In reply to a post by RobertoS:

It's the two pairs in a single cable.

Would they go back to the exchange via the same route, or might they split out at the cabinet so possibly follow different routes as you say?

(Genuine question not a quibble).

A fair question and I don't really know the answer

We have three lines at our office. They are all in the same bundle and we assume they take the same route through the village then to the exchange in town. All are 54db. One holds steady at just over 3Mb. Another holds steady at 2Mb. The third is up and down more often often than a [censored]'s knickers and rarely gets above 1.5Mb even on a good day.

Maybe it's routing, maybe it's something else.

Edited by Andrue (Sat 05-Sep-09 20:43:10)

In reply to a post by rogan8:

The feed into a typical house hold may contain 2 pairs.

Not mine

When I had Home Highway installed the engineer ran into a bit of a problem. All the lines around here are underground and when he undid the cover on the riser three or four cables sprang out. At that point he commented "Oh, now I remember - didn't this used to be the office of a taxi company?".

I've know idea if it was or not (seems a bit odd, tbh) but unfortunately he'd already unplugged the old master socket inside the house. It took him many minutes to work out which pair was the live one . Maybe he learnt a lesson there

Thanks rogan, exactly what I wanted to know .

Which answers the original point that was made that two lines to the same house can take different routes, which in a way we knew, but wasn't clear to me in the case of a single cable to the house.

Rogan answers the question for us though.

Hi Phil,
Here are results.

bt line.
download speed 678kbps. max achivable speed 1000 kbps
dsl connection rate 992kbps (downstreem) 448 kbps (upstreem)

Demon line.
download speed 2579kbps max achievable 7150 kbps
dsl connection rate 4512 (downstreem0 448kbps (upstreem)

Used the same lap top for both tests.
Cable to the house is a single line goes to pole then down underground exchange about a mile away.
Like to thank you and all who posted thanks for the input, looks many reasons for slower speed on bt line was allocated to this house over 20 years ago, had the extra line (demon ) installed 8 years ago and inbetween ryde exchange was extended, so its probably on newer equipment.
will reply to others on specific points.
Many thanks John

These results are a bit thin for anyone to comment!

You need at least in addition:
Modem Stats: Attenuation & Noise Margin
BT Speedtest: IP Profile

Full results preferred.