Very strange indeed

My story is, to me, a very strange one indeed.
I've been on BT Broadband Max for a couple of months now. I've had my ups and downs like pretty much everyone else.
When I first had it, I couldn't download at more than approx 10Kb/s although I was connected at approx 2Mb. I've been through the motions with BT and finally had an engineer come out and find a fault on the line. This was fixed and I've been downloading at approx 170Kb/s. Not ideal but hey, at least I had a connection!

Anyway, 2 days ago I thought I'd drag out my Netgear router as the Homehub phone was terrible and I generally had a bad feeling about the Homehub (i.e. it was rubbish).
Imagine my surprise when my Netgear was reporting that I was connected at between 2800 - 3500 Down and 440 Up!
I checked my actual download speed by downloading a 50Mb chunk of data from a newsgroup but I was stuck at 170Kb/s. But not for long! 10 minutes later, my download speed jumped up to 295Kb/s and remained stable for a whole day until I got an error with the router. Restarting the router and leaving it for a while returned me to the 295 speed. I can't remember what the error was but looking around the net I decided to order some XF-1e filters as they are supposed to be pretty good and were recommended to help with line drop issues.
Got home today after work and installed them but alas, my download speed is back down to 170Kb/s.

Can anyone possibly explain this mystery? I don't feel that I was straining the line in some way at getting this 295Kb/s speed as it was a complete flatline on my speed monitor and hardly ever fluctuated.

Edit - Having finally managing to get results from http://speedtester.bt.com/, here they are -

Test1 comprises of Best Effort Test: -provides background information.
IP profile for your line is - 1500 kbps
DSL connection rate: 448 kbps(UP-STREAM) 3296 kbps(DOWN-STREAM)
Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 1365 kbps

Edited by CaptainRizla (Wed 28-Mar-07 19:36:50)

What speed does it say you should be getting when you put your phone number in on www.bt.com/broadband the box is at the bottom right underneath all of the options and info about them.

Thanks for reply. I may have added the extra information whilst you were typing.
Checking the website, I should expect a likely maximum speed of 2Mb.

Seems like it is just natural fluctuation in sync speed. Currently you are getting 1.5meg which would be around 160KB/s in tru-speed. No problem that I can see.

Edited by deleted (Wed 28-Mar-07 20:04:50)

Thanks for a link you posted in another thread.
Using this, I have obtained the following information -

The phone number *********** is connected to the Wrexham Grosvenor exchange

According to BT's latest data the VP status of your exchange is RED.
A date of 06/04/2007 has been set by BT for the exchange to be upgraded.

This means that your exchange is running well below the performance thresholds published by BT. If you are experiencing Slow speeds then this is the most likely cause. Once the exchange has been upgraded the speeds should start running at normal levels again. If you still experiencing issues then you should contact our technical support team to carry out further diagnostics.

Details of BT's performance thresholds, along with troubleshooting advice, can be found here

Historical Data
Date of Report Exchange Status Date of Upgrade
12th March 2007 RED 23/03/2007
05th March 2007 RED 23/03/2007
26th February 2007 RED 16/03/2007
19th February 2007 GREEN
12th February 2007 GREEN

Are you able to explain this in laymans terms? From what I can make out, BT are saying that my exchange is underperforming in speed and that they will be upgrading the exchange on the 06/04/07? Am I reading this right?

Yup you read correctly, but this should only be a problem at peak times between 6PM-midnight but may affect at other times.

What I find a bit strange is that at my current sync rate (3264 kbps), and from looking at this chart, I should have a profile of 2500, rather than my current 1500 -

From........ to......... profile......... throughput
288 kbps 544 kbps 250 Up to 0.25 Mbps
576 kbps 1120 kbps 500 Up to 0.5 Mbps
1152 kbps 1696 kbps 1000 Up to 1 Mbps
1728 kbps 2240 kbps 1500 Up to 1.5 Mbps
2272 kbps 2816 kbps 2000 Up to 2 Mbps
2848 kbps 3392 kbps 2500 Up to 2.5 Mbps
3424 kbps 3968 kbps 3000 Up to 3 Mbps
4000 kbps 4512 kbps 3500 Up to 3.5 Mbps
4544 kbps 5088 kbps 4000 Up to 4 Mbps
5120 kbps 5664 kbps 4500 Up to 4.5 Mbps
5696 kbps 6208 kbps 5000 Up to 5 Mbps
6240 kbps 6784 kbps 5500 Up to 5.5 Mbps
6816 kbps 7360 kbps 6000 Up to 6 Mbps
7392 kbps 7936 kbps 6500 Up to 6.5 Mbps
7968 kbps 8096 kbps 7000 Up to 7 Mbps
8128 kbps 7150 Up to 7.15 Mbps

Knowing that I'll probably get no where with the Indian Tech Support (I've had my time with them) so feel like I'll have to like it or lump it for the next 10 or so months.

After 3 days your BRAS / IP Profile will reset and you will get 2.5mbps 300KB/s speed thats as long as you stay sync'd @ 3264kpbs or above 2848kbps


Hope that helps !

Thanks mate.
Will stop turning the router off and on!

youd be best to turn it on during the day so it gets a fastest sync, then hope it keeps it during the night. i know i loose a profile or two if the router decides to resync in the evening, despite it having over 10 snr all the time it will drop about a mb to get back up to 16. who can reset the 10 day stabilisation? id like to start it again to get off this 16db profile!