Packet loss and low upload

[Daniel_C]

Posted about this before in another section but feel its speed related so its under the speed section, obviously.

Suffered really bad packet loss plus low upload speeds (barely 3 mbps) due to a SNR area outage over Christmas, this was resolved towards the end of the month and I thought that was the end of it.

Today, however according to my BQM there's alot of packet loss and speed tests show only 8-10mbps upload (I should be getting 20).

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/41231e6e251120221d7c782baeeae99f0b... 

This is really annoying as I do video calls for work and need a good upload speed. 8 is probably ok to get by on but the platform I use shows packet loss by up to 4% which makes the video slightly choppy.

[Daniel_C]

Thanks for the post Paulina.

I have responded to the PM.

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @Daniel_C,

Thank you for coming back to me via private message and confirming your details. I have now booked you a technician visit for ongoing connection issue – you can check and amend the date and time of your appointment via your online account.

There will be no charge for this visit unless:
•    The technician diagnoses the faults as not being caused by our network/equipment 
•    The technician discovers that the fault or problem relates to your equipment
•    The technician discovers that the fault or problem relates to any system that we are not responsible for
The technician will confirm during their visit if any of these instances apply, and if so, a £25 charge will be applied to your account. 
Please ensure there is someone over the age of 18 present at the time of the visit. If you need to change or cancel your appointment you can do this online or via the MyVM app by 4pm the day before the appointment.
If you do miss an agreed appointment for any reason, a £25 missed appointment charge will be applied to your account on the day of the appointment.

Thank you.

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @Daniel_C,

Thank you for coming back to me and confirming that you're happy with the appointment time and date. 

There's nothing further that you need to do with your Hub or set up. Just need to ensure that a person over the age of 18 will be present at the property during the appointment. 

The engineer should contact you before they arrive, but please be ready to receive a visit from them between the three hour window your appointment is set up for.

Keep us updated on how you get on at the appointment and let us know if there's anything else we can do to help after.

Thank you.

[Daniel_C]

Ok thank you for your assistance and I hope the cause of this ongoing issue can be found during the visit.

[Carley_S]

We hope so too @Daniel_C. 

Let us know how you get on and what the technician advises. 

[Daniel_C]

So engineer arrived nice and early today, just past 8am! He said he suspected low power stream and immediately installed an attenuator in between the coaxial cable and my hub, I suspect to even out the power levels of down and upstream coming from the connection on the street? He said something about the optimal number being 3db or something, he took a reading on his device thing he plugged in. He then checked the connections from the where the cable comes in to the house, and the box outside, which need a bit of tightening. Then took another speed reading which was what I am getting when the service is working properly.

I was advised to do reboots every 2 weeks, and if things are particularly glitchy then to do the pinhole reset thing.

It's only been a day but so far its all stable, will need to monitor for a couple of weeks to see if any of that packet loss comes back, as it was really bad last Tuesday evening.

What if VM do fiddle with the connection on the street in attempt to fix the SNR/downstream power levels etc? Will I still have to use the attenuator?

[Paul_DN]

Hey Daniel,

Hope you are well, glad to hear the Technician arrive nice and early and picked up on the possible issue adding an attenuator to sort the power levels out, how have things been since this, looking at things our end it does look much better?

Regards

Paul.

[Daniel_C]

Hi Paul its only been 3 days but its looking alright so far. But I need to monitor it for longer to really tell if its making a difference. 

When the upload speed came back just before the new year the packet loss and upload speed drops came back around 2 weeks later which is why I'm remaining cautious.

[Tom_W1]

Hi @Daniel_C, thanks for your reply.

That's great to hear that things seem to have improved for you, but I appreciate you may need to monitor things a little longer.

Please keep us up to date on here and we'll do our best to help you further if required.

Many thanks

[Daniel_C]

Everything had been more settled since the last post but today I've experienced the heavy packet loss all day (from 9am-9pm) so I don't know whether this is an area fault or something else.