Help - hair disappearing!! issue with my kit please?

I run on an Apple MBP from mid-2009 (El Capitan 10.11.6) which has run well for years with no problems.
I am with Free-Onlne (Plus Net) and have been for nearly 20 years.

Last autumn I upgraded my modem to a
TP-Link TD-8817 and added a
Synology RT1900ac router.
My Broadband speed has been running at 4 to 5.5Mbps and has normally been better than 3Mbps for years.

I have negotiated 4 engineer visits (accompanied by the usual £65 intimidations) over the last 6 weeks because of various line faults and my line speed has gone right down to 0 - 0.9 Mbps and despite being assured by the latest visiting engineer that it is delivering 9 Mbps, The issue remains - I get less than 1 (and latency lies between 67 and 180).

Other people in the village served by Chathill exchange have also experienced issues since fibre was run to a new cabinet in the village.

I should be getting 9 but I get 0.9 - why?

Trying to isolate possible culprits, I get the same results with a different (older) modem, with no Router in the run and running everything through my late 2012 Mac Mini.

So does anyone have any ideas please - I'm off to get a new Modem today but I reckon it may be a waste of money. Getting help from Plus Net goes along with Blood from a Stone, and I have to believe the engineer when he says that his tests give 9+Mbps - who am I to think otherwise? The problem lies with my kit?

TerryB

And the actual connection speeds and attenuation and noise margin figures from your current kit are? And don't suppose you know what they were before the fibre roll-out.

What may have changed is that ADSL2+ is enabled on the line and thus you may want to play around with setting ADSL, ADSL2 and ADSL2+ modes to find which works best, modems are usually set to AUTO and while that works in many cases sometimes to get things stable forcing ADSL or ADSL2 is better.

It may also be your modem is connecting at 9 Mbps but speed tests etc are only showing 1 Mbps, impossible to tell from the info in the original post.

There are millions of factors here.

What you're doing here is the equivalent of saying "there is a problem with my car" and then replacing random items, the battery, the starter motor, the tyres, the windscreen wipers, in the hopes of solving it.

I'd strongly suggest you don't buy another modem, instead you need to start diagnosing the issues before buying things.

If I were you, I would probably start by changing ISP, getting a much cheaper (and possibly faster) package than you are currently on (as you're on a 20 year old package) and taking a look at the ISP supplied router/modem combo.

I'd then start to consider my home wiring - are you using the master socket or an extension? Are there extensions that you can disconnect taking you down to master only?

With the kit you have you may well be using "double NAT" at the moment for a start. Your engineer visits have likely involved test equipment in the master socket, there are lots of things that could be causing your issues.

You mention testing an "older modem with no router". This sounds like some really old school USB only device? In which case it's likely ADSL1 only and possibly USB1.1... I would not really consider this an effective test in modern days.

Well Andrew, thanks for that: I certainly wish that- a) I had had access to that data and b) had asked earlier.

So I went out and got a new modem/router (cost me) an Asus DCL AC56U; seems future-resilient too since this village is supposed to get fibre early 2019.
More to the point - it now works, I know not why but it just hooked up straight away and I'm now getting 6.6 down and .45 up: I am a happier bunny now

thank you for the advice - I have a lot to learn I can see.
regards,
TerryB

If you can access the stats MrS asked for earlier, we can still advise if your line is performing to is maximum and possibly suggest wasy to improve it even more.