Worth booking an engineer visit?
 

After my recent posts about my OpenVPN sessions going from near linespeed for a couple of years, to now struggling to hit 5MB/sec on multiple providers I did some digging. I get 1000s of pre and post RS errors, a number of T3 and T4 timeouts and other issues, as well as random 'grinding to a halt' on the actual cable line itself (i.e. sans VPN).

Our power levels have always been around 0, which is nice. I just logged into the SH2 and noticed they're now in the region of -5.55 dBmV. We have 8x QAM256 downstream channels and 3x 64QAM upstream channels if that's any use.

As we're on a new build (and rapidly expanding) estate I imagine lots of other installs have taken place and either the extra load has changed our signal levels (?) or maybe we've been pushed to a different place in the cab while someone else was being installed.

Is it worth booking an engineer to have a look? I know Seph's guide recommends -3 at the lowest and even VM spec stops at -5. Just wondering if it might improve things that's all. We've been selected for the upcoming hardware trial so I thought it'd make sense to ensure everything was as it should be before taking part.

Worth a punt or not worth bothering about? I've attached the downstream and upstream pages FYI, not long after another reboot. Thanks in advance. :)

Re: Worth booking an engineer visit?
 

After the obligatory reboot, VM's line test reports it couldn't complete due to a problem, and my power levels are now -6 and beyond. Time to make a phone call either way it seems.

ETA: Well the chap overseas told me the power levels are borked and we're seeing disconnections because of high utilisation. He can't book an engineer because VM will cancel it automatically due to the utilisation fault. 'Review date' is the end of September. Asked to speak to cancellations so he cut off the call 'accidentally'. Rang back to CS and was told they'd only be able to discount for any full days' lost service. That's OK, I'm out of contract and had been considering FTTC so let's just terminate the services. I'm not paying £80 a month for a TV that keeps cutting out for 12 hours at a time and flaky broadband. "Oh wait I'll just check your account sir"... twenty minutes on hold and they've cut me off again.

I had another round of kidney surgery this afternoon so my mood isn't brilliant to begin with. I think I'll wait until tomorrow and speak to cancellations in the UK team. Thanks anyway guys.

Re: Worth booking an engineer visit?
 

Just so you know, if you can get a fault-reference for the utilisation issue, VM will give you a credit against your broadband charges. There's enough people on the community forum getting one, and I too have been getting one since quite a few months for the same.

Good luck and hope it works out.

Re: Worth booking an engineer visit?
 

Thanks very much for replying. I didn't get around to phoning them today but I'll definitely play that card when I do. Cheers.