My new LLU connection: Almost as slow as dialup (NOW FIXED!)

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › My new LLU connection: Almost as slow as dialup (NOW FIXED!)

east

33 posts

Geek

#22577 1-Jun-2008 14:14

Thought I'd add my Orcon experience to the pile.

I recently joined Orcon on their Auckland Central exchange, and was fine with the week or so it took for it to be connected.

When the date finally came, I plugged in my router and nothing happened. The line was completely dead.
After a week or so, going through the grindingly slow process of elimination with Orcon tech support, they sent around a Chorus technician, who promptly found the line was disconnected at the telephone pole. (We haven't had a phone for a while).

Relieved to finally be connected, I did a few speed tests and was bitterly disappointed.

Speedtest websites showed my d/l rate to be around 450kbps, and my u/l to be around 550kbps.

When Orcon suggested this might be a peak-time congestion issue (which would be unacceptable anyway), I tested it again at different times of the day and night. I recieved the same result.

Even my orcon router tells me:

Downstream rate: 472kbps
Upstream rate: 572kbps

I'm not so knowlegable in this area, but to me my line attenuation looks pretty bad...

Maximum line rate:	472 kbps (upstream)
Noise margin:	6.2 dB (upstream)
Line attenuation:	51.6 dB (upstream)
Output power:	15.1 dBm (upstream)

Anyway, I've given all this information to Orcon who seemed interested at first, emailing me straight back.
But since then (the 27th May) they haven't followed up at all. Like others in this forum I've found their support to be very hit and miss.

I'm in Eden Terrace, so I'm not that close to the exchange, but I'm sure I should be getting better speeds than this.

If anyone has any ideas I would greatly appreciate them... or a followup from Duncan would make my day!

duncanblair

248 posts

Master Geek

Trusted

#135130 3-Jun-2008 11:01

Hi East,

You are a significant distance from the exchange in Eden Terrace, however I would have thought you could do better than that.

I will chase the guys to make sure they take a look at your ticket.

east

33 posts

Geek

#135163 3-Jun-2008 13:06

Thanks Duncan. Much appreciated.
Orcon support got back to me yesterday, and are escalating my ticket to their Level 2 team!

I agree that I am some distance from the exchange. I wasn't expecting 24Mbit/s or anything.. but at least 4 or 5 would be nice...

I measured the distance from my house by road to the exchange, added 500 metres for luck and figured out that I'm around 2.5 to 3kms from the exchange (unless the phonelines do some crazy dog-leg route to my house).

With that and my line attenuation in mind (51.6 dB), my theoretical max speed should be around 5Mb/s, according to this graph:
http://www.internode.on.net/residential/internet/home_adsl/extreme/

And yes, I've heard that favourite tech-support line of "there are many factors that could contribute to slow speeds....rahrahrah", but surely commonsense would say that if my download speeds are slower than my upload speeds (see above post), something is wrong at the exchange? I don't know, I'm not an expert.

Anyway, we'll see what level 2 can do!

0o0

46 posts

Geek

#135256 3-Jun-2008 18:41

I've been on Orcon's adsl2+ Ellerslie exchange for about a month and have a similar line attenuation, which fluctuates slightly around 45db, as of now its 48dB and i have a sync rate of 4.9mbps /1020kbps up

Maximum line rate:	4872 kbps
Noise margin:	5.5 dB
Line attenuation:	48 dB

So, with 51+db you should achieve something similar in the range of 4-5mb.
Also, have you tired using a different router/modem? or using a different phone jack?
Although in your case its highly unlikely its a problem on your end, good luck with tier 2.

east

33 posts

Geek

#135274 3-Jun-2008 19:13

I've tried using a different jackpoint, but don't really have access to a different router.

I've got a hunch that the problem could be with the line. When I got connected at the exchange it took about a week to figure out my line was disconnected at the pole outside my house. I'm just wondering what other lovely surprises telecom might have left me...
Tier 2 have said if worst comes to worse they'll send out a technician. Only thing that worries me is if they find it's something wrong on my end they'll sting me for $81 or so. I wonder if that'll still apply if the problem is with the router Orcon supplied... I've done all the troubleshooting I can...

Anyway, it seems things are being hurried along a little now.

east

33 posts

Geek

#135728 5-Jun-2008 16:46

My connection has now been fixed! Turns out tier 2 support is a slick machine.

June 3rd I got an email from my inital orcon support guy saying he'd passed my ticket on to tier 2.
June 5th (today) I come home to find a Chorus technician looking stumped outside my house.
He says that he's getting 5Mb/s to the cabinet, but sh*t-all to my place. He then goes up the pole and fiddles around a bit, and suddenly I've got 5Mbps to my router! Hoorah! Pretty much what I was expecting to get at my distance from the exchange.

He told me it was lucky he was able to fix it, otherwise it would have gone to Chorus's cable guys who apparently have a backlog of 300 or so cases to deal with. I hate to imagine how long many days it would have taken me to get to the front of that queue.

So, I'd like to make it clear that in this instance Orcon was completely not at fault, and in the end they did a really good job to push my problem through so quickly with Chorus.

Copper sucks....!