200M : Slough SL2 - Speeds are 68kbit-1.67mbit

[2pence]

Area 14 here.

Last night at 00:30 the connection suddenly went down as I was in the middle of a raid in Rust. For 4 hours the Hub 3.0 kept flashing its' lights and I ended up calling VM at 5am. The lovely lady in India told me to unplug the main cable and plug it in again and wait 10-15 minutes. It didn't help one bit.

Now the download speeds range from 68kbps to 1.67mbps but upload is fine now at 12mbps which was initially horrible too.

I don't know if I can cope with this, is there any specific department I can call?

[Kushan]

Call back in but don't let them fob you off with a "leave it 15mins and try again". They resolve the issue on the call, or it gets escalated elsewhere (outage/engineer/etc.).

[2pence]

Cheers Kushan, I just got off the phone, apparently other people also phoned in and reported a problem in my area. The technical support rep. told me an engineer has been called out and that I should give it another 2 hours.

Here's hoping...

[Kushan]

Did it get resolved?

[2pence]

Originally Posted by Kushan

Did it get resolved?

They didn't do anything and Hub 3.0 keeps dropping the connection randomly, barely managing 5-6mbit if I'm lucky but it's all over the place. Sometimes 1-2mbit. However the upload speed is holding stable at 12.31mbit so far but I don't know for how long as that goes down to 6-7 sometimes.

So that was from yesterday till today.

A few hours ago I spoke to a more senior technician - I think based in Ireland - and he ran some tests. He said he could see there was a lot of SNR noise and arranged an engineer immediately to go have a look.

About 30 mins ago the Hub light was flashing so I think that was the engineer.

I just ran fresh speed tests on speedtest.net and fast.com and here's what I get...

Test 1 @ 3:44pm
[img][/img]
Test 2 @ 4 mins later
[img][/img]
Test 3 @ 5 mins later
[img][/img]

And netflix' speedtest
[img][/img]

It's not good I'm afraid. Compared to the solid 220+ meg I was getting, this is just disappointing for a £46/mo connection. I'm scared to play Rust as I don't know what will happen if I'm fully geared.

Is it possible to speak to the more senior team again?

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by 2pence

They didn't do anything and Hub 3.0 keeps dropping the connection randomly, barely managing 5-6mbit if I'm lucky but it's all over the place. Sometimes 1-2mbit. However the upload speed is holding stable at 12.31mbit so far but I don't know for how long as that goes down to 6-7 sometimes.

So that was from yesterday till today.

A few hours ago I spoke to a more senior technician - I think based in Ireland - and he ran some tests. He said he could see there was a lot of SNR noise and arranged an engineer immediately to go have a look.

About 30 mins ago the Hub light was flashing so I think that was the engineer.

I just ran fresh speed tests on speedtest.net and fast.com and here's what I get...

Test 1 @ 3:44pm

Test 2 @ 4 mins later

Test 3 @ 5 mins later


And netflix' speedtest


It's not good I'm afraid. Compared to the solid 220+ meg I was getting, this is just disappointing for a £46/mo connection. I'm scared to play Rust as I don't know what will happen if I'm fully geared.

Is it possible to speak to the more senior team again?

Errr...how exactly did you speak to this "more senior tech" in the first place? If they arrange an engineer, it should be booked to come to your house to look at the actual problem, otherwise they need to raise an outage.
Once again I'm not entirely convinced you haven't just been fobbed off again.

Your modem light flashing just means the thing disconnected - could have been anything.

I'm afraid once more you need to phone in and keep phoning in until they actually acknowledge and fix the issue.

[2pence]

Originally Posted by Kushan

Errr...how exactly did you speak to this "more senior tech" in the first place?

Ah that was after the clueless lady in India couldn't handle my questions so she put me through to a "more senior technician" who sounded Irish. He understood me well and he could see there was other reports from my area plus there was a lot of SNR noise on the line.

Originally Posted by Kushan

If they arrange an engineer, it should be booked to come to your house to look at the actual problem, otherwise they need to raise an outage.

It was first raised as an outage and this "more senior technician" chap said he could see engineers have been in and out of the centre where the racks are but he rebooked another engineer to go back and look for this "SNR noise" disturbance.

Incidently, a text message arrived yesterday morning, telling me that my broadband connection issue has now been resolved. It wasn't. The problem was still there for me and I rang in and they confirmed to me that the issue has been resolved.

Originally Posted by Kushan

Once again I'm not entirely convinced you haven't just been fobbed off again.

I'm afraid the staff in India are utterly useless. One of them yesterday insisted that he log into my computer remotely via logmein123.com or he can't send an engineer to me as I was insisting they sent out an engineer to me. I had to give in and download and run this app thru which he took control of my mouse and did pointless checking, e.g. ran speedtest.net about 3 times.

Eventually he booked in an engineer for this Monday 12th as he noticed the speed was severely low and while he ran speedtests the hub kept disconnecting - confirming what I was saying all this time.

So now I got to do the waiting game. They kindly discounted my monthly charge by £15 in the meantime.

---------- Post added at 04:12 ---------- Previous post was at 03:10 ----------

Hub stats, for anyone clued up on this stuff...

Cable Modem Status
Item Status Comments
Acquired Downstream Channel(Hz)
299000000

Locked
Ranged Upstream Channel(Hz)
46200000

Locked
Provisioning State
Online

Downstream bonded channels
Channel Frequency(Hz) Power
(dBmV) SNR
(dB) Modulation Channel ID
1 299000000 8.5 29.2 256 qam 17
2 323000000 7.6 28.3 256 qam 20
3 315000000 7.8 28.5 256 qam 19
4 307000000 8.1 28.9 256 qam 18
5 291000000 8.8 29.3 256 qam 16
6 283000000 9 29.8 256 qam 15
7 275000000 9.5 30.3 256 qam 14
8 267000000 10.3 30.8 256 qam 13
9 259000000 10.5 31.1 256 qam 12
10 251000000 11.5 31.6 256 qam 11
11 243000000 12 32.2 256 qam 10
12 235000000 12.9 32.6 256 qam 9
13 227000000 13.5 33 256 qam 8
14 219000000 13.8 33.3 256 qam 7
15 211000000 13.9 33.4 256 qam 6
16 203000000 14 33.8 256 qam 5
17 195000000 14 33.8 256 qam 4
18 187000000 13.8 33.3 256 qam 3
19 179000000 13.5 33 256 qam 2
20 171000000 13.4 32.9 256 qam 1

Upstream bonded channels
Channel ID Frequency(Hz) Mode Power
(dBmV) Modulation Channel Bandwidth(Hz) Symbol Rate (ksps)
81 46200000 ATDMA 45.3 64 qam 6400000 5120
82 39400000 ATDMA 45.3 64 qam 6400000 5120

Primary Downstream Service Flow
SFID 781204
Max Traffic Rate 230000000
Primary Upstream Service Flow
SFID 781203
Max Traffic Rate 12700000

Network Log (minus MAC codes)
Date And Time Error Number Event Description
2016-12-08 22:46:05.00 84020200 Lost MDD Timeout;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
2016-12-08 22:50:31.00 83010200 Service Change Response rejected - Invalid transaction ID;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
2016-12-08 22:51:16.00 84020200 Lost MDD Timeout;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
2016-12-08 22:55:31.00 82000200 No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
2016-12-08 22:56:06.00 83010200 Service Change Response rejected - Invalid transaction ID;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
2016-12-08 22:56:17.00 84020200 Lost MDD Timeout;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
2016-12-08 23:04:54.00 83010200 Service Change Response rejected - Invalid transaction ID;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
2016-12-08 23:05:29.00 84020200 Lost MDD Timeout;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
2016-12-08 23:10:05.00 83010200 Service Change Response rejected - Invalid transaction ID;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
2016-12-08 23:10:31.00 84020200 Lost MDD Timeout;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
2016-12-08 23:16:12.00 83010100 Service Add Response rejected - Invalid transaction ID;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
2016-12-08 23:16:47.00 84020200 Lost MDD Timeout;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
2016-12-08 23:36:05.00 83010300 Service Delete Response rejected - Invalid Transaction;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
2016-12-09 00:04:00.00 83010100 Service Add Response rejected - Invalid transaction ID;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
2016-12-09 00:05:58.00 83020200 Service Add Ack rejected - Invalid transaction ID;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
2016-12-09 00:13:41.00 84020200 Lost MDD Timeout;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
2016-12-09 00:30:27.00 83010200 Service Change Response rejected - Invalid transaction ID;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
2016-12-09 00:47:53.00 84020200 Lost MDD Timeout;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
2016-12-09 02:10:07.00 82000200 No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
2016-12-09 02:33:26.00 84020200 Lost MDD Timeout;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
2016-12-09 04:11:38.00 83010100 Service Add Response rejected - Invalid transaction ID;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;

[Jon22]

Yeah, your downstream SNR is too low on most of the channels, with just a couple being marginal at best, likely down to the SNR problem. That, coupled with the downstream power levels being too high will be causing you the issue. Unless the problem is local to you (between your house and the cabinet), like loose connections etc., I can't see what the technician is going to be able to do. (S)he'll probably pass it up the chain to networks to have another look at.

[2pence]

As I type here the hub's main light is constantly flashing green and has been this way for about 90 mins or so. Not sure what's going on because rebooting or factory reset don't help at all.

[2pence]

Hub just lost it completely yesterday morning. The main light keeps flashing green no matter what I do, e.g. powerdown, factory reset etc.. it's been like this for over 18 hours. All I can do now is wait for the engineer on Monday.

[2pence]

I was thinking why the engineer hasn't turned up so far, it's because the guy who ran pointless tests via remote login, didn't actually book any engineer.

And now my area is reported to have a problem and ETA to resolve the issue in my area is 16th Dec.

We know of 1 issue in your area. We are aware that some customers using windows PCs are having issues getting online following a Microsoft Windows 10 update. We are in contact with Microsoft about this issue and will provide further updates as soon as possible.

Our engineer is working to fix the problem. Fix estimate: 16 December 16:00

Just marvellous.

[vm_tech]

Either loose connectors or faulty amplifier most likely with the SNR issues. That Microsoft issue isn't related to yours whatsoever so I would insist on a tech coming out. If it's loose connectors the service tech can resolve. An amplifier issue will be passed to network.

[2pence]

Originally Posted by vm_tech

Either loose connectors or faulty amplifier most likely with the SNR issues. That Microsoft issue isn't related to yours whatsoever so I would insist on a tech coming out. If it's loose connectors the service tech can resolve. An amplifier issue will be passed to network.

The lovely people in India said it was "pointless to rebook an engineer as there is already a team working in my area to resolve this issue, sir."

[Kushan]

This is getting beyond a joke. This happens occasionally and it's always a ball ache to get it sorted.

Here's the problem. If you had a total loss of connection, it would be a major enough issue to get them to send someone to fix it. "Slow and intermittent", however, are the bottom the pile in terms of priority - even if your connection is so slow and so intermittent that it's unusable.

Unfortunately, when the issue gets raised (As a low priority one), all the customers that phone in saying they've got no internet get told it's a known issue, but because it's low priority it doesn't get fixed for days or even weeks. If those people had phoned in before the outage was raised and reported a total loss of connection, it'd get flagged as a high-priority outage and it'd get fixed in a day or two.

It's a ball ache to get this kind of thing sorted because it relies on several people doing their jobs correctly.

I'd be tempted to disconnect the coax and report a total loss of connection, just to get them to book an engineer.

[2pence]

About 30 mins ago there was a VM team outside changing the cable on my road. Apparently the whole road completely lost VM connection.

No idea when it'll be back to normal but at least I know they're working on it now.

Anyway, the hub currently looks like this...