[Solved] Fibre has screwed up my internet connection

[joddle]

HELP PLEASE.....

 

Up until earlier this week I have had internet via copper cable running at around 8-15MBPS which although not fast worked pretty well for downloads although uploading was normally only 0.5 to 1 mbps which made some work very slow. We run several pcs on from the Ethernet connetions and have had up to 4 connected at any one time but most not accessing the internet most of the time so all worked pretty well and our little network enabled file sharing etc to work really well.

 

A part of a package offer, we have now had fibre installed through Orange with a supposed speed of 100mbps although there is a promotion where for a while we have 500mbps.

 

The engineer installed the fibre and connected us up and straight away there were issues. According to the Ookla speed test I could only get download speeds about the same as I was having on the copper connection. The engineer came and went several times over the next three days and he too was having the same issue on his laptop.

 

This morning a second engineer came and declared that it was all our fault – we had “too many PCs connected and the cookies were sapping all the line speed”. After much fiddling he “showed” us that there was a speed of 500mbps and indeed when I connected my laptop it was – but within 30 minutes of them leaving it was back to around 15 – 40.

 

What is strange is that the up-speed is nearly always at least double the down-speed when it is running slow, occasionally going as high as 200 or more on the upload test.

 

To try an eliminate the “too many pcs” issue and also “too many cookies” I have disabled the wifi and disconnected all the other pcs from the router and run the Ookla tests again many times over using a modern i5 laptop which has a very recent install of W10 and hardly anything installed (the same pc which recorded 500mbps earlier when the engineer was here) The results I now get are pitiful with download speeds as low as 15 mbps and rarely above 50.

 

One final thing. We contracted to have fibre direct to the router but when the engineer came he said that was not possible as they are using Movistar’s fibre cable and so have to put a small box between the fibre point which then feeds the router via a wan socket

 

Of course we are going to go back to Orange after the weekend to complain again but has anyone any idea what may be happening here? I have no faith in a so called engineer who seems to know nothing about bandwidth usage. My own suspicions are maybe a damaged fibre cable in the house – (it was hurriedly stapled to the wall by the engineer which I thought was a pretty crude way – could it be slightly crushed and would that that explain anything? or is there a more logical reason?

 

I had thought of disconnecting the whole system and re-connecting it directly to the fibre entry point to the property thus eliminating the internal fibre run – the plugs seem to be the same so would that be possible or would I damage it?

 

Hoping someone out the can make more sense of this than Orange seem to!

[AWS]

It's possible they installed a bad router. You can connect directly to the fiber box with a laptop to test the connection. If it works as expected then they should change out the router.

[joddle]

They did change the router in their investigations but that changed nothing - however I can't connect direct to the fibre box as the converter changes the fibre line to a lan type connection and so I have to use that. Anyway several tests today show speeds from near zero for download to about 100+ and upload from about 10 to 500 - depending the time the test was run. Also made sure nothing else was running on the network or even plugged in when testing.

I did find one issue - one of my lan cables was damaged so I have replace that and the others are Cat.5e so should be fine - not very long anyway 3m being the longest.

[KenB]

Hi,

 

When I had fibre fitted I had similar problems to you.

Speeds down to what I had pre-fibre.

 

The solution was found when the engineer replaced the master socket.

He explained that it wasn't designed for Fibre and should have been replaced on the change over.

 

It is worth asking if you still have the same socket fitted.

[joddle]

No we have a brand new socket - the fibre cable is also brand new to the street - only a month old and the feed from that to the property was only put in last week. The orange engineer then installed the internal fibre link from the master box just inside the property to the room where the router is - only about 5 metres away.

 

Today the results have been variable to say the least. FIrst thing this morning I was able to get 500 up and down on my lapptop but by midday this was back to the old copper netword speeds again for downloads although the up speed is always much higher

 

On one PC - an older Dell 755 the speeds never get much above 200 and I pit that down to the older network card but again the speeds cvary so much its almost impossible to belive its just an adapter fault..

[KenB]

If you have all new fibre cables - a new master socket - and a new router this seems to indicate that the fault lies with the supplier.

 

I assume that you are going to show the attached results to the engineer when he shows up?

[Rustys]

@joddle when you had you previous internet do you know if there was any special configuration that was done to the TCP settings?

 

How is it connected from the Fiber box to the Router?

(What type of cables)

Edited August 28, 2018 by Rustys

[joddle]

After a long time we have been told by Orange that our speed issues were due to a microwave-link tower near where we live and owned by Movistar having been struck by lightning. Most if its kit was destroyed and so has had to be rebuilt almost from scratch which has taken a few months. There were many people in our area experiencing the same sorts of issues that we have had. At least now in December the issues appear to have been sorted and we now get new speeds of near 100MBPS up and down so at last I am happy with our setup. However we seem to have lost our 500mbps promotion but that's something we can take up with Orange later (I don't need that sort of speed anyway). My biggest gripe however, is that Orange knew of the issue when we signed up with them but said nothing! I don't even think the Orange sales staff knew about it and nor did the engineers who did our installation when obviously they should have!

[KenB]

Hi

 

Good to hear that your expected speed is back.

I suspected [ previous post ] that it was an external issue.

I am not surprised that Orange made no mention of it to you. Why let a little thing like connection speed get in the way of a sale ??

 

Let's hope that the New Year brings you better luck :)