ADSL Router Slow and Restarts

[imjolly]

from your description the incoming openreach wires are connected to terminals A&B on the backplate of the livingroom socket and the wires connected to terminals 2&5 on bottom half of livingroom socket are feeding the extension socket in the utility room  that would suggest the best conenction should be the test socket in the livingroom

[GiveMeFive]

I'm considering arranging an Openreach engineer visit. Given the recent disruption to the cable into my living room (master) socket, my guess work at which wires to connect to which terminals on the front plate and the teeth marks on the cable itself I have little confidence that I'm not just playing around a problem that will reoccur at some point. The Openreach cable comes out of the ground right outside my living room and goes into a junction box on the wall from which a cable comes through my living room wall into the back of the socket. I think the engineer would just need to run a new cable from the junction box outside through the wall into the master socket, which is a straight forward job for someone who knows what they are doing.

Thoughts welcomed?

Can I arrange my own engineers visit without involving the script readers in the India call centre?

[imjolly]

to get openreach engineer you need to phone customer services and make appointment - bear in mind it is likely you will be charged £129.99 for engineer visit  http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/12439/c/

you see if a local telecome engineer will help but normally any wiring prior to master socket belongs to openreach

[GiveMeFive]

Thanks for your ongoing help and advice.

Problem back yesterday with numerous hub restarts and speed down. I logged a problem with uk centre last night and they will monitor the line for 24 hours. I think they have it down as a potential phone line fault but with notes about the hub.

I moved the hub and telephone both to the living room engineers socket and noted the following.

Quiet line test with no hub connected is quiet

Quiet line test with hub connected has variable noise

Tried changing micro filter as I have several. Noise levels heard on the quiet line test variable by filter but it's variable anyway so could be a red herring

When putting the telephone receiver down after the quiet line test the hub goes through a restart. Not every time but it happened several times in my tests last night and this morning

At one point last night the speed test exceeded 17 Mbps and it's never been that high previously but then I've not used the master socket and engineers port previously.

I've only had the Hub5 for 4 weeks. I can hear an audible hiss from the Hub when traffic is being processed. I don't remember ever hearing this type of noise from the Hub3.

Could be a red herring but at one point last night I was running a series of speed tests from my desktop PC and I got a Windows blue screen of death. Can't remember ever seeing this before on this machine. I also got one on the laptop the other day when running the hub diagnostics. Further when I was speaking with bt on my mobile phone last night I could hear noise on my iPhone and the call dropped twice. I'm not using wifi calling. Could be coincidence and paranoia on my part but thought it might be worth mentioning.

The hub logs show lots of error messages about stopped or rejected packages with suspected TCP intercept. I don't usually look at the logs so not sure if this is normal.

[imjolly]

as it seems the change to test socket in livingroom has improved conenction speed that is as suspected the actual master/test socket and utility socket is extension.  try 2 filters like this and see if that helps with noise

[GiveMeFive]

Thanks, will try this tonight. Hub into first filter and phone into the second so in effect phone via two filters. Is that right?

[imjolly]

yes double filtering the phone not the hub

[GiveMeFive]

I tried your suggestion but I don't think it's resolved matters. Line test seemed quiet at first but noise heard later and the hub went through a series of reboots last night although the quiet line test itself didn't seem to trigger the restarts. I noticed the BT app speed test appeared to trigger a hub restart on at least a couple of occasions reporting a failed speed test. Perhaps a failed speed test in the BT app is set to automatically trigger a remote restart???

I did wonder if the Hub5 might be at fault and tried my old Hub3 for a brief period. There were no hub3 restarts in the 10 to 15 minutes (not a long enough test) but speed was significantly slower than the hub5 and still heard noise on the line.

I've not yet had any contact from BT who said they would monitor the line for 24 hours and contact me yesterday or today.

I've left it setup as you suggested for now

[imjolly]

if that is not helping then you need to phone customer service and get engineer visit as I don't think you can do anymore from your end

[GiveMeFive]

Thanks imjolly,

I took your advice and an Openreach engineer visited today.  He ran tests and said the line was good but he heard the noise in the quiet line test.  He opened the grey BT junction/connection box (feeds my house and neighbour spurred off an underground line onto premises) on the front of the house and noted some verdigris on one or two connections indicting some water ingress.  He replaced these and the short run of (chewed by an animal) cable to the master socket in the living room and replaced the socket itself.  He noted the wiring to the rest of the house was "back wired" so done away with that so now I just have the master socket in the living room wired.

All his tests looked good but appreciating the fault has been intermitent and sporadic he said if this doesn't fix the issue  it points to an issue underground and would require a UG engineer visit.  We agreed to close the job but he's left me his mobile number to call if I have further issues.

For the past few days I am seeing my download speed at about 12 Mpbs where previously I got 14 to 15+ Mbps.  I notice in the Hub log that the SNR is circa 10bd where previously it was around 6db.  

13:56:11, 30 Jun. ( 5754.330000) PPPoA is up -​ VPI: 0, VCI: 38 Down Rate=14333Kbps, Up Rate=888Kbps; SNR Margin Down=10.9dB, Up=12.3dB
13:56:04, 30 Jun. ( 5747.460000) ETHoA is up -​ VPI: 0, VCI: 35 Down Rate=14333Kbps, Up Rate=888Kbps; SNR Margin Down=10.9dB, Up=12.3dB

23:05:08, 25 Jun. (178322.280000) PPPoA is up -​ VPI: 0, VCI: 38 Down Rate=19809Kbps, Up Rate=888Kbps; SNR Margin Down=6.1dB, Up=11.6dB
23:04:57, 25 Jun. (178311.270000) ETHoA is up -​ VPI: 0, VCI: 35 Down Rate=19809Kbps, Up Rate=888Kbps; SNR Margin Down=6.1dB, Up=11.6dB

The engineer's own tests before and after work measured 3.1db and 3.2db.

If my Hub runs without incidents or restarts would you expect the SNR to reduce and line speed to increase automatically or is there manual intervention required to do this?

I've seen references to lines being banded but I don't know if this applies to ADSL or is that limited to fibre?

Thanks in advance for any help and asdvice given.