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Speed capping....possible or not?

seer

Member
I have FTTC from the BT owned Plusnet and have had numerous problems over the years.
The estimated line length is approx 2,300 metres which I know is at the limit of a stable connection.

I have found that if the speed is limited to about 5Mbps (download) then the line remains stable with acceptable dropouts....if over that (currently about 7 - Mbps) then unacceptable dropouts make it virtually unusable (for Sonos an TV streaming).

After 12 or so engineers visits (no faults found) over the last 24 months (and many more prior to that), Plusnet are now saying " there is no option to manually band a fibre connection to a lower speed".

Is this correct? Is this not what DLM is all about?

In the past, various engineers have said it is up to Plusnet to do the cap and in the past Plusnet say it is up to Openreach! Two engineers comments are illuminating - 1. "Move house" (best comment yet) 2. "You are the first customer to ask for a speed reduction!"

Another engineer due next Tuesday.

I do have a sense of humour but patience is wearing thin. 4G/5G reception not good enough. Satellite too variable and expensive. FTTP not scheduled to this area (deepest darkest Hertfordshire)

And now as I go to post this...............broadband is down (10th time this a.m.!)

Any advice welcomed.

Seer

PS BTW any reference to Fibre should be banned unless FTTP. Why the ASA has not put a stop to that nonsense is beyond me.
 
The DLM is an automatic system - it's not going to perfect though and you seem to have a very poor FTTC line. I'm guessing that's well outside the expected FTTC limits the DLM is designed for.

I would assume at that low speed there's not going to be a great deal of speed profiles available for you and maybe 7mbps is simply one of the lowest that's available.

Have you tried ADSL broadband instead? You have better luck with that considering it's specifically designed for longer lines than FTTC is.

It's a shame about the 4G reception as that could have been a big improvement for you. Are you sure all 4 networks have poor reception in your area? With a reliable network even 1 bar of signal could produce reliably faster speeds than what you currently get with FTTC.
 
Last edited:
Thanks TTJJ.

ADSL not recommended by one of the engineers who said that it was as fault prone in the area as so called FTTC. Plus, speeds would not give us decent tv streaming - possible with the 5Mbps we have had.

I don't understand how following a period (months) of 5Mbps stability, the speed has "shot" up to an unstable 7 + Mbps. I wondered whether a local power outage recently (coincidental with the speed rise) may have contributed to some sort of reset at the exchange.

All 4G offerings locally has us in a black spot
 
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Perhaps you can ask PlusNet to run DLM again?

In all honesty I don’t see why Openreach don’t consider the disconnects as a fault
 
Why are you still with Plusnet?
There are other ISP's who will have much more capable support who will be able to communicate much more effectively!
 
If you have a difficult line Plusnet are no use, they are too afraid of OR charging them for engineer visits. You need to be with someone who understands the line data and can stand up to OR, Zen or Andrews & Arnold are 2 candidates.
 
It'd probably be worth ringing zen and speaking too them Kommando, I've been with them in the past and they're really in a different league to the other ISP's.
 
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Maybe a router that you can override the SNR would help here? I use a plusnet router on openwrt with the "Downstream SNR offset" to -10. and get a crazy line stats like this..

Code:
DSL
DSL Status
Line State: UP [0x0]
Line Mode: G.993.2 (VDSL2)
Line Uptime: 1d 17h 40m 25s
Annex: B
Profile: 17a
Data Rate: 17.196 Mb/s / 4.373 Mb/s
Max. Attainable Data Rate (ATTNDR): 38.020 Mb/s / 4.728 Mb/s
Latency: 0.14 ms / 0.0 ms
Line Attenuation (LATN): 26.7 dB / 30.4 dB
Signal Attenuation (SATN): 23.2 dB / 30.2 dB
Noise Margin (SNR): 8.5 dB / 6.0 dB
Aggregate Transmit Power (ACTATP): 6.7 dB / 11.0 dB
Forward Error Correction Seconds (FECS): 0 / 0
Errored seconds (ES): 0 / 2
Severely Errored Seconds (SES): 0 / 0
Loss of Signal Seconds (LOSS): 3 / 0
Unavailable Seconds (UAS): 98 / 98
Header Error Code Errors (HEC): 0 / 0
Non Pre-emptive CRC errors (CRC_P): 0 / 0
Pre-emptive CRC errors (CRCP_P): 0 / 0
ATU-C System Vendor ID: Broadcom 193.144
Power Management Mode: L0 - Synchronized

For OP maybe increasing the offset would stablise the line?
 
Openreach will soon be allowing ISPs to have more control over DLM:

But the ISP needs to opt-in (and pay an onboarding charge). Hence you might only find it available from the more advanced ISPs.
 
Thanks all for your various comments. Line was stable at about 3.5 Mbps for about a week but has now shot up to >8Mbps with 30 + dropouts per day so back to square one. Plusnet say DLM must have been reset (again) but do not seem to know who did it.

Last Openreach engineer suggested it must be my LAN causing the problems so I disconnected all things downstream of the router (including the pc) for 48 hours and dropouts continued proving him wrong.

Now awaiting yet another engineer.

Have now discovered a fibre node < 200 m from the house! Perhaps I should get my ladders out.

And so it goes.
 
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