Help please - Broadband "speed" varies up and down willdly

Hi all, Could do with some help from knowledgable ones...

I am still on copper broadband with BT. I'm about 1km the exchange (Knightwick Cabinet 4) and until recently had decent and solid 6-7mbps download speeds. But this has now gone very erratic and varies from minute to minute - it can be very fast and then excrusiatingly slow seconds later. The phone line is crackle-free and the router (Smart Hub / Home Hub 6) is consistently reporting a connection of about 8mbps, and is not dropping or reconnecting.

Some measurements from last night, which is repeated day and night. Fast one minute and slow / non-existent the next.
21/9 10.24pm download 2.33Mbps / upload 0.6Mbps / Latency 293msec
21/9 10.25pm download 6.93Mbps / Upload 0.57Mbps / Latency 40msec
And info taken from the router:
Maximum data rate: 1092 / 8768
Noise margin: 24 / 8.1
Line attenuation: 15.5
Signal attenuation: 95 / 155
Latency Type Fastpath

Might this be a fault at the cabinet or the exchange? We were moved from an EO line to a cabinet in the last months, and whilst i can't be sure, it would seem that these latency & speed problems occured since then. I have Infinity on order but the activation date has been put back twice now. (I think i may have answered my own question here - there must be a problem they are trying to fix in the exchange / cab!)

Another thing possibly strange is that i see some "TR69" actions in the router log - which i googled & think is it something to do remote router management.

Edited by rjpreston (Thu 22-Sep-16 11:54:17)

What is the actual connection speed, maximum data rate is a theoretical figure, there should be some other slightly lower numbers.

If the connection speed, and noise margin is pretty stable then suggestion is maybe nothing to do with ADSL2+ but more to do with congestion in the wholesale backhaul network or the providers own segments.

The stats you posted are a little odd though as should be two attenuation figures, downstream and upstream and if the 15.5 dB is downstream then a connection speed around 8 Mbps is somewhat low, and might indicate you are not getting the best ADSL2+ connection. So down to testing at the test socket to see if the ADSL2+ statistics change.

Some more stats from the smart hub...
Downstream sync speed: 8.13 Mbps
Upstream sync speed: 448.00 kbps

Copper ADSL-wise I th I I'm getting all I can from our exchange. I don't think it has the capability to go any faster on the copper.

Incidentally, since posting this am, I've been on to BT who advise that there are problems at the exchange delaying the infinity activation. So I think you Re right about there being a contention problem

@MrSaffron

More stats dug out of the log when I rebooted the router this morning...
ADSL link Up
Down Rate=8864Kbps
Up Rate=1096Kbps
SNR Margin Down=23.00dB
SNR Margin Up=8.20dB

What exchange is this? The 448 Kbps upstream suggests ADSL only, which would explain why its not faster for now, and also IPStream ADSL is more likely to suffer congestion

Knightwick WMKNI. Adsl only until openreach finish the conversion to FTTC.

I thought the max downstream sync on ADSL 1 was 8128 Kbps?

That's what the OP is sync'ed at if you look back . The higher number appears to be the router doing an ADSL 2+ theoretical calculation on attainable.

In fact 8128 is a BT Wholesale ADSL (Max) maximum anyway. 8192 is the maximum on ADSL, as could be seen on O2/Be when forced to ADSL by router settings.