Down to 1mbps after line repair

I'm with ADSL24 (Enta) and I've had a reliable ADSL connection for a couple of years of between 3000 and 5500 until recently. On 10th Aug the phone line went dead, internet was still on but slow (800kbps) and after about a week of waiting around an openreach engineer went up a pole about 100m from the house and replaced something which fixed the phone line and sync rates went back to 'normal', consistently over 5k and since the repair I've only seen it less than that on one occasion when it was approx 3.6k.

The problem is that even though the sync rates are good, and the profile has been between 3000 and 4000 (according to BT speedtest) the throughput has never been more than 1042kbps. Here are the stats for the Belkin F5D7633 router:

Data rate (Kbps)
5120 448
Noise margin (dB)
12.3 22.0
Output power (dBm)
19.7 11.9
Attenuation (dB)
39.0 22.0

The only value that I've noticed change slightly over the last week is the downstream noise margin, sometimes it's 12.1 or 12.2 but apart from that it's been completely stable (btw this router gets switched off every night). Another weird thing is the line reports that show the profile at ADSL24 stopped updating on Aug 9th when it used to update once or twice day (3500,4000,3000,4500,etc), but the entries just stop Aug 9th.

BT Speedtest results over the last 6 days (some evening, some morning):

Your DSL connection rate: 5056 kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP profile for your line is - 4000 kbps
Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 909 kbps

Your DSL connection rate: 5152 kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP profile for your line is - 3000 kbps
Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 932 kbps

Your DSL connection rate: 5056 kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP profile for your line is - 3000 kbps
Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 810 kbps

Your DSL connection rate: 5088 kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP profile for your line is - 3000 kbps
Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 978 kbps

Your DSL connection rate: 5088 kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP profile for your line is - 3000 kbps
Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 1042 kbps

Your DSL connection rate: 5120 kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP profile for your line is - 4500 kbps
Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 646 kbps

As you can see, good connection rates, good profile... bad throughput.

bbmax test gives:

download: 942kbps upload: 369kbps

speedtest.net:

download: 1.04Mb/s
upload: 0.38Mb/s
ping: 55ms

I contacted ADSL24 support as I'm getting about 1/4 the speed I've been used to for years but with the same sync rates. Their response was:

"BT will not take any problems unless it's something serious due to something they've changed under there rule book. Sadly speed is not a concern for BT since if you have a ADSL sync they are happy. "

I did a couple of tests and got this:

Transfer graph

TCP Delay graph

... that looks to me like the line is capable of 3 or 4k but something is having a 'traffic light' effect every second to keep the speed at an average 1mbps.

So I don't know it that leaves me any other options, ISP not interested, BT not interested but of course they still collect the direct debits every month! If I'm stuck with this then I guess there's nothing I can do but it does seem a shame after having years of 480k/s downloads and now just 100k/s.

Any help much appreciated

(btw ADSL2+ will be available next year or maybe later "The estimated go live date is between 1st April 2010 and 31st March 2011." and there's no cable around here so the options are BT... or BT!)

You aren't the only one getting this sort of thing recently from BT Wholesale type connections .

Can you post a link to what samknows says about your exchange?

Thanks, here's the link:

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/WWBRUL

I read somewhere that BT won't be interested unless the throughput goes below 400kbps on a 5000k sync but considering I *know* the line is capable of 10 times that (and the line stats are the best they've ever been) I can't help thinking there's more to this than line quality. I've had no problems for years until BT 'repaired' their phone line.

Need first to be sure its not an ISP issue.

The BT speedtest does not always bypass the ISP, i.e. more often it does not.

Entanet if I recall have a mirror of the IP Profile that they use, so it may be they've missed the improvement

Doesn't look from that exchange as though it is going to be the cause I was referring to before.

More likely the Enta copy of the Profile has failed to get updated, as MrSaffron says. I forgot about that one - it happens quite often with them and Plusnet.

Thanks RobertoS and MrSaffron,

That would actually make sense because as I said, the profile in my account at ADSL24 stopped updating where usually there would be 30+ changes per month, even if only up or down by 500 each time. If the Enta profile has stopped following the BT one then that would explain the lack of updates in my account and the 1mbps limit.

Anyway I've put that suggestion to them and we'll have to see what happens, bank holiday might get in the way though

Have a good weekend all and thanks again