It is the cross talk in the cable bundles leaving the cabinet that are the issue and can reduce speeds.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

It is the cross talk in the cable bundles leaving the cabinet that are the issue and can reduce speeds.

Despite the engineer being excellent and thorough, he didn't seem to know what I meant by cross talk. He also mentioned my distance from the exchange being a reason why my speed isn't very good. I know this isn't the case and did tell him, but he didn't agree so I didn't push it. The last engineer to visit when I had a fault after FTTC was first installed thought the same thing about my distance from the exchange.

I wonder if Openreach have engineers who are just as helpful but also have knowledge of the way FTTC works.

tbbqm is actually a free tool we provider on thinkbroadband

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping

It runs 24/7 and creates graphs like
My Broadband Ping

The rise in latency was down to a reboot of a router where its wireless side had died, and the lots of yellow is me using the connection a lot during the afternoon.

I have had issues where I have had extremely bad speed issues for certain periods which seem to just go away as quickly as they appear..

I must say that the PN team are always on the case if/when I have anything to question about anything relating to my service.. Especially on this forum where the PN staff must monitor as they get back to you almost straight away if any users express any problems relating to PN services.

I have had speeds from the BTW speedtest down to as low as 14.4/14Mbps (approx) and then by the time I have completed the reporting of the problem the issue had almost gone completely away except for a - (minus) 3Mbps drop off my BTW "Max Attainable Estimate" which did originally show 73.3Mbps now its 70Mbps but that's just nit picking.. My official speed estimated for which my line could handle on the ADSL Availability Checker showed: 32Mbps / 6.5Mbps Well this was completely under estimated and almost doubled upon request for IP Profile to be updated..

Anyway, back on topic
I don't know if you have tried this but I found that after 21days of uptime I just done a quick disconnect/reconnect through my router, thinking this may help to clear the line (or whatever) in fact when I did reconnect my ping time had gone from the 25ms mark down to 10-18ms mark and shortly after my speeds went back to 'normal'

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

tbbqm is actually a free tool we provider on thinkbroadband

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping

It runs 24/7 and creates graphs like
My Broadband Ping

The rise in latency was down to a reboot of a router where its wireless side had died, and the lots of yellow is me using the connection a lot during the afternoon.

That looks excellent, thanks for the tip, I've just set that up for myself.

I have set a monitor up now and will keep an eye on that. I don't have a static IP unfortunately and I don't know how long it stays the same, but it's the best I can do. Hopefully it'll stay the same long enough to give me some decent information.

In reply to a post by Zackary:

That looks excellent, thanks for the tip, I've just set that up for myself.

The reason I mention it is because in the past i have experienced severely reduced throughput whilst connected at a decent speed. My quality graphs would show an increase in latency:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/1ae25650a99...

You can see the sudden increase in latency starting at 4pm. It used to happen every 60 days but appears not to have happened since I changed my router. There's a bit of a [censored]? about that given that the effect was present when the router was taken out of the equation and basically once started it took four or five days to clear regardless of what anyone did.

BT once suggested it might have been a 'profile mismatch' but tbh I don't think anyone ever knew what it really was. I just hope it stays fixed

In reply to a post by majika2007:

I have had issues where I have had extremely bad speed issues for certain periods which seem to just go away as quickly as they appear..

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/fibre/t/4231998-the...

/me shrugs

In reply to a post by Andrue:

In reply to a post by Zackary:

That looks excellent, thanks for the tip, I've just set that up for myself.

The reason I mention it is because in the past i have experienced severely reduced throughput whilst connected at a decent speed. My quality graphs would show an increase in latency:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/1ae25650a99...

You can see the sudden increase in latency starting at 4pm. It used to happen every 60 days but appears not to have happened since I changed my router. There's a bit of a [censored]? about that given that the effect was present when the router was taken out of the equation and basically once started it took four or five days to clear regardless of what anyone did.

BT once suggested it might have been a 'profile mismatch' but tbh I don't think anyone ever knew what it really was. I just hope it stays fixed

I see what you mean by the spikes. I can already see on my graph that there might be too much yellow, but I need to leave it running a while longer before I get any decent information from it.

I have another router that I shall try if the spikes look bad. Although I need the Gigabit ports of my current router, but I can go without for a day I guess while I test things out.

In reply to a post by Zackary:

I have another router that I shall try if the spikes look bad. Although I need the Gigabit ports of my current router, but I can go without for a day I guess while I test things out.

Well if the cause of my issues was the router it's worth noting that simply swapping the router out or connecting my laptop directly didn't immediately resolve the issue. It's more like my old router '[censored] off' BT's network and it took several days for things to settle back down.

Which frankly is rather bizarre which is why I remain sceptical :-/