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Poor service from Plusnet

I signed up with Plusnet when I moved into my house in February. I knew the connection was going to be slow, speed estimates put it at around 2.0Mbit/s. What I hadn't anticipated were the constant drop outs (several times a day) and intermittent high ping times that cause sites to time out, usually half way through a transaction.

I have placed numerous support calls with Plusnet and get the standard responses like it's probably my wireless (even though I'm wired) or they've tested everything and found it to be fine. The only thing they have done in four months is get BT to switch off interleaving to help with the ping times (it hasn't, they still go up to 1500 millisecs at times).

In one support ticket they said there had been a problem with the network the previous month that was now resolved, but when I had an ticket open that month they said there were no problems. They are providing me with a flaky service and refusing to acknowledge there is a problem.

My exchange is fibre enabled, but there is no scheduled date for the cabinet upgrade.

Line stats:
Upstream 160
Downstream 2592
SNR Margin(Upstream) 5.0
SNR Margin(Downstream) 6.4
Line Attenuation(Upstream) 31.5
Line Attenuation(Downstream) 57.0
 
Hi Nick,

At 57db Attenuation, I would be expecting sync to be higher than 2.5Mbps. The upstream SNR also looks a bit out of wack, I would have put that around 12db or 13db. This makes me think that the line stats are bouncing around quite a bit, which could be causing the drops. If so, you have a line issue or internal wiring problem.

Is the router running in g.DMT (ADSL1) or g.992.5 (ADSL2+) mode? I would recommend trying to force this into ADSL1 mode to help settle the line a little.
 
Thanks for your reply. Now why can't Plusnet give me intelligent replies like this, instead of going off at every tangent they can think of so they can close the call?

It is running in g.DMT mode already. I have tried running from the test socket with just one device attached and no phones, also with different microfilters. The router is a BiPAC 7800N.
 
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Hi there,

Sorry to hear that - I can see the last action taken on your fault ticket was to remove interleaving which should have reduced the ping times, but the ticket subsequently timed out awaiting a response from yourself?

Seems strange that you're seeing several dropouts per day that our RADIUS servers aren't picking up - if these are shown on your router logs it'd give us some more ammunition to push back on our suppliers with. If they are, do they show as PPP drops or sync drops?

Either way we'd like to try and get this sorted for you if you'd be willing to give us another chance to. Is it the drops that are the main issue (and if so please advise as per the above) or the increased ping times you mention are the main problem on the fault ticket?

Regards,

Matt Taylor
Customer Support
 
As Martin said, the upstream stats (especially SNR but also, to a lesser degree, attenuation), look a bit out of whack. It's more normal to find that upstream SNR should be about double downstream SNR, while upstream Attn would be about half downstream Attn.

The SNR in general is also very low and quite a lot of routers, except for a few of the latest ones with a higher tolerance, could possibly be dropping your connection for brief moments every now and again and that isn't going to help line performance (causes the line profile speed/sync to reduce the more it happens). Some degree of interference may thus exist on the line.

Normally we'd recommend fitting a special filtered faceplate but you've said that the issue still occurs even when using the test socket so I'm not sure without being able to get a look myself, ADSL/ADSL2+ has always been a tricky technology to diagnose. Our old ADSLTips article goes into issues like this quite a lot though:

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/articles/adsltips/
 
@Matt

Sorry, there is nothing in my router logs.

The drops and the high ping times cause exactly the same problem, i.e. websites become inaccessible, so I can't say that one or the other is a higher priority. The only difference is when the connection drops I can see "No internet access" in the system tray, whereas with the high ping times it's a timeout when attempting to load a page. Generally the ping times are now fine, around 30Ms to 40ms a hop, but intermittently they go as high as 1500ms. Whenever there is any other activity on the line, e.g. YouTube or cloud backup, nobody else in the house can use the connection without timeouts.

As the two other posters have noted, the SNR is low, so I'm guessing it is the router that is dropping the connection if there is nothing in the RADIUS logs.

@Mark Thanks for your comments and the link.
 
I have had the same symptoms in the past, they were finally traced to a problem with the equipment at the exchange - HOWEVER remotely interrogating the equipment always gave a "no faults detected" reply; it wasnt until an engineer tried to run tests on it directly that the fault became apparent.

It was locking up randomly, but ONLY for data travelling FROM the internet, and the error reporting circuits were completely locked up - saying everything was fine all the time, even when the engineering disconnected it from the line.
 
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That to me is either a copper line issue or a port issue
 
I am suprised your not getting noise on the voice line if its a copper issue, the upload at such low speeds would normally indicate a issue with that as well due to how close the frequencies are at the lower end.

img006.GIF


If there is no noise then I would suspect that the port on the DSLAM/MSAN to be at fault.
 
These are the faults that separate the men from the boys; when I had this fault it took 10 days or so to get an engineer out to look at it, my sister (w/ Orange) was mucked about for nearly 2 years before they found the same fault - and which I TOLD the tech support guy was the probably cause right at the beginning!!!.
 
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These are the faults that separate the men from the boys; when I had this fault it took 10 days or so to get an engineer out to look at it, my sister (w/ Orange) was mucked about for nearly 2 years before they found the same fault - and which I TOLD the tech support guy was the probably cause right at the beginning!!!.

What did you think it was and what did they do to fix it? the symptoms can point to a few things but the finer detail gives you a "good educated guess" with some tests you can run.

@ The OP

I am guessing your on a 448 upload product, now with the changeable sync rate on the downstream its harder to judge so I tend to look at the upstream more and then look at the downstream. Given experience you can tell if it looks acceptable and if anything jumps out at you.

The attenuation doesn't look to out of whack to me, the upstream could be 2-3db lower or the downstream up to 60 maybe a bit more and I wouldn't be worried. The worrying thing to me is the upstream sync rate and SNR margin.

On a 448 upload product I would expect for a normal working line, at your length guessing about 4-4.3km so I will base it on that. You should easy see the 448 upload on basic DSL product, along with a SNR of around 16-20 and it be stable. Downstream I would of thought up to maybe 4 meg is possible on a 6db SNR. Ask for interleaving if you don't mind the ping times going up by 15ms it will help line speed and stability.

All that is assuming the DSLAM or MSAN port is functioning correctly of course, also all the cabling in the exchange which would take twice as much to type as what I have already.
 
Have to also remember the customers internal equipment and wiring can cause noise on the line so that side needs to also be checked out by going direct to the BT engineers test socket.
 
Have to also remember the customers internal equipment and wiring can cause noise on the line so that side needs to also be checked out by going direct to the BT engineers test socket.

I tried different routers and microfilters, all connected to the test socket before I started this topic.
 
What did you think it was and what did they do to fix it? the symptoms can point to a few things but the finer detail gives you a "good educated guess" with some tests you can run.

My fault was a dodgy Fujitsu DSLAM, the "Tech" news at the time had a report that thousands of them had been installed by BT and were now found to be faulty, so I suggested this as a possibility to Orange Tech as my sisters ADSL had been upgraded at almost the same time as mine, and the faults started immediately after the upgrades.
 
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My fault was a dodgy Fujitsu DSLAM, the "Tech" news at the time had a report that thousands of them had been installed by BT and were now found to be faulty, so I suggested this as a possibility to Orange Tech as my sisters ADSL had been upgraded at almost the same time as mine, and the faults started immediately after the upgrades.

Was that when 21cn was introduced?
 
Hi Nick,

Would anyone from Plusnet like to comment on all these informed observations?

I can see disconnections over recent days when checking our RADIUS logs:

Code:
Session Ended	Session Duration
N/A	 2 Days, 23:38:50 (on going)
16:44 21/Jun/2013	  7:15:22
09:27 21/Jun/2013	  0:0:10
09:17 21/Jun/2013	  2:21:55
06:54 21/Jun/2013	 One Day, 6:47:48
00:12 20/Jun/2013	  12:9:6
12:02 19/Jun/2013	  21:4:20
14:57 18/Jun/2013	  0:0:13
14:56 18/Jun/2013	  0:0:12
14:55 18/Jun/2013	 12 Days, 5:4:14

Line stats:
Upstream 160
Downstream 2592
SNR Margin(Upstream) 5.0
SNR Margin(Downstream) 6.4
Line Attenuation(Upstream) 31.5
Line Attenuation(Downstream) 57.0

Your line stats are consistent with what I see here with the exception of the upstream. Your downstream sync rate is currently at 2464kbps, whilst the upload has increased to the expected 448kbps (this can be uncapped on request by the way but I wouldn't suggest it whilst things are as they are).

Interleaving off is probably a bad idea as your line is reporting errored seconds (both up and down). With interleaving at least some of these errors will be corrected (at the sacrifice of some sync speed/latency normally).

Regardless, you need to raise another fault because we're not doing anything about the situation at the moment. It can be frustrating getting to the bottom of intermittent problems like this but don't let us close the fault report this time until you're confident things are OK your side.

If you encounter any resistance then bump this thread and I'll see what I can do to help.

Best regards,
 
Last edited:
No, this was When "ADLSMax" was introduced.

In my case the fault was rather beneficial, I was supposed to have a 1/2Mb connection, but they made a mistake when fitting the new DLSAM and I was getting 2.2Mb for several months.

Its funny really, when ADSL came out BT said I could only get 1/2Mb down/256KB up, but I now average 6Mb down/1Mb up, with the limiting factor being the ANCIENT cable connecting the local box to the fibre box (according to the BT engineer)
 
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