Stuart Posted September 22, 2015 Share Posted September 22, 2015 Morning chaps, Really struggling with my rural broadband for a few days now. Plusnet ADSL. Can't raise a ticket with them anymore can only call them, so I thought I'd ask if anyone can give me any tips before I do. Service normally runs somewhere between 3-4 mbps download speed and 0.36-0.38 upload with a ping 50-60 ish. For about a week now download has been at 1.9 upload keeps dropping to 0.03-0.06 with pings going as high as 325. Plusnet require you to run BT Wholesale speedtest and diagnostics and check against that. Well that says that my line is only capable of up to 2mbps when it has been running between 3 and 4 for the 11 months we've lived here. The BT test also changes it's parameters e.g. says that the line is capable of uploads up to 0.41 when I get speedtest results of 0.37 but at other times says the line is only capably of 0.06 upload, which is when I get speedtest results of 0.03. All this from being plugged directly in the master socket and trying 2 different routers and 2 different microfilters, so I'm certain it's not my setup. I would like to avoid them bullsh*tting me and any tips on what to say to them would be much appreciated. It's now becoming unusable at times. Cheers, Stuart Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CraigHew Posted September 22, 2015 Share Posted September 22, 2015 Its a bit of a black art I'm afraid. We've been with TT for about 5 years now and back in April/May we experienced a hugh degredation in service. I went through all the usual pain of speed tests, physical checks, swapping out socket filters etc to no avail. We're quite "heavy users" with a couple of smart TVs, media streaming devices as well as our smartphones tablets etc so the downturn effect was very noticable. I downloaded and ran a diagnostic called "net uptime monitor" which once running pings 3 websites every few seconds and reports if it can reach them ok. It then logs any fails. Over 24/48 hours this provided me with a very robust audit trail of how bad our broadband was. I published this on TT forums and also sent it to their tech support to help my cause. TalkTalk sent out BT openreach engineers who agreed that there was a problem and that the fault wasn't inside the house. As their engineer was only allocated a certain amount of time to fault find, he didn't resolve anything. We raised another fault ticket and went through the engineer fault-finding route several times until we eventually got a guy who cared about customer service. He said he only had a month left with BT before he retired and that he'd spend as long as it takes to resole our problem. It took him a couple of hours to sort the problem, reported as a physical line issue and our service resumed at previous levels. I'd suggest you download the "Net uptime monitor" programme and then log your service over 48 hours, you can then use the log to pressure plusnet into sending out an engineer. You also need to doggedly stick to your guns. Good luck Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Posted September 22, 2015 Author Share Posted September 22, 2015 Thanks very much Craig good idea. I can only find this programme to buy for $24 though - is that right? There's a free trial version but it only runs for half an hour Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CraigHew Posted September 22, 2015 Share Posted September 22, 2015 Hi Stuart, Yes I think I did have to pay for it (not my usual thing being an ex-IT manager with a good few contacts) but it was well worth it. have a go with the trial first to check it's OK for you I just found having some "hard evidence" helped a lot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Man On The Clapham Omnibus Posted September 22, 2015 Share Posted September 22, 2015 I have been with Plusnet for a few years and I am seriously looking at going elsewhere too. I lived in Beaconsfield in a built-up area and had three different computers, running two different routers and couldn't maintain constant internet connection for more than a few minutes some days. I moved fifteen miles north-east to a small village in 2012 and exactly the same phenomenon occurs here. The only common factor is the provider - Plusnet! All that being so, my neighbours report poor reliability on different providers and we have been promised fibre optic cable being laid on in "about 18 months" for the past two years. If I live long enough I'll go for that... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Colonial Posted September 22, 2015 Share Posted September 22, 2015 You may be unsurprised to learn that Plusnet is owned by... BT! Won't matter who your broadband provider is if it goes through a BT line and exchange that are faulty. Sorry for your problems and wish you luck getting them sorted. You won't want to hear this, but I'm with Virgin and getting 88Mbps download, 6.2Mbps upload and a ping of 17. http://www.speedtest.net/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Posted September 22, 2015 Author Share Posted September 22, 2015 Yep I know that Scott. I,ve been with them years and never had a problem. Trouble is I'm 11 months into a 2 year contract with them here - they stuck me with that in exchange for moving me 'FoC'. Had no reason not to take it 'cos they'd been so good. And I nearly caveated my original post with 'please don't tell me how fantastic your speeds are'......... We have no chance of cable here so I gotta get this ADSL back where it was Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rhett Turner - Black Country AO Posted September 22, 2015 Share Posted September 22, 2015 Trouble is I'm 11 months into a 2 year contract with them here - there are new rules, I believe, that allow early termination if the supplier is not delivering a good enough service. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Posted September 22, 2015 Author Share Posted September 22, 2015 Thanks Rhett. Have now bought the monitoring software recommended by Craig ($10 not $24) and have just started to run it - so far 11 connection failures of more than 5 seconds in the first 44 minutes of monitoring. This is possibly explaining longer term occasional drop out problems too. Pings running around 50 then surging to >200 as the connection starts to drop out. I assume this isn't what should be happening? Would I be right in also assuming that this instability will be causing the connection speed to throttle back? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SootySport Posted September 22, 2015 Share Posted September 22, 2015 Are you sure you are testing in the main socket? Can you visually check the cable from outside the house goes to the main socket first and no old sockets or redundant cabling are still connected somewhere in the house. If there is noise when using the phone you have good reason to report the line as noisy as this will also affect your download speeds. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Posted September 22, 2015 Author Share Posted September 22, 2015 Absolutely certain Bernie 'cos it's the only socket I have and I can track the cable down the pole in my garden and into the house. No detectable noise on the phone line. Now up to 54 >5sec periods of no connection in 4hrs 40mins according to Net Uptime Monitor. Last one lasted 36 seconds Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Man On The Clapham Omnibus Posted September 22, 2015 Share Posted September 22, 2015 Dial 17070 IIRC and there's a 'quiet line' option where you can listen for inherent noise. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Posted September 22, 2015 Author Share Posted September 22, 2015 Thanks MOTCO. Still sounds fairly noise free to me Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lyonspride Posted September 22, 2015 Share Posted September 22, 2015 5 years ago I had major issues with my internet, dropping out all the time, slow as anything. It took 2 weeks to convince them to send out a tech, it took him 10 minutes to fix the issue.......... Apparently what had happened was someone else had issues a few weeks before it all started, their issue was a physical line needed replacing inside the roadside cab, but instead of replacing it, some guy came out and swapped their connection onto mine, leaving me on their old dodgy connection. It happened just before Christmas and apparently they were all working "extra hard" to hit targets and earn their xmas bonus. A classic case of when you set targets, you only get what you measure. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Posted September 23, 2015 Author Share Posted September 23, 2015 This gets curiouser. I shut down my browser at 10pm last night and reopened it at 7.10 this morning, but left Net Uptime Monitor running all night. It registered just one 8 second disconnection over those 9 hours, but has resumed regular ones as I use the web this morning - so far 5 in 40 minutes. Does that indicate the problem may be with me, or just that the connection only fails when data is being transferred? Any ideas anyone? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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