Ah - found it...
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.5130161,-1.1409577...

It's on the other side of a busy main road, not at all where I was told it was

Apologies for that, I was told by the Digital Region people that they would struggle to provide service to us because of that. Thinking about it, maybe that was because that was the nearest place that THEY had a cabinet. I don't know.

A rather sad looking box just a little bit further up the road too:
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.5128171,-1.1412346...

Both seems to have lots of trenches and their little manhole pits around.

That means we are 425m from the cabinet, as the crow flies.

Post deleted by MrSaffron

So, 6 months later and the broadband went off several times between 0100 and 0130. When I got service back I did a speedtest and was rather amazed to see it had jumped up quite a lot.

The EE box says
Downstream Rate 69.92 Mbps
Upstream Rate 12.74 Mbps

Here I got a result:
which is given as an average download speed of 65.76 Mbps and 11.73 Mbps upload.

A great improvement on what we originally got in September. No idea what EE have done, maybe we have dropped lucky on a good IP address - although I still don't see how this makes any significant difference.

Just thought it worth mentioning as we are now getting closer to the upload speed I was given and have surpassed the download speed by some margin

IP address will not make any difference to connection speed.

So if your connection speeds are what have increased, then you are looking at changes like lower target noise margin, vectoring or G.INP providing benefits and DLM system has switched them on.

So it is something EE have done, I have not changed anything here and wondered why the (bright) box went off as it did.

I will keep an eye on it. See what happens the next time they change the IP address or whatever it is they do every few days.

In case anyone can tell what has changed, here's the latest statistics:

STATUS
Configured Current
Line Status -- UP
Link Type -- Fast Path
Operation Mode Automatic G.993.2 (VDSL2)
DATA RATE INFORMATION
Upstream 12736 (Kbps)
Downstream 69924 (Kbps)
DEFECT/FAILURE INDICATION
Operation Data Upstream Downstream
Noise Margin 3.9 (dB) 4.8 (dB)
Line Attenuation 0.0 (dB) 19.1 (dB)

Indicator Name Near End Indicator Far End Indicator
Output Power 6.6 (dBm) 12.6 (dBm)
Fast Path FEC Correction 0 351
Interleaved Path FEC Correction -- --
Fast Path CRC Error 0 0
Interleaved Path CRC Error -- --
Loss Of Signal Defect 2 0
Fast Path HEC Error STR 0 8787
Interleaved Path HEC Error -- --
Error Seconds 16022 4204

I can see this is different
Noise Margin 3.9 (dB) 4.8 (dB) (NOW)
Noise Margin 6.0 (dB) 6.2 (dB) (Sept)

How strange... The router just reset again, red light flashing and status page showing no connection. It came back, different IP address, and this:


And the noise margin(s) have changed again...

STATUS
Configured Current
Line Status -- UP
Link Type -- Fast Path
Operation Mode Automatic G.993.2 (VDSL2)
DATA RATE INFORMATION
Upstream 10264 (Kbps)
Downstream 64573 (Kbps)
DEFECT/FAILURE INDICATION
Operation Data Upstream Downstream
Noise Margin 6.2 (dB) 6.3 (dB)
Line Attenuation 0.0 (dB) 19.2 (dB)

Indicator Name Near End Indicator Far End Indicator
Output Power 6.6 (dBm) 12.6 (dBm)
Fast Path FEC Correction 0 372
Interleaved Path FEC Correction -- --
Fast Path CRC Error 0 0
Interleaved Path CRC Error -- --
Loss Of Signal Defect 3 0
Fast Path HEC Error STR 0 30
Interleaved Path HEC Error -- --
Error Seconds 16126 4243

Not EE but the Openreach Dynamic Line Management DLM that is permanently running and will do things like try a lower target noise margin to see if a line will go faster, and if the errors go up it may take the extra speed away again.

Which looking at the two sets of stats is what has happened, i.e. the lower margin gave you 5 Mbps extra download and that has been taken away now.

It has reset a few more times but seems to have stopped now. Ah well, for a fleeting moment...

I'm coming back to make a note on this issue, I've already tagged @XRaySpeX on the EE community forum with the same info about the (eventual) fix to the issues I've had.

A couple of weeks ago Openreach did a new install near me and my download speed dropped by 15Mbps. I was getting 59/8 on average before. It went down to 44/6

I called EE and reported this, the checks came back to say I was within the minimum range but they agreed that a drop of 25% was not good so booked an Openreach visit.

He came on Thursday this week and did some checks, but couldn't figure out what was wrong. He changed pairs as there was some contention with the recent install, seems I was on the next pair to that. A bit of improvement was seen, but not back to where I was.

So he left as his day was up and came back Friday morning. Lots more testing, he checked each stage of the run from the exchange to my home, at the cab, at the pole, at a chamber DP on the way to the pole. All was fine up to the chamber. He could see 71Mbps there. So it came down to a 40 meter run between the chamber and the pole.

That's where he scratched his head a lot until he discovered that when the line was provisioned, only 2 years ago, they had an issue and had connected my line to an old underground cable that ran from 'my' pole to a more distant pole, with an overhead wire coming back in this direction. Yes, they had connected me to that loop, totally unnecessary.

Today the engineer disconnected the loop and put me on the nearest pole, as it should have been in the first place. A really good result, for him and me, as I now get 69/17 !!!

That's 10Mbps more download speed and double the upload speed. That is more like I should have got 2 years back.

Here's today's info from the hub

Data rate:17.08 Mbps / 68.91 Mbps
Maximum data rate:16.97 Mbps / 69.10 Mbps
Noise margin (up/down):6.0 / 6.0
Line attenuation (up/down):25.0 / 17.4

The Think Broadband speed test comes in at 64.2/15.6