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Exchange or internal problem?

I have been suffering from low connection speeds lately.

It all started in the beginning of the week with frequent disconnections. The connection speed stayed the same after the first few disconnections, but then it started to drop. My average connection was 6MB, now it is 135KB. I have of course reported this to my ISP (ADSL24), and they have checked with their supplier (Murphx) and apparently there are no problems there. So my ISP asked me to check my wiring and cabling, microfilter, do a quiet line test, see if the wireless is secure, etc, etc.

Well, for starters, I'm connected with a cable to the router, so no wireless there. As for the wiring of the socket, it has never changed since I first connected. And yes, I did check the BT Master Socket. Only 2 wires are connected, white and blue. The cable from the microfilter to the router is the same, so is the microfilter. But, just to satisfy them, I changed the microfilter and cable on Friday just in case.

No change. Maybe it is the router (Belkin), but as my support contact said it can take up to 3 days for the IP Profile to sync itself, it is best to leave the router on for 3 days. I do have a spare router which I will use come Monday when the 3 days are over, if needed.

Technical data.

I did various BT Speedtests during the week, and checked the router stats.

Tuesday 15th:

Your DSL Connection Rate :1344 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 1000 Kbps
Download speedachieved during the test was - 882 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 200-1000 Kbps.

Wednesday 16th:

Your DSL Connection Rate :5792 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 1000 Kbps
Download speedachieved during the test was - 885 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 200-1000 Kbps.

Data Rate Upstream: 448
Data Rate Downstream: 5792
Noise Margin Upstream: 27 dB
Noise Margin Downstream: 9 dB
Attenuation Upstream: 58 dB
Attenuation Downstream: 47 dB

Thursday 17th:

Your DSL Connection Rate :6208 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 500 Kbps
Download speedachieved during the test was - 458 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 50-500 Kbps.

Data Rate Upstream: 448
Data Rate Downstream: 6208
Noise Margin Upstream: 26 dB
Noise Margin Downstream: 8 dB
Attenuation Upstream: 58 dB
Attenuation Downstream: 47 dB

Same day but in evening:

Download speedachieved during the test was - 92 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 50-135 Kbps.
Additional Information:
Assured Rate IP profile on your line is - 135 Kbps

Data Rate Upstream: 448
Data Rate Downstream:160
Noise Margin Upstream: 16 dB
Noise Margin Downstream: 19dB
Attenuation Upstream: 60 dB
Attenuation Downstream: 45 dB

Friday 18th:

Download speedachieved during the test was - 83 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 50-250 Kbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :6176 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 135 Kbps

Data Rate Upstream: 448
Data Rate Downstream: 6167
Noise Margin Upstream: 27 dB
Noise Margin Downstream: 6 dB
Attenuation Upstream: 58 dB
Attenuation Downstream: 47 dB

Today:

Download speedachieved during the test was - 100 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 50-250 Kbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :6208 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 135 Kbps

Data Rate Upstream: 448
Data Rate Downstream: 6208
Noise Margin Upstream: 26 dB
Noise Margin Downstream: 5 dB
Attenuation Upstream: 59 dB
Attenuation Downstream: 47 dB

----------------------------------------------------

Now I'm seriously beginning to suspect that the problem is at my exchange, unless it is possibily the router?

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Three and a half hours for a 200MB download is no fun :(
 
Hmm, I notice your upstream attenuation is higher than the downstream, normally you'd expect upstream attenuation to be quite a bit lower than downstream which kind of suggests a fault somewhere to me (unless your router misreports them)- did you notice any crackling noises on your phone?

I think when the IP profile falls to 135 kbps, it is usually supposed to recover quite quickly after the sync rate recovers, unless you're still getting frequent disconnections.

If you've got a NTE5 master socket (the one with a horizontal spit across the middle) I'd try the spare router in the test socket behind the lower panel
 
The upstream Noise Margin is also higher than it should be and again suggests a problem that could be local to your home/line. Some other ADSL tips and tweaks that might be worth trying can be found here:

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/articles/adsltips/

Also your Downstream Attenuation of 47dB would normally suggest a performance of 4-5Mbps at most and not the 6Mbps reported for your DSL connection rate. In reality you'd probably expect to see real-world speeds of less than 4Mbps with that, although there appear to be other factors impacting your line.

It's always good practice to have a spare cheap-o router, cables, microfilters etc. in case problems comes up and you need to identify where they are coming from. I would certainly be looking for a problem at your end or on your home wiring but at worse it may end up requiring an engineer visit.

One problem with IP Profiles is that even if you fix the problem it might take a little while to be properly reflected in the stats.
 
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The problem appears to be that you will have a intermittent connection and the fluctuating speeds are just a symptom of that, the upstream attenuation is worrying as it should be roughly half of what the downstream is, the upstream SNR isnt a problem when its on a fixed rate like the 448 then the higher the better.
 
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