In reply to a post by Zackary:

From looking at my own graph (in sig) I guess it's looking pretty good

That's even better than mine (also in sig).

so no need to carry on with the monitor. What do you think please?

Mine has run continuously since tbb made them available... it comes in handy on occasion to spot a growing problem, changes in your line (eg interleave being applied/removed), dropped connections overnight etc. And it can be useful to see if a sudden problem is peculiar to your connection (shout at ISP) or shared by many others (shrug shoulders and wait for BT to get their act together).

It's using tbb's resources not yours, so I'd suggest you leave it running

Thanks Bill.

I'm just a little bit nervous using those resources non-stop, tiny though they may be, if I don't need them. Maybe I'll give it a few more days and then will stop it. I only have it running as a step to try and diagnose my current speed issues, but if it doesn't show anything up after a few days it's unlikely it ever will.

I agree with Bill. The point of the BQM is to show up both growing issues and a record if something is suddenly found to be wrong.

For example, I had no issues for over two years, other than cross-talk slowing my speed a few times and interleaving being applied once and for all but varying occasionally.

Suddenly I started getting very slow loading speeds when browsing. To the extent that Kelly on PlusNet, whose team monitors many things and in particular this page, contacted me about my huge packet loss before I had thought of even checking my BQM myself.

Using the history of the graphs, which tbb hold, I quickly tracked back to the date it started, so I know exactly what to ask my neighbour. Even to the level of checking if she watched the TV in the day yesterday, (as it has never occurred in the afternoon before), and whether she went out this evening.

Leave it running !

Ok well I'll leave it for a while but not too long as I don't want to use their resources for no reason. A few days is adequate I think, in my particular situation.

Just to update my situation, I have spoken to my provider (Plusnet) and the conclusion is that there is probably nothing wrong. I knew they would say that, but in all fairness I'm not sure what else they can say. He said that the speed can drop due to cross talk, which of course I know, but he agreed it's dropped more than expected.

Anyway, he sees it as a red flag rather than an actual problem, and if the sync speed drops below 50Mpbs then to get in touch and they'll take things further. I'm happy with that.

Thanks for everyone's comments and help.

I would like to use the monitor but why does it have to be IP based? Why can't I set a dyndns address instead that will always have the current IP? I do not want a static address.

since you never know when problems may start I would keep the monitor on.

question to site owners, but one reason maybe they dont want to be doing dns lookups everytime a check is done. it also could be to (try to) enforce the static ip policy.

Resources and limited time, the human body does have to sleep now and then