EXTREME connection issues

Hi guys and gals imhoping someone can help me somehow :P
the story as follows

..up to 2 weeks ago today ive enjoyed a fabulous service from BT no complaints whatsoever, then on the first of march i couldnt connect to the net at all this was 430 amm ( im a postie ) not having anytime to do anything right then i went to work , on returning home i jumped on the computer as usual and was connected ( ok maybe an outtage in the area this particulat morning ) but as i browsed it got incresingly slow to the point where every page timed out , i checked the BT site for service problems and none reported , so with this i disconnected everything my homehub the master socket all power leads the ethernet card got was reseated in the MB and booted up still this extremely slow browsing speed. I phoned BT 0800 number and we went through the usual rigmorol of clearing cookies and temp files and all that jazz forwarded me to the speedtester.bt.com site which i couldnt connect to so forwarded me to the 2wire.com site i eventually got on to that and ran the test it showed 0.00mbps , the guy on the phone as pleasently as i can put this didnt have a clue from this point put me on hold 5 mins later hes ran his tests and my line is fine its my end thats the problem , gave me the 0845 number if the problem persists. I rang this number as browsing is extremely slow he ran his tests said there was a fault on the line and id get a phone call in 48 hours, phone call never came so i rang back , the giy on the phone asked me to do all these delete this and that and no firewall av running ran his line test said there was no problem their end and to ring back if the problem persists ( anyone seeing a pattern yet ) before he managed to cut me off i said did the faults on the line get corrected to my amazement they were unaware of any line faults so after being shuffled between a few folks , i got cut off , it was late my temper getting worse so i left it till the next morning , booted up still extreme slow speeds no matter what time of day im getting huge delays, so on the phone again , went through all the above AGAIN and got the its a problem my end weve run our tests and your recieving 7.5 to the house with a 6.6 threshold which i asked what that meant he said its not capped an you shoulde never go below , mmmm i asked if i could get a home visit and the guy insisted there wasnt a problem but i wasnt taking no for an answer eventually i got a BT engineer to the house who tested all of my equipment and everything my end is working firne and it was now a matter for the isp which ofcourse is BT , i asked what i should say and he basically told me that the possible issue could be the network card im connected to is faulty or overloaded and they should be able to check all this at the exchange. With this new info i promptly got on the phone to tell them the score and i got a "try deleting your cookies and temp files" well like anyone else this was stating to get up my nose , i tried explaining to the chap what the enginner had sad but i dont think my words were printed on his dummy cards in front of him as he had no clue what i was trying to say , the conversation ended pretty much like the rest weve just ran a line speed test and everything is fine here is a number if the problem persists , well tbh i put the phone down as i seemed to be getting nowhere fast.

I definately have a problem with my connection , nothing has changed with my hardware why all of a sudden this particular morning go from an excellent service to a more or less useless one , can anyone help me with a more indepth test i can perhaps do my end which shows where the problem is or run whatever check , you will have to excuse my ignorance but as i have never had an issue with my connection before my vocabulary is extremely limited whne it comes to anything net/coneection wise so if whoever replies could put it in laymans terms and treat me as a 5 year old learning to write :P i would be extremely thankful as the language im reading in alot of the posts is just foreign to me .

Thankyou for your time whoever reads this and i hope you can help me in resolving the matter , alot of previous posts in the forum say if your not happy get your mac code and move , id rather try and find the solution if i can before i move on , surely the problem would move with me no matter what isp i use ?

cheers
Allan Jackson

Welcome Allan,

Well first of all I need to know what router you are using? This is to get information on your connection. Valuable details which will help in diagnosing the problem.

Then I need you to go to http://speedtester.bt.com pop your phone number in and do the speedtest their. Once done copy and paste the results into a reply on here.

Also are you on DSL Max which is the up to 8Mb service you see advertised?

I hope this has been of use and is easy enough to understand!

Phew!

I'm off to bed.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

Routers are Bt Voyager 2091 and the BT Home Hub ( which i ran the tests on ) both get same result

The speed test results are as follows ...

first 4 attempts got to 96% then said EXCEPTION:Invalid arguement connect

the one i did get ..

Test1 comprises of Best Effort Test: -provides background information.
IP profile for your line is - 5500 kbps
DSL connection rate: 448 kbps(UP-STREAM) 6144 kbps(DOWN-STREAM)
Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 1445 kbps

few notes on these tests that ive been running over the last 2 weeks with the guys from india

IP profile for your line is - 5500 kbps this has been 6k 6.5k 7k 7.5k 8k it seems to be pretty random

DSL connection rate: 448 kbps(UP-STREAM) 6144 kbps(DOWN-STREAM)
upstream has never changed but the down stream has been 7.3 7.9 and at the beginning of my problems it was 8092 i think not 100% on the last 2 digits .

im on BT Broadband Option 3 8 meg unlimited.

hope this helps
Allan

and my apologies for the long winded post to begin with , i just thought if i got the background stuff out of the way it would help , even tho most probably fell asleep halfway through

My brother had a problem similar to this one. It was over 4 weeks before it was solved.
His speeds were similar to dial-up instead of the 6mbps he was used to getting. BT India made him jump through the same hoops over and over again saying the fault must be with his computer. My brother formatted his pc and the problem remained. They checked the line twice and found no fault and then sent him a new Hub. The problem remained. Twice engineers called. The first one said there was a fault on the line and when my brother asked what would be happening next the engineer said "dunno -- it's not my job" The second engineer came and went without saying anything.
Finally a third engineer called and climbed up the telegraph pole outside my brother's house. He removed and replaced the cable going into the house. He shown my brother the old cable and it had a 9 inch split in it.
Unbelievable - 4 weeks to solve the problem that should have been found within a week at least. The quality of some BT staff is deplorable.

I don't know how you are getting IP Profiles of 7.5k & 8k as the fastest that you should get is 7150 for an ADSL Line Rate of 8128. The reason that your IP Profile fluctuates is because your line speed is fluctuating.

Having said that there are basically two measures of speed: Your IP Profile, which dictates your top speed, and actual throughput which can be MUCH lower, especially at night when Contention kicks in as more people are using the system. (Big downloads in the middle of the night for instance.) Contention means that you are actually sharing your service with up to fifty other people. So you need to do two tests to find out where speed problems lay. Speedtester which will tell you your IP Profile (your top speed). and then some kind of throughput test will tell your what you can actually download at. If the second test is way lower than the first at night then it is usually contention or traffic shaping.

can you direst me to some form of test please?

Regards,
Allan

www.speedtester.bt.com

ahh kk used that one , thats where all the info in a previous post is from when i finally got it to go past 96% that is.

Regards,

Allan

I had the same problem with BT going though the same thing every night before finally an engineer fixed the exchange card.
Afterwards I blastered off a complaint to the chairman and e mailed Ben V (unsure of how to spell his surname but you can find his email address on this forum as I did) and got a full apology and compensation from him.

I suggest you look up his e mail address and e mail your post to him and demand he fixs it!