This topic

download speed is poor , upload speed still good.

nannajan13 — Fri, 16 Jul 2021 08:12:13 GMT

Hi,

Before I start I am not very tech savvy and avoid messing with settings etc if at all possible.

BT are supposed to be sending out an engineer to take a look but I would be grateful for any advise on questions I should ask and what tests should be done.

I have a smart hub 2 with fibre to the box which is by my front gate. I have a guaranteed download speed of 30mbps which I have been consistently receiving until recently. My download speed is now never above 3mbps although upload is the same as it was at about 7.5mbps. The problem is with both wired and wifi connection and there is only one desktop (wired) and one TV wifi which is in a spare room and rarely used.

BT have taken a look their end and confirm the very low download speed but say they were unable to rectify it from their end hence the engineer visit.

I've unplugged everything and reconnected and changed the filter on the telephone box.

At the end of May a neighbour had BT installed and Openreach dug a trench in front of my driveway and obviously had to open up the box in the ground to make the connection. All this was done in the pouring rain and ramps were put over the trench for us to drive over as they did not return to complete the job for a couple of days.

I didn't notice a drop in speed at the point the work was being done but I'm wondering whether somehow rain has penetrated to a connection there and caused a problem later? I asked if the engineer would be looking at the box outside and was told no only inside, can they tell remotely there is no problem with the connection outside? I don't see how they can.

Also the neighbours broadband wasn't activated straight away, could the activation of the neighbours broadband have an effect on my broadband? BT complaints department says not.

Thanks in advance for any questions I should ask on the engineers visit.

Re: download speed is poor , upload speed still good.

NeilO — Fri, 16 Jul 2021 09:19:20 GMT

Hi @nannajan13 welcome to the community and thanks for posting. I'm really sorry to see you're having problems with your broadband speed. It's possible that the recent work outside has disturbed your line but that would require an Openreach engineer visit, did the helpdesk say they were organising a Qube visit? If so they would be going out to check your internal set-up and can't fix external network issues.

Can you post your Home Hub router stats and we'll take a look? You'll get them by entering 192.168.1.254 in your browser, if you have a home hub 5 please go to troubleshooting then helpdesk and if it's a Smart Hub go to advanced settings then technical log information.

I'd also recommend you do a quiet line test? - dial 17070 from your landline choose option 2 and it should be silent.

Thanks

Neil

Re: download speed is poor , upload speed still good.

nannajan13 — Fri, 16 Jul 2021 09:53:29 GMT

Thanks for the prompt response, I have done the quiet line test and it is silent.

I was speaking to the complaints department on the telephone who have organised the engineer visit, I did give all the information about the external work but I got the impression they were just checking inside the house.

Is this the information from the Hub 2?

Thank you for looking into this for me.

The complaints department did say I could cancel the contract if they can't get me unto the promised 30mbps but I've been with BT for years and in May I was getting over 30mbps no problem so I can't understand why I can't now. I don't really want to leave anyway.

Re: download speed is poor , upload speed still good.

NeilO — Fri, 16 Jul 2021 11:00:17 GMT

Hi @nannajan13 yes that's the info I needed thanks. The SNR is very high at 30.4db it should be around 6db, so it looks like you're in a banded profile due to instability on the line. Are you noticing if the Hub is disconnecting and lights going off/changing colour as the connection time is just over 7 hours?

Thanks

Neil

Re: download speed is poor , upload speed still good.

nannajan13 — Fri, 16 Jul 2021 11:28:35 GMT

Hi,

I haven't noticed the hub going off or the lights on the hub changing, occasionally when I first click on Safari it will say you aren't connected to the internet but that stops when I click again and I think that has always happened.

Like you I have noticed the connection time is low when I've checked the hub previously.

The connection time now shows 9 hours ago , 3.20am I've checked the hub log and this was happening about that time.

The message a device disconnected from the ethernet port and a device connects ethernet port happens quite a lot I assume this is when my desktop is put to sleep. The slow download happens both on ethernet and WiFi.

Re: download speed is poor , upload speed still good.

NeilO — Fri, 16 Jul 2021 12:00:42 GMT

@nannajan13 no problem, I'll send you a private message in a moment so you can get in touch with the moderation team and we'll be happy to help.

You'll find the private message by clicking on the envelope on the top right of the community.

Thanks

Neil

Re: download speed is poor , upload speed still good.

nannajan13 — Sat, 17 Jul 2021 09:56:56 GMT

The BT engineers came on time and were very polite and helpful. They looked at the internal set up router, incoming master socket etc and could find no problem. They did upgrade the master socket to the latest although they couldn't see a problem with the one there but by doing this they could sign off that everything inside appeared to be fine.

As NeilO the moderator suggested it does appear from the engineers tests that the router has been turning on and off frequently, although I was unaware of this. But they confirmed in their opinion it is not a router problem.

Because of the master socket change I now need to wait 72 hours to see if the system resets and download speed increases, although the engineer said he thinks this is extremely unlikely. He thinks the fault is outside and eventually an open reach visit will be necessary.

Re: download speed is poor , upload speed still good.

iniltous — Sat, 17 Jul 2021 11:20:42 GMT

It would appear that the ‘engineer’ visit wasn’t actually an Openreach visit , and whoever did visit can only check things within the property than , chances are an Openreach engineer will be required, and the previous visitor has arranged that.
You haven’t said if you have tried using a landline phone , dialing 17070 and taking the quiet line option, any noise on the line would indicate an external issue , if the call is made from the master socket test port.

Re: download speed is poor , upload speed still good.

nannajan13 — Sat, 17 Jul 2021 11:50:49 GMT

Hi,

I have done the quiet line test a few times and it is silent apart from the operator saying quiet line test every so often.

From what the engineer said I should be contacted in a few days with a follow up call to see if things have improved, but he suggested I call them if I don't hear. It seems they won't do anything else until 72 hours has elapsed anyway then I will have to ask for further investigation.

Re: download speed is poor , upload speed still good.

pippincp — Sat, 17 Jul 2021 12:30:10 GMT

If you replied to the mod's PM then you need not do anything, they will take it from here and keep you updated.

Re: download speed is poor , upload speed still good.

nannajan13 — Sat, 17 Jul 2021 19:02:39 GMT

Thanks Pippincp,

I really hope they do do something, the speed seems to be going down everyday. since the engineer visit today download has dropped further to 2.08mbps and has become virtually unusable. It's very frustrating because I was getting 36mbps+ consistently for months so I can get that speed no problem.

The engineer said all the internal equipment is fine, I assume they do some sort of test on the router when they check everything out?

Re: download speed is poor , upload speed still good.

pippincp — Sat, 17 Jul 2021 21:56:22 GMT

Don't worry @nannajan13 as soon as the mods pick it up for you they will stay in contact with you until you say it's resolved. Wait for them to get in touch with you. Don't think you'll speed things up by ringing customer support.

As soon as your reply to thier PM gets to the top of the queue they'll be in touch, normally about 3 days.

Re: download speed is poor , upload speed still good.

nannajan13 — Sat, 17 Jul 2021 22:06:12 GMT

Thank you, I will hang on for them as you suggest.

I have just received an email from BT saying your service should be up and running now and if not restart your router which I have done but the problem is still the same. I guess the email was generated because of the engineer visit, although he agreed nothing had been accomplished by his visit.

Re: download speed is poor , upload speed still good.

PaddyB — Mon, 19 Jul 2021 12:51:46 GMT

Hi @nannajan13,

Thank you for taking my call today. I'm sorry the last engineer wasn't able to repair the service.

I've ran a few test and it is picking up a fault on the network. I've booked another engineer to visit on the 21st and I'll follow up with you again on Thursday to see how the connection is performing.

Thanks,

Paddy

Re: download speed is poor , upload speed still good.

nannajan13 — Mon, 19 Jul 2021 17:07:40 GMT

Thank you Paddy,

I appreciate you trying to sort this out for me and arranging a second engineer appointment.

Just wanted to check something, on Sunday morning I received a text message from 61998 saying BT had done extra checks and that my broadband was still below minimum guaranteed speed. I needed to reply NEXT or MORE for appointments within the next 7 days or the fault would be closed. I wasn't sure which department the text came from, whether it was from a Mod or another BT department. I text MORE for a choice of appointments straight away.

Obviously today you called and have arranged for an engineer to come out on the morning of 21st which I am very happy with.

This evening I received another text from 61998 giving me a choice of texting 1 for a morning appointment and 2 for an afternoon appointment. I don't want to do anything that will jeopardise the appointment you made, is it best to just ignore the text message? I have a feeling if I telephone to explain I already have an appointment something is bound to go wrong and I will end up with no appointment.

Re: download speed is poor , upload speed still good.

nannajan13 — Mon, 19 Jul 2021 17:25:02 GMT

Sorry I am a little confused, I checked on MyBT shortly after I spoke to you and the fault was showing and the appointment you arranged for the 21st was showing although I haven't received any confirmation email or anything.

Just to be sure I have checked again this evening and this is what I see when tracking a fault.

Track faults

There are no faults to display for this account.

No fault is showing and no engineer appointment is showing. Have I definitly got an engineer coming on the 21st?

Re: download speed is poor , upload speed still good.

nannajan13 — Wed, 21 Jul 2021 15:22:17 GMT

The OpenReach engineer that PaddyB arranged turned up 😀 I was concerned when the MyBT showed no fault that they wouldn't, but they did and within the timeframe PaddyB said they would.

The engineer was really helpful and checked everything and made sure all was up and running before he left.

It turned out that the OpenReach work outside the property had nothing to do with our problem, it was just coincidental that the problem started a couple of days later.

The fault showed up on the engineers equipment as an extension fault, although we have no extension to our current line. The explanation was that previously we had two BT lines coming in at the same point (one no longer used with no signal). BT moved the line we kept years ago but it appears that the original line into the house also remained connected although we thought it was redundant. This has never caused any problems over the years it has been like that but apparently somehow it was now causing a fault. The engineer disconnected the old line and hey presto the fault disappeared.

While here the engineer tested everything from the road right up to the router (which did play up a bit at first staying orange) but he sorted that. The download speed has gone from 2mbps to 46mbps!

I want to say a big thank you to PaddyB I really appreciate you sorting this out for us, fingers crossed the problem is permanently solved.

Re: download speed is poor , upload speed still good.

RobbieMac — Wed, 21 Jul 2021 15:32:10 GMT

@nannajan13 wrote:

The OpenReach engineer that PaddyB arranged turned up 😀 I was concerned when the MyBT showed no fault that they wouldn't, but they did and within the timeframe PaddyB said they would.

The engineer was really helpful and checked everything and made sure all was up and running before he left.

It turned out that the OpenReach work outside the property had nothing to do with our problem, it was just coincidental that the problem started a couple of days later.

The fault showed up on the engineers equipment as an extension fault, although we have no extension to our current line. The explanation was that previously we had two BT lines coming in at the same point (one no longer used with no signal). BT moved the line we kept years ago but it appears that the original line into the house also remained connected although we thought it was redundant. This has never caused any problems over the years it has been like that but apparently somehow it was now causing a fault. The engineer disconnected the old line and hey presto the fault disappeared.

While here the engineer tested everything from the road right up to the router (which did play up a bit at first staying orange) but he sorted that. The download speed has gone from 2mbps to 46mbps!

I want to say a big thank you to PaddyB I really appreciate you sorting this out for us, fingers crossed the problem is permanently solved.

Hey @nannajan13

Thank you for posting back!

I'm really pleased to see that the engineer managed to get things sorted out for you. I am sure you're delighted. I'll let @PaddyB know that you've posted 😀

Cheers,

Robbie

Re: download speed is poor , upload speed still good.

nannajan13 — Sat, 24 Jul 2021 05:22:07 GMT

An update on what has been happening since the engineers visit.

At the moment the speed is still OK but I am still getting the following happening, it has happened twice since the fault on the line was supposed to be repaired 2 days ago.

WAN connection WAN2_INTERNET_PTM disconnected.[ERROR_NO_CARRIER]

Is this something I should be concerned about?

The engineer did a good job within our property boundary but didn't look in the BT box outside the boundary where OpenReach had worked and when the original fault started a few days later. I did mention the work on the box but the engineer said the speed coming through the line was good and there wasn't a problem showing on his equipment. But if this is an intermittent fault might it not show on the equipment?

The engineer said the router would need 10 days to settle is this likely to settle or do I still have a problem on the line?

I would be grateful for any advise as to whether I need this problem looked into again.

Re: download speed is poor , upload speed still good.

nannajan13 — Sat, 11 Sep 2021 09:58:23 GMT

Final update (hopefully)

The engineer visit mentioned on the 24-07-2021 that seemed to have rectified the problem had in fact not worked. The disconnections continued each early morning and the speed dropped each time.

Paddy the BT Mod on here has been amazingly helpful and seemed determined to sort the problem. He called quite a few times to keep me updated and to check things my end.

After the BT engineer visit and the open reach visit already mentioned he arranged for two more engineer visits from Openreach. The first one sorted the problem for a day but then the problem reoccurred. The final Openreach engineer was excellent and literally checked everything that had already been done in or around the premises. It was fortunate that the intermittent fault happened to register on his equipment and he did say he hadn't come across what seemed to be happening before.

Anyway as had been requested by Paddy the BT Mod the engineer said the only option was to try a lift and shift. He did the lift and shift returned to make sure the hub was connected. He didn't reset the speed as the other engineers had done preferring for the line to settle itself, I was getting very close to my 30mbps anyway so that wasn't a problem.

I did have disconnections for the next few days but the speed never reduced in fact it has gradually increased and I am currently getting 50mbps. The last disconnection was over 3 days ago so it is looking like the lift and shift has worked.

Paddy continued to monitor the line and said all is looking good from their end and the possible cause could have been crosstalk at the box, but I guess we will never know for sure.

Anyway just wanted to say a very BIG THANK YOU to Paddy I really appreciate all your help and determination to get this sorted.