O2 : HALP!! - Dropped from 14Mbps to 2.5Mbps, increased line attenuation as well?

For over 5 years I've had no problems whatsoever with O2 and my connection. However this morning I felt web browsing was very slow so I checked my router stats. I had synced at @2,495 kbps. I normally sync at @14,000kbps. Quite a drop!!. Also, my attenuation has went through the roof now showing 59 db up / 51 db down. For the past 5 years or so its been around 28-29 db.

I've tried resetting the router, pin in the back method and via the Wireless Box II interface. I've also unplugged it and left it for 4 hours but no change. Tried with the router cable directly into the test socket on the BT master. Swapped over to a new filter. Nothing, no dice. Still connecting at about 2,500 kbps. Called O2 today but they weren't much help, they are sending me a new router but I don't honestly think there is anything wrong with my current one. I'm on ADSL 2+ ( Home Premium on a rolling month to month basis I think, not one of the new contracts ) and again from my stats I'm seeing FEC and HEC errors where there were none before. I don't know what to do, called O2 back after my initial phone call to them when they said a new router was the answer and asked them to make further investigations into the issue but the guy wasn't really listening and appeared to be reading from a script or checklist. I don't know what to do now.

Really annoyed having gone all these years with no issues at all and all of a sudden I'm getting awful speeds. Here are my router stats :-

Have you tried a bt quiet line test? Could be a problem on the line.

What would I be listening for? ( I know - obvious question, sorry!! ). I've dialled 17070 and tried a quiet line test and it sounds fairly quiet to me, no cracking, obvious interference or anything that I can hear. However, I did it from the base unit of the cordless DECT phone that is connected to the master socket, is that ok or does it need to be a corded phone, someone mentioned that on another forum in a related thread?.

DECT phones are designed to suppress noise so it's possible that it's covering up any noise on the line. That said when I had crackles on my line I could hear them with my DECT phone, when I finally plugged in s cheap corded phone (Argos) it was actually a fair bit worse than the cordless.

Noise on the line might not even indicate anything as voice and therefore audible frequencies are much lower than those of ADSL.

The difference in attenuation is massive and probably equates to something like 2 extra km of cable. Something must have happened to the line from the exchange.

Sound like your ISP doesn't have a clue. Test this new router and get back to them again. Not quite sure how to get past the script bunnies though. I went straight to BT, who were at tehe time my line providers and reported it as a fault. They sent a BT openreach line engineer rather than a broadband guy but he still managed to fix it. My attenuation went from 11 to 8.

Tealc said:

The difference in attenuation is massive and probably equates to something like 2 extra km of cable. Something must have happened to the line from the exchange.

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I have a suspicion you are correct. God knows what they have done but it's too much of a massive change in stats for it to be anything other than something that's been fiddled with at the exchange or somewhere between there and my master socket. I received an email this morning saying that the replacement router should arrive today ( although they use Yodel so it's anyones guess when it will actually arrive ).

Once it's arrived, I'll swap everything over including the filters and the network cable and give it a try. I'll try it at the test socket direct too.

Okay, I feel like such an idiot. Had a conversation with the wife earlier about the connection issues. She was "wondering what I was so annoyed about?".

I got half way through explaining what was going on and she said "Ooohhh!!!.....maybe it was something to do with the wee fella pulling the cable off the wall the other day?" - referring to our 1 year old lad. Apparently he had discovered the phone and ADSL modem cables hanging out of the master socket behind the sofa in the living room on Monday afternoon and proceeded to repeatedly pull on them till they were hanging off the wall. She "forgot" to mention this to me.

So today I tried again connecting the router directly to the master socket and then directly from there using the network cable into my laptop right next to the master socket, thus bypassing the possibly dodgy cable which runs from it upstairs to an extension socket in the study where the router sits. Didn't expect any miracles as I had done this yesterday, albeit quickly and in a bit of a rush. Feel like an idiot for not taking my time in doing that yesterday as well.

BAM!!! - Connection now reads as below :-



So it would appear that it is an issue with the extension cable. I now need to work out what my next move is. I think my preferred option is to just replace the dodgy extension cable with a new one. Only issue there is that about 3m of it runs under wooden flooring and then up the side of the stairs. I'd need to run a replacement around the door frame instead of under the wood floor. Not a huge issue but annoyingly it will be less tidy.

Or I could leave the router where it is in the living room and switch to a wireless connection in the main PC upstairs which the router was previously hard wired into. But I'm pretty sure I tried that before and my speeds were well down in comparison to it being hard wired in.

Or what about a third option, I don't know if this would be better than a replacement extension cable?. Rather than run a new telephone extension cable upstairs to the router, what would happen if I ran a long ADSL modem extension cable from the master socket to the router upstairs?. Would that be likely to have worse results than running an telephone extension cable up there?.

Glad you got it figured out and also it would have cost you over £100 if you'd called an engineer out and they'd traced it to your extension.

Can you not trace the fault in the extension cable? It's more than likely a break in the cable near where it was pulled, or perhaps a loose connection near the master socket, which would create a lot of noise on the line I'd have thought.

Wireless is generally pants so I'd forget that.

What you need ideally is a proper telephone extension consisting of twisted pair rather than the crappy flat cable you get in extension kits. Looking at your new attenuation comapred with your old attenuation you've dropped it a further 10 dB, which could point to your extension adding noise anyway.

The type of cable I used was a CW1308 which is what BT use. It's a twisted pair cable with small diameter that is relatively inobtrusive. This dropped my attenuation by 1 or 2 dB on a 15 Metre run, compared with the extension I had used previously. You can get lengths of it off eBay for a few quid. You'll need to terminate it yourself of course but they are all IDC so easy enough.

Nice to see your 14 Mbit popped up to 20 Mbit though. Looks like your wee fella has helped you gain an extra 6 Mbit.

Hi, cheers for the info. What would I do if I could trace the break in the cable?. I'll have a look at the extension cable you mention.

The new router arrived this afternoon so I thought I'd plug it in anyway. It's a Wireless Box V. Once I got it up and running it shows slightly higher stats speed wise and it appears to be missing the "Max bandwidth" stat completely. Few other differences in readings at the top, as below :-

Stick with that modem as it matches the chipset of the remote equipment at the exchange. BDCM = Broadcom. Your old one might have had the same but it didn't say. Good to see those HEC errors at near zero. The FEC errors are normal for an Interleaved line.

Actually I typed all that before realising your extension was dropping you 6 Mbit. Even iof you could repair it you'd still be adding attenuation to your line. If I were you I'd either forget it and start your network at the master socket or if that's not practical run a new extension using the CW1308, which will minimise your losses. Depends on what the extension is for really.

I used to run the telephone cable from it's entry point upstairs all the way down to the living room downstairs and then run it into my modem. These days I have the modem next to the master socket and run some Cat5e down to my Gigabit switch and then on to my PC, Xbox etc. Cat5e in white is only slightly thicker than CW1308 and still pretty cheap. Screwfix do super cheap trunking too.

Tealc said:

Depends on what the extension is for really.

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Thanks for all that info m8, really appreciate it. The extension run upstairs would be purely for broadband access. We don't need any phone points upstairs as there is a DECT phone on a base unit downstairs with another one on another base unit upstairs, so no phone points needed, just ADSL.

Tempted to take the easy option and go for a high gain USB wireless adapter but I just know I'll regret it and its kinda like cutting my nose off to spite my face. Missus has again voiced her opinion on running more cabling upstairs of any kind if it's going to have to go around the door frame, which it will so I'm going to be in the bad books with her ( so what's new? ) when I run whatever cable I decide on, up there.

Options. Either run shield cable upstairs (can use cat5/cat5e), or relocate your modem downstairs and wire ethernet cable to go upstairs or use powerline adaptors. Forget the extension cable, just remove it.

Yep Powerline would certainly be a better option than error prone wireless. Much more expensive than a bit of cable though but not much more than a decent wireless solution.

If you care about latency (gaming) then you need a cable. Powerline adds 20-130ms varying constantly in my experience, and wifi, well its totally fine for some and randomly drops for others. No way to tell without testing it out.

Cables when they are clipped to the skirting board and are through one corner of a door frame really arent obtrusive at all. Get white/light grey, flat is also useful as then you can fit it through 3 sides of the door frame rather than having to find a bit of a "gap".

Cheers guys. Does Powerline suffer from drops in speeds?. The reason this is so awkward is that my main PC, the most powerful one in the house, is in the spare bedroom / study upstairs and I'd rather it had a wired network feed to it than anything that is going to perhaps suffer from a drop in performance. Simply so I make the most out of the speed I'm paying for. I use this PC for most things internet including downloading and uploading. This is why I am reluctant to simply go for a wireless solution and I'm unsure about homeplugs.

Trying to weigh up the expense with the possible results here. Not keen on spending @£50 on a set of 200mb Homeplugs if they don't give me top notch results as a cable would do?. Likewise I looked at the TP Link wireless adapters here on OcUK, the WN822N High Gain ones but again, reluctant to spend the dosh in case I am disappointed with the results.

However, I may have thought of a 4th option. If I leave the router downstairs plugged directly into the master socket, which makes the most sense I have to admit - would there be any problem with running CAT5 out of the living room window, up the wall a short run and into the bedroom window straight into the ethernet card on the back of the main PC?. It would save any problems with running cable inside, around doors, under carpet and flooring etc ( and would keep the peace between the wife and I !! ). But I'm not sure if there would be issues with running CAT5 outside?. It would only be for a very short cable run - 5 to 8 m at the very most.

I've ran cat5e cable outside and it's fine tbh. After a few years you may want to replace it but for your uses you'll probably not have problems for a long time.

Done a bit of reading on Ze Googles regarding network cable running outside. Seems to be a fair bit of conflicting opinion on it. Some say its fine and some say its not to be done at all!.

Will the weather, temp, rain etc affect it?. What about interference?.

Weather, temp, rain - Use exterior grade Cat5e which uses UV resistant and water resistant Polyethylene rather than PVC for it's insulation.

As for interference I'm not quite sure what could affect it, unless you happen to have mains wiring or your BT telephone cable running within 50mm of it. Cat5e is a twisted pair cable that is designed to reduce the effects of interference from it's own separate pairs and other external sources.

I wouldn't be surprised if those that have issue with running Cat5e outside probably have used interior grade expecting it to last.

If you can run it outside and this doesn't incur the wrath of the missus then I'd go for that.

A lot of people say that normal interior cable is fine for running a few meters outside, but i fyou were looking at doing 15m+ then you need the better quality stuff. If you have a spare cable, give it a go with normal, or if buying, if its not much more for the proper stuff, go with that.

Another thread on here a guy with 200mbps powerlines, which said they were connecting at ~75MBps were actually only giving him like 15MBps. Remember that if its just for the net, that still plenty for your connection as 20Mbps is only ~2MBps bandwidth wise, even wireless should be fine. Its latency which is an issue for some and not at all for others, I myself have had amazing experience with wireless in one house, and awful in another house with the same kit and supposidly strong signals in both.

Only time bandwidth limitations come in is if you are transferring/streaming large/high bit rate content, and as such takes ages or stutters

Cool, cheers. I'm going to try out a TP Link WN722 wireless dongle that I have here already just out of interest to see what speeds I get. I'm not bothered about latency as I no longer game online, just want to get the fastest speeds on the main PC for my connection. If the speeds aren't up to scratch with the TP Link I'm going to go down the route of network cable routed outside, will investigate that this weekend. I've got some standard CAT5E here so I'll give that a go first. There's a good few sellers on that well known aution site who have external CAT5E for sale in 15m lengths with RJ45's already fitted at under £10. As I said, kinda reluctant to spend £50 on powerline kit only to find it gives similar speeds to the wireless stuff.

I've run a standard cat6 cable outside on our wall from the ground floor up to the first. Just 2-3 meters outside but it's been there for the last 3+ years without problems.