What profile is used for EE VDSL connections?

[steve_v]

https://kitz.co.uk/adsl/DLM.htm explains that there is a choice of three profiles for managing a VDSL line - speed, standard and stable.

What does EE use?

The reason I ask is that my line appears to be banded at 18000kbps and is not recovering (I've seen this line do 26Mbps when I was with plusnet), even though the SNRM is over 11dB and the ES is below the daily limit explained in the above link. It has been stable for over 10 days and so I was hoping it would recover by now.

[XRaySpeX]

The QLT should be silent on a corded phone.

The DLM system has put you on a banded profile in response to past errors on your line, at the top of the up to 18 Meg band of these VDSL Banded Profiles,. You need to give the DLM time to relent & remove any banding. If your sync speed at the test socket remains stuck at the same speed for 10 days you should ask EE to investigate the underlying fault. If a fault is found and fixed then the OR engineer may request a DLM reset. However should significant errors persist the DLM will reapply banding.

[steve_v]

Not sure about the QLT then - it is noisy enough for me to know it is not disconnected but it is very quiet - much quieter than the sound of my breathing, for example. It is also only a cheap phone - we generally use our mobiles and I only bought that phone for any stray calls that still come in on the land line - so could it be the phones amplifier that I am hearing? Maybe will connect the phone to someone else's line and try the test again.

Will leave the modem connected to the test socket for the next couple of weeks. Will then at least have some stats for any changes that are made. Will raise with EE if it does not change by the end of the month.

I appreciate that the DLM works to stabilise people's lines but the problem is that there is no way of knowing if/when it will act. The original document I posted suggests that people could be happily using their connection while having thousands of ES a day, without any DLM intervention, but then a brief spike that takes them over the limit will see DLM act and unless their line recovers to a much lower error rate, they will be stuck. I also don't know if my line is OK now (as we don't know the profile being used) and I just have to wait or if DLM still objects to something about my line.

Thanks again for your help,

Steve

[XRaySpeX]

Thanks! You're welcome 🙂 ! Glad I could be of assistance

[mikeliuk]

Hi @steve_v ,

Not related to banding (your link says "ISP's known to use NGA Standard Profile: EE, Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone") but I guess you have a Vigor 130 because you are comfortable with networking. Did you look into this functionality: https://www.draytek.com/support/knowledge-base/4800

It seems like excessively fine control to give to end-users but there are lots of reports on other service provider forums suggesting people have had success with it.

A recent discussion is https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/dslrouter/4682647-draytek-vigor-130-snr-stats.html

As mentioned it won't help with the banding (could make the issue worse) but no one gets a DrayTek if they don't like tweaking things. 😀

[steve_v]

Hello,

Yes, I've seen the vdsl snr command - it can be used to change the target SNR margin by +/-5db in 0.1db steps.

I've left it at 0 as reducing it will possibly let me get a faster upstream connection but at the expense of stability, which I really need right now to get the line unbanded. As I am connected to an ECI cabinet, it is something that I might very cautiously experiment with once I am unbanded as the ECI cabinets work with a 6db target and my SNR does not seem to vary much through the day. On the otherhand, a -1 db change is probably only going to give me 1 or 2 extra Mbps so perhaps not worth the risk. 

I have heard of people raising the offset to force the line to a lower sync speed to get a really stable line to help get rid of the banding. But I am seeing a SNR of about 10db anyway, so don't get that many errors on the line at the moment and so going to 11db (current target of 6db plus 5db offset) is probably not going to make any difference.

I have swapped the 130 for a HG612 for now. This is to rule out the 130 being faulty or having any firmware bugs or incompatibilities with my line. It also lets me use DSLStats to monitor the modem. Was a bit painful having to log into the 130 to keep checking the stats and you don't get the hour by hour breakdown. I see that DSLStats has some "Advanced Tweaks" to apply a "Target SNRM offset" but, again, it is not something I am going to experiment with now.

I also saw about EE using the standard profile but I believe that ISPs can change it for individual customers (have seen plusnet customers request stable rather than speed, etc) so there is the possibilty that EE have put me on the stable profile but there doesn't seem to be any way of finding this out. If it is possible to change, then I would like to be put on the speed profile. As I am load balancing a couple of connections (my wife and I work from home and we have 4 kids so need the bandwidth), any additional drops are not going to be noticeable.

I am looking forward to FTTP, as I can drop the multiple connections and load balancing and stop worrying about modem config, but there aren't any plans for it to be installed in my area. Might even consider Starlink but it is £90 a month and about £500 for the hardware!

Thanks,

Steve

[mikeliuk]

I have the option of FibreNest FTTP which I've seen exceed 500 Mbps for my neighbours but can't justify it for the demand I have, so I've cheaped out with 4G LTE+ (highest bandwidth, Cat4 router, I've seen is about 35 Mbps down, and 68 Mbps up, hoping a future 5G router will help with this).

Based on my previous experience with Virgin Media/cable and BT/VDSL, mobile broadband is becoming pretty competitive with fixed line services. I'm even hoping 5G mobile broadband means I might be able to skip FTTP entirely at a lower price point (bursty but I'm hoping for higher peaks).

I'm hoping DrayTek will bring out a 5G dual-SIM Wifi 6 router as their current range is getting dated from a consumer perspective (new shiny things) but obviously still fine for enterprise (boring old technology). 🤓

I guess one key advantage of mobile broadband is that I'm not reliant on a single point of failure which is very hard (for a consumer) to replace (by persuading the supplier): a cable to the house. I can replace the router and SIM very easily, and have a good choice of towers nearby (even connecting to some surprisingly far away).

Like in enterprise, high demand is a good thing. High demand means a larger budget and hence better toys. 😂

[steve_v]

I am using a B818 Huawei 4G+ router as the other connection into the load balancer.

Generally get around 100Mbps download, but have seen over 200Mbps! However, the latency is a bit higher and the remote desktop connection software that I use to connect to my work computer doesn't seem to like it. Think I get the good download speed as I can actually see the tower from my garden!

It does make the FTTC "fibre" solutions look a bit tired. But again people's experience with 4G seems as hit and miss as with FTTC. Luckily, I seem to have good luck with 4G to make up for the FTTC performance! 5G will offer better speeds and latency so will be interesting to see what happens. Unfortunately, I am not in a 5G area, though.

[steve_v]

As an update to the original question - it does look like EE are using the standard profile for my connection. On Saturday morning, the connection had resync'ed to 20Mbps.

Now am seeing a few more errors - over the 144 threshold - so will see if it gets any better.

[XRaySpeX]

I expect you are still on a banded profile in the up to 20 Meg band

[steve_v]

Agreed:

Max: Upstream rate = 4415 Kbps, Downstream rate = 26060 Kbps
Bearer: 0, Upstream rate = 4394 Kbps, Downstream rate = 19998 Kbps

Down Up
SNR (dB): 10.0 6.1

it syncs at that speed consistently and that is the top of one of the bands listed here - https://kitz.co.uk/adsl/DLM_profiles.htm

Hopefully will get some good days and see a low ES count so that get moved up to the next band. I would be OK on the speed profile as the ES count I am seeing is below the limit for that profile. Unfortunately, am getting just higher than allowed for the standard profile.