Speeds all over the place

I've always had speeds around half a meg then about a month ago things improved and we were getting a whole 1Mb (after around 12.30am usually). Then yesterday it suddenly ground to a halt..even at 4am it was slow as anything...at some points today we've only manage 90kbps! It's now about 400. But I can't listen to the radio or anything fancy like that.

All that happened yesterday was that I checked on bt if I could get infinity yet as it went live in my town last week. I'm not with BT but my ISP uses a bt line and I plan to get fibre to cabinet with them.
What can I check? Oddly my router is saying I'm still getting 1Mbps!

I pay for ASDL 2+
Connection Speed 10226 kbps 444 kbps
Line Attenuation 38.5 db 21.8 db
Noise Margin 2.4 db 16.0 db

I'm 1 km from exchange. My router is only a few months old, firmware up to date. No viruses (my imac is brand new).
Any ideas what's going on or what to check?
It's most frustrating as I work from home and online!

Your post is a bit confusing as you seem to be talking about kilobits and Megabits per second all the way through, but you have a connection speed of 10Megabits per second.

Are some of your figures supposed to be megaBytes? A byte is 8 bits.

If your best ever speed has never been above 1Megabit per second, something is dreadfully wrong somewhere, because you are connected at ten times that, and your slowdown to 90kbps or 400kbps could be something to do with whatever the major problem is.

No idea what I did there! I think I missed an 0 when trying one of those converters!

It's just a very sudden drop in performance. For example my son was trying to download a minecraft update (so it's not just my mac) that normally takes seconds and he gave up after an hour.

The speed tester on here says I'm currently getting 0.51 Mbps (definitely Mbps, I just checked)

Let us see what results you get from the BT performance tester:-

http://www.speedtester.bt.com/

Please copy and paste the full contents of the two text boxes of the BT speed test that Apprentice asked for, not just the bits you think we need to see .

So are you really saying you have never had over 1Mbps actual? (If you had registered you could have edited and corrected errors, and the whole forum works much better. No Captchas for a starter and a lot fewer adverts).

and thank you...I had no idea about the bytes/bits thing.

So my router is claiming it's getting 10226 kbps but I am actually getting way less!
I've done a few tests now and the range between 380 and 510 kbps (i've doubly doubly checked those now) so that's like 5% of what I should be getting!
It can't be the line if the router says things are fine. The router is new but I guess it could still be wrong.

Ok I logged in! I'll go do that test...might be a little while, have to go dig out that ethernet cable..will have to plug the laptop into the router as I use my imac wirelessly. Thank you very much for your help.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

Oddly my router is saying I'm still getting 1Mbps!
I pay for ASDL 2+
Connection Speed 10226 kbps 444 kbps

That's 10 Mbps!

Can you get your numbers and units right and then we can understand the scale of the problem? Also paste an actual speedtest result, like the thinkbroadband forum code from here.

You are receiving ADSL2+, cuz Sync Speed is > 8 Meg.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

Can you get your numbers and units right and then we can understand the scale of the problem? Also paste an actual speedtest result, like the thinkbroadband forum code from here.

You are receiving ADSL2+, cuz Sync Speed is > 8 Meg.

Sorry! I have now become aware of the units of broadband measurements!


Right I've done the BT test now

Download speed achieved during the test was - 319 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 4 Mbps-21 Mbps.
IP Profile for your line is - 9.02 Mbps

Upload Speed achieved during the test was - 455 Kbps
Additional Information:
Upstream Rate IP Profile on your line is - 448 Kbps

That's awful! You running wireless on a contested channel? You need to run speedtests with Ethernet.