Hi All, This one has been done to death, but I'm not sure that most people's experience is quite so extreme. I migrated from an old freeserve 'maximum speed available package' to the newer Orange unlimited after a tech support explained that the 'maximum speed available' package was capped at 2MB
My existing ADSL2/2+ router started synching at 8mb on the 5th of Dec, but repeated speed tests suggested what I was getting was a very good 2mb line - I was maxing out at around 1972kbs on a download test.
Figuring an early call would result in being told to wait for my livebox I held off, and After a couple more weeks I got my Livebox and confirmed it made no difference. I found info about the way BT calculate the bRAS profile and that the line would have a 2mb setting on it and would then in theory be trained over the first ten days (in my case, the 5-15th of dec). By the 28th of December I knew what the problem was - despite synching at the max speed every time (I'm 400m straight line from the exchange and my internal wiring isnt bad either) - my IP Profile as returned by the BT Speedteester (Speedtester.BT.com) was 2000kbps, and has not fluctuated one iota since going onto Max.
Now for the fun bit. I know the problem, I'm speaking to the right people (apparantly) at the UK tech support for livebox...but I've spent over four hours (on an 0870 number of course) over the course of five phone calls trying to get them to ask BTw to reset my profile. Despite initial promise as they acknowledged that teh training 'hadn't worked' - two calls ended after over an hour each when the 'fault reporting system' was down, two calls I ended in disgust as the person didn't know what I was talking about, and couldnt get past the idea that the synch speed was right, so the line regrading was complete - end of.
The final support guy actually tried to tell me that its possible my modem had been trained, that despite always synching at 8mb, (and having no training related issues such as slow speeds and disconnections at any point) it might have decided to settle on exactly 2000kbps as the optimal speed for the line. When I pointed out in slightly irate tones that it had never strayed from this value at any time he agreed it was a problem, and raised a fault. I was to expect a call within Three working days. Hearing nothing (quelle surprise) I called back after four days to be told there was no evidence of a fault ever being raised. back to square one.
Any advice from people who've had this problem? Any particular department who are good at handling it? Any keywords that might make them realise what the problem is in under an hour?! Any suggestions for other things that could be causing this problem - I'm open to suggestions that I'm wrong!
When you say they said the training hadn't worked what exactly did they say? Was there mention of the FTR or MSR being set or the speed the line should be running at by Orange?
If thats not been set then there may be problems actually submitting a fault. If thats the case then you could ask them to call BT to check if the MSR/FTR has been set and just not got through to the system. If BT have it but not Orange then it should be escalated, if BT don't have it either than something majorly odd is going on and again would probably need escalating or them pestering BT faults over the issue.
Unfortuantly a lot of tech support don't truely understand ADSL Max and only have a basic grasp of the issues and what they need to really be checking.
Thanks for that, gives me another angle of attack - I was rapidly running out of ammunition and motivation for another call! The first guy I spoke to didn't give me anything concrete about the MSR, I think he was just agreeing with the analysis that "the training period hadn't worked" - if he could see something specific he didn't tell me what.
As an aside, I see today that the PlusNet Exchange status checker shows that the local exchange (DEWSBURY) is reporting a 'virtual path' capacity/status of 'red' and has been for a couple of months - it has an ETA for a fix of today - Although it describes this as affecting available speeds etc at peak times, could this have an impact on the exchange's ability to set my MSR?
Last edited by Squeek on Mon Jan 15, 2007 1:05 pm; edited 2 times in total
Shouldn't do really, I believe, as it appears to imply, that it's an issue with the available bandwidth at the exchange meaning that it should only effect speeds when there's a lot of data throughput. Basically things will run slower at peak times as there's not enough bandwidth to fulfill demand. I don't know the specifics of that part of the system and if it applies to the whole exchange or just specific providers.
Just got off the phone after another hour long call where I persuaded a very nice bloke to pass it on to BT because none of the line tests were working. After he spoke to BTw for 15 mins or so they eventually reported back that theres an 'Earth Fault' on my BT line which I need to get BT to resolve - this is apparantly the root of all my problems.
It's probably a shonky extension, might be BT-side but sod's law it wont be - but even so I'd be surprised if it all magically started working once fixed and the MSR process springs into life. I've reported the problem to BT proper, so will wait and see....
Once I finally got the Orange support guy in India to put me through to Middlesex the tech support guy there reported it to BT and about 5 days later BT manually set my profile.
"something majorly odd" you say Elhana? you're not kiddin! BT have just got back to me after reporting an Earth Fault (as per BT Wholesale instruction, see above) - theres nothing wrong with the line and if it is an adsl fault, not a voice fault, in evidence, then BTw need to deal with it and BT will not. So that was an hour well spent today then. Once more, back to square one.
Well, after another 2 rounds of agents promising to escalate the matter, then logging that I was happy with their resolution - so the next time I call there is no record of me having an ongoing problem(!) I took matters into my own hands
I've been tempted to do this since day 1 (well, day 10, but you know what I mean) but didn't want to give Orange any excuse for the situation....a bit of lateral thinking suggests that if the problem was my ip profile not being st and properly trained because my modem always synchs at the fastest speed(8mbps), well then, lets mess it up a bit!
I took the filter off my Sky box, and immediately managed to get the Livebox to synch at just 5mbps. wasn't convinced this would be low enough to kick-start my profiling, so plugged my old Speedtouch 330 in (with original firmware and related speed limits), and for good measure added about 40 metres of shoddy extension cable between it and the master socket - don't laugh, I was desperate!
After getting a synch at 4.8mbps (with hindsight it wasn't worth the effort with the frog and the cabling!) I went out for an hour, came back and did the BT speedtest - my IP Profile has doubled, and is now set at 4000kbps! Plugged everything back in properly, and with a following wind I'm hoping that after Three days of sustained 8mb synchronisation it will go up into the 7meg region - even if it doesn't, half an hour cacking about with it has doubled my speed, more than Orange managed in 6 weeks!
Hmmm interesting... I have the same problem and seem to have fixed 1000 - I'll give it a go (see my post in tech section "I can't believe it"). However before getting too excited it could be that the restriction on the exchange coincided with your speed increasing...
Anything is possible, although my exchange is still showing the path congestion it had previously, and the ip profile, static for around 7 weeks, changed within an hour of me synching at the lower speed (I believe is the profile speed I would expect after synching at 4.8mbps - this profile is given if you synch in the range 4544 kbps to 5088 kbps)
Wouldn't make any promises, and as I say, anything is possible really - maybe Orange resolved it for me?
I can't get my max 'attainable speed' as reported by livebox below 8500kps even with some dodgy cable (its normally >10500kps). However in all cases the downstream speed reported by livebox remains resolutely at 1152kps (and upstream at 288) supposedly on IPSTREAM Max...
I am on IPStream MAx, but I think we have a slightly different problem - Am I right in thinking you're unable to synch at higher speeds despite the livebox saying the stats suggest you should be able to?
My problem was that I could synch at 8128/448 but never get more than 2000kbps down the line - the BT speedtester confirmed my IP profile was still set to 2000kbps, effectively capping the amount of data, despite my synch speed. Initially set at 2000kbps on moving to adsl max, this is one of the pieces that is meant to be 'trained' over the first ten days after upgrade - the DSLAM at the local exchange monitoring and assessing the line to ensure that no more data than the line can handle is pushed down it - so if you synch at 5mb, the cap is somewhere around 4 etc. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the better the line is, the longer this takes - as there is less fluctuation for the exchange to detect. In my case nothing happened at all, in theory a single call from Orange to BTw would allow them to manually restart this process, but in 4 weeks of calls I've not managed to speak to anyone who could do this for me.
As such, creating noise on the line and forcing a lower synch speed has forced a refresh at the exchange - a lower synch should result in an instant change to the IP Profile, and if you maintain a higher speed for 3 days straight it should go back up to reflect this. If my theory pans out I should hit full tilt sometime over thursday night - I'll let you know!
From details in your other thread you were saying that your speed restrictions were possibly due to congestion and being moved onto a capped profile, which sounds like it would be harder to resolve as its not a glitch as such, but a limitation imposed by BT, who these days answer to no-one!
Thanks very much for clarifying that. Yes my situation is not as you describe - I sync at 1152/288 and its never changed. I think my problem is more one of a cock up between BTw and Orange and I'm still not sure who... Orange insist that BT say I'm on Max even though I'm clearly not with this upstream speed.
I've also read elsewhere in a doc by BT called "Broadband Myths and Legends" that 10 connect/disconnects in one hour makes the system think the line is flapping and forces DLM to readjust the BRAS profile... maybe this is kind of what happened to sort you out. However for anyone else please note that this doc does not recommend doing this as it will be conservative and push speed down.
Indeed, I don't know whether it was a significantly degraded synch rate, or the sheer volume of reconnects in a short period that 'kick-started' my training process. Although the patchy availability of the BT speedtest made it difficult to follow exactly, the IP profile reported moved up from 4000 to 4500 after a few hours, and when I finally got on again on Sunday (about 6 days after starting the process) I was at 7150kbps as required.
Now I just need to deal with an overcrowded exchange and crazy contention in the evening
Thanks to all for pointers, tips and snippets of info - good luck to those of you still struggling to resolve issues.
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