Help with Homehub Hell

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Joined
20 Jun 2004
Posts
1,002
Location
Manchester
Ok, until about 3 weeks ago BT was working fine for us, we had a full 8mb connection, decent download, we're about 363 meters straight line from the exchange and then we started having problems.

Rapid dropouts, connection de-synchronising and so on with no idea why, the extension we ran upstairs stopped working for the PSTN part and i couldn't for the life of me get the connection.

So then begins our tet a tet with BT. I plugged the router into the test socket downstairs and the connection was a bit better, not as many dropouts but still, quite frequent. So i bought a new extension to run upstairs, replacing, line sync'd back at 6mb (which it has been doing since these problems started) and was working fine again, until yesterday.

We seem to have the most problems in the afternoon around 3pm, and in the evening at around 12pm, thats when the connection goes down the most, its beginning to get most irritating as i've replaced all 'variables' except the homehub. Anyway, i telnet'd into it today so i could get the settings, as you know its an absolutely awful bit of kit if you're even remotely knowing what you're doing, and these are the values (i had a few CRCs in the previous one but i've just reset the router)

Code:
Modemstate            :  up
Operation Mode        :  G.992.1 Annex A
Channel Mode          :  interleaved
Number of resets      :  1

Vendor                              Local           Remote
  Country             :               0f               b5
  Vendor              :             TMMB             TSTC
  VendorSpecific      :             0000             0000
  StandardRevisionNr  :               00               02

                                  Downstream        Upstream
Margin       [dB]     :             14.5             23.0
Attenuation  [dB]     :             22.0              9.5
OutputPower  [dBm]    :             19.5             12.0

Intrinsic/Actual  Bandwidth          %
  Upstream            :             38
  Downstream          :             92

Available Bandwidth                 Cells/s           Kbit/s
  Downstream          :            15547             6592
  Upstream            :             1056              448


Transfer statistics
    Errors
      Received FEC    :                0
      Received CRC    :                0
      Received HEC    :                0
      Transmitted FEC :                0
      Transmitted CRC :                0
      Transmitted HEC :                0

     Near end failures since reset
      Loss of frame:          0 failures
      Loss of signal:         0 failures
      Loss of power:          0 failures
      Errored seconds:        0 seconds
     Near end failures last 15 minutes
      Loss of frame:          0 seconds
      Loss of signal:         0 seconds
      Loss of power:          0 seconds
      Errored seconds:        0 seconds
     Near end failures current day
      Errored seconds:        0 seconds
     Near end failures previous day
      Errored seconds:        0 seconds

Does anyone know of any other way i can test, aside from buying a new router, which is sort of last ditch, because BT are being absolutely no help, and like i said, nothing has changed on our line, it just started 'happening'.

Cheers
 
Hi mate, these are the statistics from this morning on the router, check out all the errors recieved FEC

Code:
Modemstate            :  up
Operation Mode        :  G.992.1 Annex A
Channel Mode          :  interleaved
Number of resets      :  15

Vendor                              Local           Remote
  Country             :               0f               b5
  Vendor              :             TMMB             TSTC
  VendorSpecific      :             0000             0000
  StandardRevisionNr  :               00               02

                                  Downstream        Upstream
Margin       [dB]     :             33.0              7.0
Attenuation  [dB]     :             22.0              9.5
OutputPower  [dBm]    :             19.5             12.0

Intrinsic/Actual  Bandwidth          %
  Upstream            :             53
  Downstream          :             69

Available Bandwidth                 Cells/s           Kbit/s
  Downstream          :             2264              960
  Upstream            :              528              224


Transfer statistics
    Errors
      Received FEC    :            16585
      Received CRC    :                0
      Received HEC    :                0
      Transmitted FEC :                0
      Transmitted CRC :                0
      Transmitted HEC :                0

     Near end failures since reset
      Loss of frame:          0 failures
      Loss of signal:         2 failures
      Loss of power:          0 failures
      Errored seconds:       87 seconds
     Near end failures last 15 minutes
      Loss of frame:          0 seconds
      Loss of signal:         0 seconds
      Loss of power:          0 seconds
      Errored seconds:        0 seconds
     Near end failures current day
      Errored seconds:       87 seconds
     Near end failures previous day
      Errored seconds:        0 seconds

could yhou possibly tell me what this means?

i really cant tell if its a line fault between myself and the exchange.
 
It means you've dropped from >6Mbps to <1Mbps, which is evidently a Bad Thing?

Your upstream SNR margin is crappy, so you're seeing rate adaption. At the same time, your downstream SNR margin is pretty good (and you should expect to get more).
Without trying a different modem, it's hard to say where the fault lies. It could be a dodgy line, dodgy line card, dodgy modem, loads of things.
 
think its going to be one of those things isnt it, i just cant put my finger on it after having a full 8mb connection for 6 months and solid 2mb for years with no dropouts to then get to 'this'.

Suppose all i can do is get a new router and go from there. BT have been less than helpful in diagnosis. It's their hub though, so surely they should replace it?
 
They'll want you to try a different modem whether it's a fault between you and them anyway, so it's no bad thing having a spare lying around.
 
what an utterly strange thing, router has been maintaining a solid connection at 6mb for about 24 hours now, with the following stats

Code:
                                  Downstream        Upstream
Margin       [dB]     :             15.0             22.0
Attenuation  [dB]     :             22.0              9.5
OutputPower  [dBm]    :             19.5             12.0

IP Profile is still stuck at 512kb but they rejig after 3 days dont they?
 
yeh you have a lot of forward end corrected errors on there basicly it looks to me as though that could be an exchange issue, but we cant narrow it down untill you get the same on another router.

fec aint to bad its crc you want to worry about, but im thinking something has effected your line somewhere or the exchange is having an issue imo.
failing that it is due to the poor upload stats
 
i think ive managed to get my hands on my old DLink DSL-504 router, so im gonna give that a shot and see what it does
 
guys.. ive just sorta switched to bt with the homehub, but have read lots of it being pants..

how do you use a seperate router without the modem in the humehub?? and can i still use the hub phone for calls??
 
Swap the hub for an ADSL router, and forget the modem in the hub?

No idea about the phone though. I'd imagine you could connect the hub to another router (and disable DHCP et al), and use the phone as usual, but $deity knows what BT's done to the HomeHub.
 
i've given up on the home hub after 3 of them, i've now got a bt voyager 2500v , no more dropping connections or slow speeds.
 
Right, using a Voyager 2098 flashed with the Draytek firmware, anyway, these are the stats

Code:
> adsl info --show                  
adsl: ADSL driver and PHY status                                
Status: Showtime  Channel: INTR, Upstream rate = 416 Kbps, Downstream rate = 1568 Kbps                                                                              
     
Link Power State: L0                    
Mode:                   G.DMT                             
Channel:                Interleave                                  
Trellis:                ON                          
Line Status:            No Defect                                 
Training Status:        Showtime                                
                Down            Up                                  
SNR (dB):       31.4            6.0                                   
Attn(dB):       21.0            9.0                                   
Pwr(dBm):       19.8            12.3                                    
Max(Kbps):      1728            584                                   
Rate (Kbps):    1568            416                                   
                        G.dmt framing                                     
K:              50(0)           14                                  
R:              16              16                                  
S:              4               8                                 
D:              8               4                                 
                        ADSL2 framing                                     
MSGc:           1               1                                 
B:              119             15                                  
M:              2                      
T:              1               1                                 
R:              16              16                                  
S:              2.1333          9.0000                                      
L:              960             128                                   
D:              16              4
                        Counters
SF:             60090260                60090258
SFErr:          6652            21570
RS:             1021534424              510767193
RSCorr:         1931956         779460
RSUnCorr:       42408           0

HEC:            5663            15688
OCD:            23              1646
LCD:            0               252
Total Cells:    3777706909              0
Data Cells:     264163025               0
Drop Cells:     0
Bit Errors:     0               0

LOF:            5               0
LOS:            39              0
LOL:            0               0
LPR:            0               0
ES:             4058            0
SES:            381             0
UAS:            24              0

Im definately thinking their is a problem with the line now, as its still synching issues, i mean 1568kbps sync from 8192? somethings wrong with that.
 
It looks like your brars profile has dropped and then got stuck,goto btspeedtest,google it and do a speed test and post your results and i will help you out,im an expert with bt now as i have had loads of problems in the past with them and thought if they cant help me i will self teach myself about bt's crappy adsl max.
 
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