There was a blip in the night (00.30am — 02.30am approx) where some users had no broadband (this appears to be nation wide).

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.

We are hearing from more and more users who are experiencing very slow Broadband, particularly users who connect to the Corfe Castle exchange — we have had reports from PlusNet, Mad as a Fish and Virgin users in Church Knowle, Kimmeridge and Harmans Cross — they’re at least 2+ miles away from the Corfe Castle Exchange, and have also reported random noise on their telephone lines.

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!

The Swanage Exchange was upgraded earlier this year and now supports 21CN WBC.

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

A lot of people (possibly everybody) in the Purbeck Area are experiencing wild fluctuations in broadband speed again. To be fair, broadband speed results are never the same from one test to the next, but over the last three to four weeks my speeds have varied from a good 6 MB (6000 kbps) to an appalling 0.8 MB (900 kbps) in less than 30 mins… then back to 6 MB again an hour later.

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.

Tiscali customers are facing a second day of frustration as their phone lines are moved/migrated to TalkTalk.

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?

On Monday (4th October 2010), BT announced Race to Infinity, a competition allowing members of the public and businesses the chance to vote for superfast fibre broadband to be installed at their exchange.

What is the Race to Infinity?
The Race to Infinity is a nationwide competition run by BT whereby members of the public and local businesses can vote to get our superfast fibre broadband, BT Infinity, in their exchange. The top 5 exchanges with the most registered interest as a % of the total telephone exchange size on 31st December will be added to BT’s fibre rollout plan. Exchanges need to get a minimum of 1,000 votes in order to enter the race. People will be able to register their interest via the web site (www.bt.com/racetoinfinity) from 4th October to 31st December 2010.

So after the race has finished, BT will upgrade the top 5 exchanges with the most votes registered as a percentage of the total telephone exchange size. But each exchange would need at least 1,000 votes in order to enter the race.

The Isle of Purbeck has 4 exchanges, located in Corfe Castle, Studland, Swanage and Worth Matravers (5 if you count Wareham). This would mean each exchange would be racing against each other, with Swanage and Wareham having a tactical advantage over the rest as they have a lot more people and businesses being served by their exchanges. Corfe, Studland and Worth have a limited number of residents and business with Studland and Worth falling way short of even the required 1,000 votes to enter.

So if Swanage or Wareham managed to get a high percentage then they could possibly be in for a chance, but I suspect Corfe will struggle to even get close to the required 1,000 mark. Interestingly I wonder what BT would do if two towns, one say with a larger exchange ended up with exactly the same percentage — would BT decide to upgrade the larger town in favour of a better profit margin?

To be honest, I feel the whole idea of a race is a bit weird and farcical. BT have already said that most large exchanges would be upgraded over the next two years and smaller exchanges will follow after 2012. There is currently no date set for any of the exchanges in Purbeck though, which would mean we will end up sandwiched between Poole/Bournemouth and Weymouth/Dorchester who already have or will have super-fast broadband by 2012.

To vote or not?
Campaigning BT for faster broadband is always a good idea, so YES, I would definitely suggest voting. But don’t get your hopes up, all I can see this really doing is giving BT a better indication of just how much of a demand there is across the whole country.

Alternatives?
FibreCity is behind the 100Mbps network in Bournemouth. There are rumours that they are looking to expaind their network, but it is unclear if it would be ever be available in the Isle of Purbeck.
Link to FibreCity www.fibrecity.eu.

There is also a strong indication that C4L will be testing their 100Mbps Wireless Broadband in Purbeck at some point. If this happens then there would be no need to use a telephone line, meaning we wouldn’t have to rely on BT’s infrastructure anymore — which has been the main cause of the fluctuations and Major Service Outages (MS) over the last year.
Link to C4L www.c4l.co.uk.

Your Thoughts
What do you think of BT’s Race to Infinity?

If you are experiencing slow broadband today, chances are it is due to the Election Coverage. As remarkable as it sounds, there are countrywide reports of general slowness and BT and ISPs (Internet Service Provides) are attributing the problem to a higher than normal use of the internet!

Normal service should resume once the mess is sorted out!

There is currently an Major Service Outage (MSO) in Weymouth, which is affecting 01305 area codes. This doesn’t appear to be causing any problems within the Purbeck Area, but we are still seeing fluctuating speed-results when running tests via our ISP’s.

WEYMOUTH MSAN 302 : LOSS OF SERVICE
Update Number 1
Detected 05/04/2010 13:05
Started 05/04/2010 13:00
Anticipated Clear Time: 05/04/2010 15:00
Area Codes: 01305

If you are experiencing any problems and decide to contact your own ISP, then it may be worth mentioning the problem(s) in Weymouth.

As of 11.30 am (1st April 2010) there appears to be a problem with broadband in the Corfe Castle and Worth Matravers area.

We are awaiting a response from our ISP and will update this post with any news/info.

Unfortunately, this is not an April Fools, and we would be interested to know if anybody else is having similar problems (please leave comment below).

Note: if you are having problems, please report it to your own ISP so that the problem will ‘hopefully’ be fixed ASAP.

Update – 12.33 pm Service has returned to normal (whatever that means). There is no explanation yet, hopefully our ISP will be able to inform us of the reason.

Update – 13.05 pm BT acknowledged a fault in the Corfe Castle area, but were unclear as what was causing the problem!

Update – 13.31 pm BT have said there is an Internet problem in the Dorset Area affecting 01929 and 01305 dialling codes:

Dialling codes affected: 01929, 01305
Estimated time to resolve: 2hrs
We are aware of a temporary problem in the Dorset area that may be causing some users difficulties accessing the Internet. Our engineers are working to resolve this problem and we apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

Update – 14.37 pm – Looks like the fault has been fixed, but latest update suggests it affected most of south Dorset – area codes affected: 0130, 01300, 01305, 01308, 01929!

Update – 16.30 pm – BT have said this mornings outage was due to a “power issue” in the Salisbury area (see comments below for details).