The problem should be resolved by 6.25. If you are still having problems, try restarting (power off/on) your modem/router.

Broadband Problem in the Reading and Surrounding areas

Date & Time: Thu 03/01/2013 at 04:48
Estimated time to resolve: 03/01/13 06:25

We know that some of our customers in the Reading and Surrounding areas are having trouble with their broadband connection at the moment.

Affecting multiple area codes:

17/12/2012 00:53 Fixed

If you still have problems or no broadband, try restarting your modem or router.

Update: This is starting to be a joke, no broadband all day, lots of businesses have suffered today!

Update 2: at 8.12pm all broadband appears to have been restored.

The following info/details are from Zen Internets status page:

• 03/08/2012 20:39 / FINAL — Service has been restored as of 20:14; by completing: a change of hardware. BT regrets any inconvenience this may have caused
• 03/08/2012 17:09 / 12 — Fault diagnosis is ongoing. Next update will be at 21:00 sooner if significant progress made
• 03/08/2012 16:27 / 11 — Fault diagnosis is ongoing. Next update will be at 17:30 or sooner if significant progress made
• 03/08/2012 15:31 / 10 — Spare card on site at Wareham. An engineer has now been pinned to the task. His ETA is unknown at present
• 03/08/2012 15:30 / 9 — Fault diagnosis is ongoing. Next update will be at 17:30 or sooner if significant progress made
• 03/08/2012 13:29 / 8 — An engineer has been tasked to site and new hardware ordered
• 03/08/2012 12:21 / 7 — Fault diagnosis is ongoing
• 08/2012 10:39 / 6 — This incident is due to a fibre fault which BT is progressing
• 03/08/2012 08:31 / 5 — Fault diagnosis is ongoing
• 03/08/2012 07:23 / 4 — Engineer is onsite working with the operational team to restore full service. Next update will be at 08:30
• 03/08/2012 04:31 / 3 — BT are awaiting delivery of hardware. Due at 06:45
• 03/08/2012 03:35 / 2 — Engineer on site at Wareham investigating cause of the failure. Hardware ordered
• 03/08/2012 02:24 / 1 — Initial diagnostics underway

WORTH MATRAVERS & CORFE CASTLE MUX 101 : DEGRADED SERVICE
Incident Details: At the moment some of your Broadband End Users may be experiencing a degradation of Broadband Service.
Area Codes: 01929
Cleared: 09/07/2012 17:00 (estimated)

Lasted Updated 16:45

• The problem is now fixed — if you are still experiencing problems, first restart/reboot your Router (turn it off at the mains for at least 10 seconds). If you still have problems, contact your ISP.
• 09/07/2012 16:40 / FINAL — Service has been restored as of 16:20 by completing a change of hardware. BT regrets any inconvenience this may have caused.
• 09/07/2012 14:12 / 4 — Spare card ordered from the stores. Estimated time of arrival 16:00.
• 09/07/2012 13:24 / 3 — Spare card ordered from the stores. No estimated time of arrival at present.
• 09/07/2012 11:55 / 2 — Engineer en-route to Wareham to investigate.
• 09/07/2012 10:50 / 1 — Completing initial diagnostics. Next update will be at 12:00.

My ISP confirmed BT Wholesale had an outage over night and several other ISPs (internet service providers) have also reported customers with no service.

If you were affected or still have no broadband, try restarting your router/modem, if that doesn’t work, contact your ISP and report the problem.

A helpful support person confirmed that they have had to turn on ‘Interleaving’, which appears to help, but there are several drawbacks to using this.

What is Interleaving?

Interleaving is a form of error correction that can help reduce the number of ‘errors’ on a line. This will be activated by default on new broadband services and where a fault has previously been reported. It helps to stabilise a line that might otherwise suffer frequent disconnections. One drawback of interleaving is that it can increase ping times, which may cause problems for people that play online games. Whilst we’d recommend against it, if it is switched on, interleaving can be turned off if you ask us.
Source: PlusNet

Traditionally adsl used what is known as “FAST” method for transmitting data.
MaxDSL & LLU can make use of a technology called Interleaving to help maintain the tolerance against noise on longer length lines.

If during transit more than a certain amount of data has been lost then the data cannot be correctly decoded by your router. Short bursts of noise on the line can cause these data packets to become corrupt and the modem has to re-request data which in turn can slow down the overall rate at which data is transmitted.

Interleaving is a method of taking data packets, chopping them up into smaller bits and then rearranging them so that once contiguous data is now spaced further apart into a non continuous stream. Data packets are re-assembled by your modem.

If your line is particularly susceptible to bursts of noise then interleaving should improve your adsl experience simply because if you lose a whole batch of data then this could cause your modem to loose sync with the exchange.

By now you may be asking if interleaving is so good, then why isn’t it used by default?
The answer to that is that it can also have a downside – chopping up, rearranging and decoding of the data adds a small amount of additional time it takes for data transmission. Forward Error Correction will also add to the delay, since the check bytes will take additional transmission time.

BT state that interleaving can increase latency by an additional 20-40ms. Whilst this will not be noticeable to the vast majority of users, ardent gamers are the ones most likely to complain about additional latency and therefore prefer a slower synch speed than higher latency.

It should also be pointed out that whilst BTw state that applying interleaving shouldn’t reduce your line speed, it does reduce the maximum line rate achievable from 8128kbps to 7616kbps due to the additional overhead required for check bytes.
Source: kitz.co.uk

We would be interested to hear from anybody who is experiencing very slow Broadband in Purbeck. We would also be interested to hear what ISPs are saying is causing the problem(s) and how they are fixing them.

Note: Remember to turn your Router off/on and check all cabling before calling your ISP, you can guarantee they will ask you to do this first before they investigate the problem!

This means broadband users should get much faster download and upload speeds. Some users might get close to 24Mbps, but most will probably see double their existing speed.

What is “21CN”?
21CN (21st Century Network) is a Next Generation Network (NGN) being deployed by British Telecom over the next 5 years. The core aim of the project is to bring the UK’s telecoms network in to the digital age, whilst at the same time allowing BT to save up to £1billion per year in costs. The total cost of the project is estimated at £10billion.

The following are some of the key changes that 21CN will bring:

• The national PSTN phone network will be moved on to a digital IP network
• The retirement of 16 existing legacy networks and the introduction of a single “multi-service” network
• The national roll-out of ADSL2+, offering services at up to 24Mbps. ADSL2+ Annex M will also be deployed, offering upstream rates of up to 2.5Mbps
• A complete overhaul of the broadband services offered. A range of new configurable QoS (Quality of Service) products will be made available

In recent years BT has seen its traditional revenue sources (i.e. phone calls) decline considerably, and its “new wave” products (such as broadband) explode in popularity. Ultimately, 21CN should help BT to surf this new wave of demand and reduce their dependence on traditional revenue streams.

Source: SamKnows.com — 21CN Overview: More details about BT Wholesale 21CN

Swanage ADSL status:
ADSL Max status: Enabled as of 01/10/2003
SDSL status: Enabled as of 31/03/2006
21CN WBC status: Enabled 2012

Consistency in speed appears to be the number one problem (frustration) here in the Isle of Purbeck.

A number of people are running speed tests on a regular bases – I personally run hour tests using www.mybroadbandspeed.co.uk as it keeps a record of all your tests and also allows you to export the results.

We would like to hear from anybody in the Purbeck area (Wareham through to Swanage) who is also experiencing fluctuating broadband speeds.

Please leave a comment below, stating your broadband supplier and a brief overview of the best and worst speeds.

Purbeck Broadband has heard from a number of customers who have no phone or broadband service. When speaking to customer support, they are told disruptions could last 24 hours, the same answer was given last week!

Are you a Tiscali user? Have any thoughts good or bad?