the appropriate profile set it's going to perform at ~ 1.75Mbps - http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/IPprofile.htm

As the profile was set low that is all they'll get until the profile is raised by DLM. Rebooting the router will simply extend the period before that happens.

If those stats were taken just after a resync then the default noise margin has been set above the default 6dB which will result in a lower sync rate in an effort to improve stability. It's possible but not certain that was done because of the frequent reboots.

Check the stats to see if you can find the line attenuation. Sorry scrub that = I see frogstats on kittz say all you'll get is what you've got. It also confirms that the dB figures are noise margins.

My advice to improve this is to just leave the router alone and let DLM do its job. If there is noise on voice by all means report that of course but I think the poor ADSL speed is almost certainly down to a long line and the occasional noise event throwing a spanner in the works.

If they are low users then they might consider using 4G. I'm currently in a holiday caravan in rural Norfolk and using a MiFi with an external antenna...

http://beta.speedtest.net/result/5429026312

spud17

It's never been anywhere near 1.75 Mbps.
As I said, the best they've seen is 1.3 Mbps.

If they leave it, the speed just drops lower and lower, until it is unusable. A reboot used to get it back to around 1 Mbps.
Despite resisting rebooting until absolutely necessary, to avoid upsetting DLM, in reality this ends up being every second or third day, overall speed is dropping.
It is a long line on aged poles.
Could this be an instance where turning the router off overnight would actually help? :cool:
I have a kind of theory that it is overnight noise, possible???
It is not used in the evenings, so turning it off in the afternoon, before overnight noise knocks the DLM wouldn't be a hardship.

4g is an option, probably 5GB/mth would be enough, I've suggested a trial with an inexpensive mifi and a preloaded data sim.
O2 is best for calls inside/out, but only 2G data, EE is 3G/4G for data once you're in the garden.
So I'm guessing some sort of exterior aerial if it's going to be a permanent service.

p.s. Norfolk is flat, unlike Devon where mobile reception can go from 100% to 0% by going around a bend or over the crest of a hill.

J_B

spud17 wrote: »

I'm trying to help someone with their poor rural broadband.

This helped me ....

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5159215

kwikbreaks

I vaguely remember that marathon. The thing that seemed to be the cause was a badly filtered alarm and the fix was a change of router and a filtered faceplate. Certainly a router that showed proper line stats would help any diagnosis and a filtered faceplate is always a good move.

You mention there is no ring wire. Are there any plugin extensions - if so then there is a ring wire because they all have one. If you only have the master socket and no extensions at all then a filtered faceplate will make it look tidier but is unlikely to result in an improvement.

As was mentioned in that old thread most noise pickup is during the hours of darkness but it's MW radio picked up on ringwires and transferred to the signal pair by the ring capacitor in the master socket. Overhead wires are going to be more prone to such noise pickup too so if it isn't wanted overnight then turning off may eliminate any instability caused then.

This is what I was using on Three

http://www.digitalham.co.uk/mobile-broadband/

I'm currently on EE and have change the MiFi to one carphone warehouse were giving away with a 30day EE contract but they've stopped offering it now. That MiFi has two ports for 4G and I'm currently using that antenna into one port and one of the two leads from a cheap (~ £10) square 4G antenna from eBay into the other. Just the ebay cheapy works but using the external antenna with it works better.

spud17

One socket only, we've changed filters twice to be on safe side. No alarm.
I thought that I'd seen somewhere about the increased noise at night, hence my question.
I've got several old routers here, a nice Netgear DG834G would do the job of grabbing better line stats.
I just need to convince them that it's not going to be too much fuss.(I don't mind doing it).

spud17

J_B wrote: »

This helped me ....

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5159215

2.9Mbps!!
I live on the edge of town and have tweaked my router to give me about 6 Mbps.
My friends have never been above 1.3 Mbps
I will read that thread again.

kwikbreaks

spud17 wrote: »

My friends have never been above 1.3 Mbps

Yet the latest sync shows it should be 1.75Mbps profile giving over 1.5Mbps after overheads. It could just be the vagaries of speedtesting or it could indicate that it can't sustain that sync and explain the elevated noise margin. It's really all guesswork without some decent stats. http://www.vwlowen.co.uk/internet/files.htm was mentioned in that old thread and would give a nice graphical representation of what is happening on the line over time if used with a router that it supports such as the DG834G