In reply to a post by andyboygsi:

if you have a cheap corded phone stick that in and do the testing again. it should be pretty much silent.

I did use a cheap corded phone plugged into the test socket and the result is as I posted. My regular phone is a cordless type and does like you say add a bit of noise. Now and then the back ground noise (or the hiss) gets loud, not something that happens everytime. It is far less noticable on the corded phone in the test socket, but it is there. Should I run the test again to see if it is repeatable?

I'm in an older house and from the NTE5 the wire goes staight outside (through the wall), up the wall, along the edge of the roof just under the gutter and across to the pole. There are about 25 wires going to the pole and the one from my house looks like it is pulled rather tight, most of the others are slack and wave about in the wind. Not sure if that helps.

You probably know all this already. I think I had a similar problem - steadily deteriorating Linespeed. I was told that each time my router was shut down by my time switch, a 'robot' at the exchange sensed a problem and reduced the speed. The same thing happened last week when an engineer disconnected my line while investigating a different fault.

I've not had the time to chase my problem with BT yet, but since I last posted on this thread... The router has been on 24/7 for the last 2 weeks and the sync rate has gone up and up as the noise margin has gone down. It peaked at 6784kbps with an IP profile of 5500Kbps, the noise margin has settled around 4.5db. The throughput on the connection is still up and down, although more up than down in the last week.

I notice that PlusNet's exchange checker still has my exhange as having problems with some Virtual Pathways, since the major outage in the North of England the other week. The BT status page and line says nothing is wrong.

The sync dropped a little bit to 6464kbps about 9am in the morning the other day and over 2000 errored seconds were reported in the following 13 hours. A rate of 1 every 23 seconds, if maths right. Loss of framing and signal were reported as well. I'm guessing that something is periodicaly interfering with the line as these errors seem to come in bursts. I can not pin down exactly when they are happening, 9am the other morning does seem a good starting point but I was elsewhere at the time.

Connection time 0 days, 13:05:07
Downstream 6,464 Kbps
Upstream 448 Kbps
VPI/VCI 0/38
Type PPPoA
Modulation ITU-T G.992.1
Latency type Interleaved
Noise margin (Down/Up) 4.8 dB / 25.0 dB
Line attenuation (Down/Up) 43.0 dB / 27.5 dB
Output power (Down/Up) 19.8 dBm / 12.0 dBm
Loss of Framing (Local) 16
Loss of Signal (Local) 3
Loss of Power (Local) 0
FEC Errors (Down/Up) 108778 / 0
CRC Errors (Down/Up) 94 / 2147480000
HEC Errors (Down/Up) nil / 0
Error Seconds (Local) 2085

I recorded a BT speed test of 5022Kbps (WOW!) at a sync of 6784Kbps a few days ago. I've never had speed test results that high before. Not long afterwards I'm back to 2000Kbps and below again. The slow periods do seem less now but they still grind everything to a halt, and I still get noise on my voice line.

I've been toying with the idea of putting my Netgear DG834 v2 back on line just to see how it gets on. At least I could use router stats to get a better idea of what is going on. Although I've been lead to believe the Broadcom chip in the HUB2 is the better option than the Texas Instruments chip in the Netgear?

BTW: Also discovered completely by accident when using a TCP/IP tester off another site, that my MTU needed to be lowered to 1472 to stop packet fragmentation.

In reply to a post by Kail:

fitted a filtered faceplate (XTE-2005) to the BT box. Used a 1m ADSL cable to link the router and a CAT5e run across the room to the computer.

The existing phone is of the cordless type and is double filtered with an XF-1e plugged into the faceplate.

Are you saying you have an XF-1e (awesome microfilter btw) connected into an already filtered faceplate? I've resolved countless set up issues causing throughput and lower sync rate issues just by educating people on the simple fact that double filtering causes issues.

I really hope that when you said you plugged in the XF-1e it was to the test socket and not the ADSL filtered faceplate.

If it is in the phone socket of the ADSL filtered faceplate plug your phone directly in, I've solved many a throughput issue in my time as a fault analyst by correcting these basic issues. I'm surprised no-one questioned it.

If you are using an extension cable (again a bad move when it comes to speed) then you cannot use your broadband at the end of it, as again you would need to double filter to even connect it. A phone at the end of one is fine without a filter, as the socket itself would provide the filtering.

If this is all just misunderstanding your post I apologise, it just seemed to conflict itself a couple of times in terms of your set up.

Welcome to the forums, but he's probably already got it sorted. Note the year of the whole of the thread.

Incidentally, re double filtering, I agree he shouldn't need one for the phone as it was then, (may have changed), but Sky boxes often used to need it, and occasionally still do.

Re using broadband at the end of his extension, that would be impossible, whether through the XTE-2005 phone socket, the XF-1e phone socket, or both. So I'm not sure what you are saying with "... as again you would need to double filter to even connect it".

Anyway, a dead thread .