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Message 1 of 9

Another tale of woe with upgrade to g.fast

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Long time BB/BT Sport/BT Mobile customer, moved house in March '21, new phone/VDSL, SmartHub 2, complete wifi, stable and 76/18 sync, we are 150 metres from cabinet.

August '21, g.fast upgrade, Fibre 100 (sync 145/29) upgraded to Fibre 250 a few days later (sync 328/49), still SmartHub 2 but with new g.fast faceplate. Loved the responsiveness and speed, noticed it.

Shortly after Fibre 250, connection would drop for no apparent recent, but it came back again. Then it started dropping more and not coming back without disconnect/reconnect SH2 from socket and/or power cycling. Reported fault, OR engineer replaced the line from our master socket to telegraph pole as he felt that g.fast didn't like the type of line that was there.

Initially this seemed to have solved it, but disconnects came back. BT agreed to "downgrade" to Fibre 100 to see if 250 was the issue. Made no difference. They sent new SmartHub 2 (labeled SH2 Ultrafast 3.0) as mine was 2-3 years old. Initially this seemed to work, but joy was short lived.

I've done multiple quite line tests, calling the line, have swapped the faceplate for a filter to connect the hub, tried power cycling, replaced the connector cord with the grey ends, but none of these work other than to get the connection back, temporarily.

I often examine the event log to check what's been happening. Last night and this morning I saw that after the first time the connection dropped following several hours of uptime, there were frequent DSL Link Down and DSL Link Up events with sync speeds varying and much lower. For the first time this morning, I could hear crackles on the line via the corded receiver that is connected to the master socket faceplate along with the SH2.

I took the faceplate off and replaced as I have done many times and the crackles disappeared, the hub went from flashing purple to flashing orange and the DSL Link came back up and is still up. Each time BT or OR test the line I guess this is the condition they find, line is fine and the sync speeds are near max what they could be, so they don't investigate I suppose.

I have an ongoing complaint to keep this alive as I find that BT are very keen to close the fault even though for me the fault is very much not closed. Since the first time they sent an engineer, the 3 further times they have booked an engineer the engineer did not materialise, latest one of these is today.

All I have tried to do is upgrade my service but have ended up with something I can't rely on for my work from home which like so many others includes lengthy Zoom/Team calls. We also have quite a few smart devices on our network which all stay connected via the wifi but obviously require internet connectivity to function, highly inconvenient too.

Its now 6 weeks in and despite having a new line from the pole, new faceplate, new connecting cable, new SmartHub 2 its still the same. The big variable is g.fast, but given the sync speeds and distance to cabinet I would expect it to work fine. If there is anything else I can do or any tips for how to handle BT/OR I'd love to hear it as now I've tasted higher speed connectivity I would like to keep it. Although Virgin are on our road and I have a cable and socket in the house, I really would like to stay with BT, but they're making it very difficult.

I've seen quite a few threads about g.fast issues, some very like what Im seeing, but sadly yet to find one with a specific outcome, they seem to just fade away!

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Message 2 of 9

Re: Another tale of woe with upgrade to g.fast

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@mja 

G.Fast is likely to drop out more often than VDSL, so if you want a more reliable service, then downgrade back to VDSL.

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Message 3 of 9

Re: Another tale of woe with upgrade to g.fast

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I get that and would live with it if it was reasonable, but dropping out several times a day out is surely more than just a tendency to drop out more than VDSL, there must be a cause or better still a fault no?

Ive seen all the excuses made for g.fast like distance from cabinet, sensitivity to noise, modem type etc etc, but if g.fast is really this hit and miss where for some connections it just doesn't work and nobody can explain why I hope BT are reasonable when it comes to downgrading back to VDSL or being able to leave without penalty (for Virgin in my case) as full fibre with BT doesn't look like its on the radar any time soon for us.

 

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Message 4 of 9

Re: Another tale of woe with upgrade to g.fast

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OR engineer did come today after all, I spoke too soon. Really helpful guy looking to solve the problem. Typically there were no DSL Down events while he was here, despite his feeling that it would be a high resistance problem, all his testing showed nothing. He changed the master socket/faceplate and went to the cabinet to check the type of connectors there. Unfortunately it wasn't a type he has seen cause issues with g.fast wasn't being used, but there was an ancient connector in another place which when he moved it a wired fell out so he has replaced that, time will tell. I'll monitor events log to look for a pattern which he said they would be glad to react to if there is something.
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Message 5 of 9

Re: Another tale of woe with upgrade to g.fast

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Hi @mja,

Thank you for posting back to update the thread. Hopefully what the engineer has done, has improved the connection.

Please keep an eye on your connection if you notice the instability return, post back and we'll be able to give you a hand.

Thanks, 

Paddy

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Message 6 of 9

Re: Another tale of woe with upgrade to g.fast

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Unfortunately there has been instability, although the SH2 has reconnected rather than stay disconnected.

SH2 spec and event log WAN extracts below

Firmware version:v0.27.06.04290-BT
Firmware updated:Tue Oct 5 21:20:27 2021
Board version:R01
GUI version:1.74 12_11_2020
DSL uptime:0 days,01 Hours35 Mins28 Secs
Data rate:29.551 Mbps / 159.528 Mbps
Maximum data rate:74.923 Mbps / 428.323 Mbps
Full Fibre (FTTP) Mode:Off
Noise margin:19.6 / 21.9
Line attenuation:0.0 / 29.8
Signal attenuation:0.0 / 29.8
VLAN id:101
Upstream error control:Off
Downstream error control:Off
Data sent / received:277.9 MB Uploaded / 1.5 GB Downloaded

Event Log WAN extracts
11:42:32, 12 Oct.
DSL Link Up: Down Rate=159528kbps, Up Rate=29551kbps; SNR Margin Down=15.7dB, Up=17.3dB
11:42:25, 12 Oct.
WAN Auto-sensing detected port DSL WAN
11:40:46, 12 Oct.
DSL Link Down: duration was 125 seconds
11:38:49, 12 Oct.
DSL Link Up: Down Rate=159547kbps, Up Rate=29561kbps; SNR Margin Down=13.4dB, Up=14.4dB
11:37:06, 12 Oct.
DSL Link Down: duration was 36260 seconds
01:26:12, 12 Oct.
DSL Link Up: Down Rate=159387kbps, Up Rate=29409kbps; SNR Margin Down=21.5dB, Up=19.6dB
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Message 7 of 9

Re: Another tale of woe with upgrade to g.fast

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Another OR engineer visit yesterday, luckily the same guy and luckily the DSL link went down just as he arrived middle of the day. It didn’t help his testing because electrical properties were the same, but it encouraged him to change further physical connection on the basis that broadband can defy logic. This time he changed the length of cable from the base of the telegraph pole to part way up. Interestingly there was a change in max download data rate, noise and attenuation readings, DSL Link has been up for a while, fingers crossed.

DSL uptime:0 days,20 Hours27 Mins50 Secs
Data rate:29.419 Mbps / 159.547 Mbps
Maximum data rate:71.600 Mbps / 492.697 Mbps
Full Fibre (FTTP) Mode:Off
Noise margin:18.9 / 24.1
Line attenuation:0.0 / 25.4
Signal attenuation:0.0 / 25.4
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Message 8 of 9

Re: Another tale of woe with upgrade to g.fast

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I should also add he also swapped a connecting cable at the cabinet end even though it looked like an older cable, he said the newer one had very few connections on it so maybe others had seen problems too.
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Message 9 of 9

Re: Another tale of woe with upgrade to g.fast

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I’m calling this as fixed, good job done by BT case handler, OR engineer aided and abetted my me

DSL uptime:2 days,23 Hours34 Mins43 Secs
Data rate:29.419 Mbps / 159.547 Mbps
Maximum data rate:71.519 Mbps / 492.103 Mbps
Full Fibre (FTTP) Mode:Off
Noise margin:19.0 / 24.1
Line attenuation:0.0 / 25.4
Signal attenuation:0.0 / 25.4