Plusnet Discussion Thread

[bledd]

I don't know if its the service or the router/wifi but streaming via the Firestick has started stuttering a lot since switching from Sky to Plusnet.

For streaming, always use a wired connection. WiFi is for lightweight connections (phones etc)

 

[robj20]

For streaming, always use a wired connection. WiFi is for lightweight connections (phones etc)

Great. Only firestick is WiFi only. Also doesn't explain why it had been fine for 18 months with Sky and sky router. Now with plusnet and their router it isn't.

 

[ChrisD.]

Great. Only firestick is WiFi only. Also doesn't explain why it had been fine for 18 months with Sky and sky router. Now with plusnet and their router it isn't.

I'm going to take a wild guess and say that the wifi on the PN router isn't as good as Sky's?

Try a different channel or using 2G instead of 5G if applicable.

 

[robj20]

I guess I could see if it's using the 5g and swap it to the 2.4 see if that helps.

 

[bledd]

How far is your router? I've never used my Plusnet router, went straight to a Unifi

 

[robj20]

The room below. Firestick speed it fluctuating between good and fair. The 5G shows as poor.

I'm eyeing up the nanoHD.

 

[Uther]

Great. Only firestick is WiFi only. Also doesn't explain why it had been fine for 18 months with Sky and sky router. Now with plusnet and their router it isn't.

You can get an ethernet adapter for the firestick, no idea how good it is though.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Amazon-Ethernet-Adaptor-Remote-models/dp/B01LXP5TXI

 

[robj20]

Not for the fire stick I have.

 

[realscot]

I have plusnet, and found that firestick was a waste of time with plusnet router, also had lots of wifi dropouts, ended up buying my own router and that solved the problem.

 

[Steveocee]

Randomly just checked and my oh so amazing ping has gone back to normal now Weirdly the same time as my mothers connection went off totally but she is served from a different cab so no idea what's going on there.

 

[Simps]

Randomly just checked and my oh so amazing ping has gone back to normal now Weirdly the same time as my mothers connection went off totally but she is served from a different cab so no idea what's going on there.

Yeah same and I lost D/L speed too even though the max rate on my line has gone up. My ping went back to normal nearly 2 weeks a go now. Forgot to post in here.
My line dropped after 3 days and the nice ping was gone. piff paff puff gone
I asked on the pn forums and they say they don't know anything....

 

[robj20]

My line speed had dropped significantly as well only been with them a month or two started at 60+ all the time averaging less than 30 now.
Not impressed sky was so much more reliable.

First two tests were 74 and 61, now in getting 27.

 

[Simps]

My line speed had dropped significantly as well only been with them a month or two started at 60+ all the time averaging less than 30 now.
Not impressed sky was so much more reliable.

First two tests were 74 and 61, now in getting 27.

That's got to be handback territory, ask on the forums. The staff on there are great and I find their support loads better than BT ever were. I would not be impressed with that kind of drop in speed.

 

[djimty]

I'm on Plusnet Fibre but their router is pretty poor and makes a weird buzzing noice when using when using 5ghz. I'm pretty lost when it comes to routers and they are so many out there, can anyone recommend a better Router? I mainly game and torrent quite a lot (which I leave on at night).

 

[bremen1874]

It shouldn't be buzzing. Have you moaned at Plusnet to get it replaced?

If you do want to replace it with a different router what makes the current one 'pretty poor'?

How much are you willing to spend?

 

[robj20]

I'm on Plusnet Fibre but their router is pretty poor and makes a weird buzzing noice when using when using 5ghz. I'm pretty lost when it comes to routers and they are so many out there, can anyone recommend a better Router? I mainly game and torrent quite a lot (which I leave on at night).

Mine makes a notificable noise as well when you're using it.

That's got to be handback territory, ask on the forums. The staff on there are great and I find their support loads better than BT ever were. I would not be impressed with that kind of drop in speed.

The sync speed is nice and high so not sure what it could be. Have to connect the laptop tonight wired and see what that says.

 

[djimty]

It shouldn't be buzzing. Have you moaned at Plusnet to get it replaced?

If you do want to replace it with a different router what makes the current one 'pretty poor'?

How much are you willing to spend?

It's an issue with their routers. it's a common problem unfortuantely, their solution is to 'switch over to 2.4ghz' .

I used to use the Billion 7800n which was perfect before and ever since I switched over to the new Plusnet router, the line drops a lot especially durings game sessions (For example: I have two Gaming PC's, so when I play PUBG on one and my nephew plays Fortnite on the other, we both get hit with Lag at the exact same time and this happens a lot). This never happened before with the Billion router .

Ideally I dont want to spend so much, I just want something reliable with good Wifi range so looking around under £100.

 

[robj20]

Think my router must be dying.

Did 3 tests, 1st (bottom) on 5Ghz wireless, 2nd (middle) 2.4Ghz wireless 3rd (top) cabled. Literally inches away from the router as well.

I then did a test via the BT speed test and 5ghz was at 17Mbps, 2.4Ghz was at 68Mbps and cabled 71Mbps.

So looks like 5Ghz dieing, i have that noise when using 5Ghz as well.

 

[Simps]

My line dropped this morning at 5am after being up for 10.38 days. Got my good pings back again too.
05:09:33, 03 Jan. DSL Link Up: Down Rate=51366Kbps, Up Rate=10368Kbps; SNR Margin Down=6.2dB, Up=6.1dB


C:\Users\Simps>ping bbc.co.uk

Pinging bbc.co.uk [151.101.64.81] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 151.101.64.81: bytes=32 time=10ms TTL=57
Reply from 151.101.64.81: bytes=32 time=11ms TTL=57
Reply from 151.101.64.81: bytes=32 time=10ms TTL=57
Reply from 151.101.64.81: bytes=32 time=10ms TTL=57

Ping statistics for 151.101.64.81:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 10ms, Maximum = 11ms, Average = 10ms

C:\Users\Simps>ping 1.1.1.1

Pinging 1.1.1.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 1.1.1.1: bytes=32 time=10ms TTL=57
Reply from 1.1.1.1: bytes=32 time=10ms TTL=57
Reply from 1.1.1.1: bytes=32 time=10ms TTL=57
Reply from 1.1.1.1: bytes=32 time=10ms TTL=57

Ping statistics for 1.1.1.1:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 10ms, Maximum = 10ms, Average = 10ms

C:\Users\Simps>ping 8.8.8.8

Pinging 8.8.8.8 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=10ms TTL=121
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=121
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=10ms TTL=121
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=10ms TTL=121

Ping statistics for 8.8.8.8:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 10ms, Maximum = 12ms, Average = 10ms

C:\Users\Simps> ping google.co.uk

Pinging google.co.uk [216.58.206.67] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 216.58.206.67: bytes=32 time=10ms TTL=54
Reply from 216.58.206.67: bytes=32 time=11ms TTL=54
Reply from 216.58.206.67: bytes=32 time=11ms TTL=54
Reply from 216.58.206.67: bytes=32 time=10ms TTL=54

Ping statistics for 216.58.206.67:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 10ms, Maximum = 11ms, Average = 10ms

C:\Users\Simps>ping google.com

Pinging google.com [216.58.206.46] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 216.58.206.46: bytes=32 time=10ms TTL=54
Reply from 216.58.206.46: bytes=32 time=10ms TTL=54
Reply from 216.58.206.46: bytes=32 time=10ms TTL=54
Reply from 216.58.206.46: bytes=32 time=10ms TTL=54

Ping statistics for 216.58.206.46:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 10ms, Maximum = 10ms, Average = 10ms

Today

A few days ago

My max attainable has dropped 5Mbps, it was 56-57

5. VDSL uptime: 0 days, 06:51:00
6. Data Rate: 10368 / 51366
7. Maximum Data Rate: 10468 / 51402
8. Noise Margin: 6.1 / 6.0
9. Line Attenuation: 27.1 / 21.0
10. Signal Attenuation: 0.0 / 0.0

I've not had this much instability on my line as what I'm seeing in the last 3 months.
There was a engineer in my cab yesterday and the day before but don't know what he was doing.

 

[~cw]

That's got to be handback territory, ask on the forums. The staff on there are great and I find their support loads better than BT ever were. I would not be impressed with that kind of drop in speed.

Sounds like you've either had your line disturbed upstream of your property, there's possibly water ingress affecting your line or, worse still, you've had pairs swapped.

Possibly the engineer has even taken your better pair and swapped you to a worse pair because another customer had a fault (this happens more than we'd think, according to one OR engineer I was feeding with tea and biscuits!)


Before you go down the route of asking PN and BT to investigate this, SCREENSHOT ALL OF THE RATES ON THE BT DSLCHECKER SITE for your line, including both Clean and Impacted estimates.

Fun story time!
I had a Max Fibre line installed as soon as it became available on my street, which connected just shy of the max - 74 down, 19 up actual throughput.

The line developed a voice fault late 2017. After the first engineer visit they mumbled about insufficient spare pairs, cold weather preventing easy access to telegraph pole, yada yada... They ended up scavenging a pair from another bundle and my speeds went to ****. Utter ****. 30 meg from 74.

And more amusingly, BT's own automated systems 'relearned' the line -- without me knowing about this -- so when I next checked my line statistics on DSLChecker, the 'clean' and 'impacted' rates were DRASTICALLY lower - about 54 meg!

So as my actual rates were still lower than impacted, PN were able to action another engineer visit - not much changed and I lost my dial tone again. A THIRD visit fixed the dial tone and most of the line buzz (single leg dis I think was the root cause) but the FTTC speed never returned to its original speeds.

I continued to protest this with PN, once my line speed got inside the impacted range (about 50 odd meg) the response every time was "sorry, there's not much we can do as you're already getting the maximum rates attainable by your line according to the Openreach system. You can always agree to pay the BT callout charge and have another engineer visit..."



Be very wary of BT Openreach and their sneaky automated systems. When they're able to effect revisionist history to their line speed systems, the truth is whatever they say it is. If you lose broadband speed through no fault of your own and subsequent incompetent engineer work, you can end up in a Computer Says No scenario.

I ended up moving at that point due to life (not because of the broadband speed, ha...) but it's a shame I could never get the fibre speed issue fixed.