Just got 50mb Broadband - Signal levels ok?

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Risco

Hi Sepiroth, ok not sure what exactly you mean so here goes!

The comes in through the front bedroom. It is from a gray box outside, which has a cover held on by just a screw stopping it falling off! I opened it as it was easy to use, it has a single Tratec splitter in there, [SEPH]: Please describe this device. Which model is it? If it's a splitter, how many outputs and how many of those go through your wall?. and some weird what looks like phone wire with an orange bobble bit on the end [SEPH]: That's in case you want a VM phone. Once inside the house it immediately hits a splitter [SEPH]: Please describe this splitter. How many outputs & how many of those carry a cable forward? for my mates room for his TV. It is then wired through his room to mine, [SEPH]: Is this the second output of the splitter? which then hits the HDU made by Tratec FDU-61 [SEPH]: Does this mean that the wire coming from your mate's room goes into the drop input? And only one coax goes out of the FDU-61 to the cable modem? Any attenuator on the end going into the CM?.

The box cover in my mates room is of the old Telewest broadband style lol. But as it is a cover, do not think it has anything to do with it? [SEPH]: Does anything from the above wiring go into this box and if so full description of ins and outs please?

[Risco]

1. ES/o2/MS 3.7db - I think this one was for when I had a box in downstairs which is no longer there.
2. A big black wire comes through the box and upstairs. This comes through the telewest wallbox.
3. It is then split via a ECO Tesi O2N 2 way splitter. One for mates tv and one to my room.
4. The wire then feeds through in to my room to the FDU-61
5. It is the second output to my room
6. yes the wire from mates room goes in to drop input of HDU.
7. HDU has two cables, one for BB and one for TV.
8. For splitter in mates room the 4.0db goes to mates tv abd 3.6db goes to my room.
9. I cannot see any attenuator.
10. Just want to add the splitter from the wallbox is a Tratec TRIS-102A with 0.4DB out.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Risco

Thanks for the tip, got some very interesting results. This is a direct feed from the wall inside. No splitters, seems my DBmV levels are too high or am I mistaken?

I should add that my speeds were still crappy.

Those power levels are fine.

So if it still sucks connected directly to the incoming cable feed it would seem a bit of a waste of time messing around micro-analysing the internal wiring as the fault is evidently outside the home, is the cable modem or is your PC, n'est-ce pas?

[Risco]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Those power levels are fine.

So if it still sucks connected directly to the incoming cable feed it would seem a bit of a waste of time messing around micro-analysing the internal wiring as the fault is evidently outside the home, is the cable modem or is your PC, n'est-ce pas?

Defo not the PC, it is pretty state of the art ( Asus N61JQ, google it :P ) Modem, I guess it could be! From what I gather about splitters as mine is a 3.5db, that means my true power in to the house is 45? Surely that is a little low when hitting my house before the splitters? Which is why if I have two 3.5 splitters I get 56 once it hits my room, but the HDU counters this and keeps it at 51.75?

On a side note I rang call centre again and as usual they cannot resolve my issue and credit me £15 lol. So far I have had £50 credit applied. I keep telling them, I ain't bothered about credit just fix my damn speeds! Also they told me there is maintenence work going on and will be fixed by 19th. Yet I was told the same thing last week it would be fixed by 13th. Which then UK confirmed had been carried out. It seems the right arm does not know what the left arm is doing.

[Sephiroth]

Igni has a point, but I wanted to understand your highly complex wiring. There is always greater scope for RF ingress when it's all over the house. I noted you only mentioned 1 TRIS-102A which is an isolator. Your STB should have one as well for safety sake because the FDU is powered.

It's not a reverse line HDU in my book. It's an amplifier that has a low and a high filter to deal separately with upstream and downstream amplification.

I don't like that kind of arrangement even when whatever might be wrong outside is put right. Your modem should really be placed close to the incoming wall to keep the run short. A router should be pretty well next to it and Cat 5e ethernet run up to your room or use a Homeplug/Powerline to go through the mains with ethernet.

I'll bet the unused ES-02 port is not terminated.

[Risco]

Thanks sep. Just called again the minute my speeds went to pot. Got the damn indian call centre again. No use, here is my latest speeds

[Risco]

Well I have had enough and emailed the CEO office and took it to higher level complaints. Even the support forum ignored my posts, and I mentioned I emailed the CEO and would be detailing the thread as evidence of poor customer service.

Let's see if I get a reply now.

[Risco]

I got a super fast reply, within 20 minutes of my email @ 7pm last night. Got a phone call this morning. I had a long chat with the guy, he gave me some Ubuntu files to download. I was saying I was suffering quite a bit at peak times. Now I also said I understand that speeds will suffer somewhat, but that they should be a higher level than what I am getting. I also suffered a T4 timeout while I was at work, which I never had before! From what I understand this is a total loss of connectivity? My T3 also increased from 2 to 7 during the day, when I was not even here!

Essentially @ peak times I am getting 3.0mpbs. I think this is not good enough, and I am rarely going to see the benefit of 50mbps. He was saying that 3.0mbps was acceptable?

Am I being unreasonable to expect a higher speed than 3.0mbps during peak hours?

[General Maximus]

not at all, I would extremely sarcastic and ask him why me getting less than 10% of my bandwidth was acceptable. If that is the case there is no point being on 50mbits, not even 20mbits, they had might as well whack you down to 10mbits.

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by General Maximus

not at all, I would extremely sarcastic and ask him why me getting less than 10% of my bandwidth was acceptable. If that is the case there is no point being on 50mbits, not even 20mbits, they had might as well whack you down to 10mbits.

Exactly right. At peak times you should not be getting less than half your tier. Alright, I don't grumble at 5 meg, which means you might be content on odd occasions with 12 meg. But 3 meg (unless rare) is unacceptable and not what the reasonable person on the Clapham omnibus would regard as reasonable.

[Risco]

Originally Posted by General Maximus

not at all, I would extremely sarcastic and ask him why me getting less than 10% of my bandwidth was acceptable. If that is the case there is no point being on 50mbits, not even 20mbits, they had might as well whack you down to 10mbits.

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

Exactly right. At peak times you should not be getting less than half your tier. Alright, I don't grumble at 5 meg, which means you might be content on odd occasions with 12 meg. But 3 meg (unless rare) is unacceptable and not what the reasonable person on the Clapham omnibus would regard as reasonable.

Cheers for the replies, feel better about the solidarity of my argument.

Also, it gets worse! Here is my "50mbps" @ 10pm. Using the links provided in the email. Also included another from earlier in the night @ 8.30pm which was a bit faster.

Shocking!

[Risco]

Interesting, have they moved me to a different node by any chance?

Here is my current tracert

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7600]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\Karl>tracert bbc.co.uk

Tracing route to bbc.co.uk [212.58.224.138]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 29 ms 8 ms 7 ms 10.13.196.1
3 7 ms 8 ms 9 ms osr01maid-ge19.network.virginmedia.net [81.96.1.
45]
4 11 ms 9 ms 11 ms basl-core-1a-tenge81.network.virginmedia.net [62
.30.243.45]
5 9 ms 10 ms 9 ms brnt-bb-1a-ae4-0.network.virginmedia.net [195.18
2.178.109]
6 16 ms 24 ms 13 ms glfd-bb-1b-as1-0.network.virginmedia.net [212.43
.163.105]
7 12 ms 11 ms 14 ms redb-ic-1-as0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.
185.78]
8 22 ms 12 ms 31 ms 212.58.239.249
9 14 ms 14 ms 14 ms 212.58.238.133
10 33 ms 13 ms 13 ms virtual-vip.thdo.bbc.co.uk [212.58.224.138]

Trace complete.

Here was my tracert from a few days ago

Tracert

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7600]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\Karl>tracert bbc.co.uk

Tracing route to bbc.co.uk [212.58.224.138]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 8 ms 10 ms 43 ms 10.13.196.1
2 142 ms 44 ms 197 ms osr01maid-ge28.network.virginmedia.net [81.96.1.
169]
3 10 ms 35 ms 33 ms basl-core-1a-tenge81.network.virginmedia.net [62
.30.243.45]
4 9 ms 18 ms 17 ms brnt-bb-1a-ae4-0.network.virginmedia.net [195.18
2.178.109]
5 12 ms 69 ms 11 ms glfd-bb-1b-as1-0.network.virginmedia.net [212.43
.163.105]
6 23 ms 33 ms 14 ms redb-ic-1-as0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.
185.78]
7 214 ms 215 ms 212 ms 212.58.239.249
8 14 ms 21 ms 13 ms 212.58.238.149
9 14 ms 14 ms 14 ms virtual-vip.thdo.bbc.co.uk [212.58.224.138]

Trace complete.

[Ignitionnet]

Maybe they fixed the fault, you weren't moved at that time of day.

[Risco]

Got a phonecall in reply to my email. He got me to do a few tweaks, but they were more for wired which he admitted ( 100mbps Full Duplex ) He also reiterated that 3.0mbps was acceptable for a 50mbps connection at peak times. Also I questioned what is likely to be the end result if I am getting these slow speeds consitently at peak times. He said basically there was nothing he could, and said there is no over utilization on my UBR either.

I also mentioned contention ratio, which I thought was 50:1. Apparently it was much higher thant this! He was quite avoiding and would not give me an exact figure. I said there should be minimum acceptable standards for 50mbps and really 42mbps @ peak should be the bare mininum. While he agreed, he said this was not possible.

I get a feeling I am going to end up asking for a permanent credit on my account or requesting to leave which is a lot of hassle as have to get a BT line installed along with Sky....

[Sephiroth]

For what my opinion is worth, you need to get stuck into VM. The following web page is relevant. http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html...and/speed.html

They make these two statements:

A different league
Honestly, who can you rely on for a whizzy broadband service these days? Well, according to recent studies, nobody quite measures up to Virgin Media fibre optic broadband. It's in a different league compared to standard broadband, which comes down a copper telephone wire.

Speeds explained
We use the term ‘up to’ because download speeds are affected by things beyond our control. For example, the website you’re on, the number of people online and your computer spec. With Virgin Media you’ll get much closer to the broadband speed you pay for.


Their headline statements, in your case, are patently untrue. Eiether they fix your service or they change their untruths. 3 Mbps is nothing near close to the speed you pay for. 3 Mbps is worse than copper telephone wires in urban areas that get close to 8 Mbps or more.

The CEO's reprersentative is wrong, knows he's wrong and, provided you make a note of the conversation, replay it to them in an e-mail, go throughh the complaint procedure - you can take VM to the CISAS or ISPA and indeed the ASA to get them caned for their disreputable behaviour in your case.