I'm with Zen who allow me to see line info. I got the BRAS info from there and the IP profile from the BT speedchecker. But don't make the mistake of thinking I know what I'm talking about!

I resynced about 23 hours ago and I understand that the IP profile is set from the "long term average sync speed". At least that's what I read. Now, whether "long term" means hours, days or weeks I have no idea but I did have about 10 days where the old Thomson was severely struggling and would only sync at a low speed. So I'm in "be patient" mode. It's not easy but it seems to be working.

Thanks,
John

It'd be more accurate to say the profile reflects your lowest recent sync. For simplicity's sake you could assume the profile reflects the lowest sync within the last five days.

The lowest sync was 1600, sustained for, iirc, one day, so I'm inclined to believe the average theory, though there does seem to be an element of voodoo in all of this

I must keep repeating "be patient".

Thanks,
John

The "average" idea is total bunkum I'm afraid.

The way it works is explained here.

It looks from your post as though Zen are another that hold a copy. However, it appears their copy is wrong. The one shown in the BT speed test is what is currently being applied.

The only time the ISP version is relevant, other than as an easier way to find out the IP Profile than running the BT speed test, is if it is lower than the BT one, and is applied by the ISP (as per Plusnet and AAISP as I said earlier) rather than just provided as information. The lower of the two figures would then be the ruling one, with the BT one always being the correct (master) one.

Thanks. That seems to confirm that all I can do is wait.

Speed tests hit a brick wall at 2000k and that is the figure that the BT tester is showing.

I'll report what happens.

John

Some time between about 7 last night and 9 this morning the line has gone back to 3.5Mbps. Hurray! So that's just over 2 days to get back to normal. OK that's slower than 74% of GB according to Speedtest.net but it's an awful lot better than 2.0.

Now, I wonder if I can start tweaking this 2800N up to 4.0

John

And then, 2 days later it crashed down to about 1700k sync speed and it's stayed there

I've spoken to Zen. Ah the sheer joy of talking to someone who knows what he's doing and does the tests there and then rather than talking to one of BT's script bunnies!

Anyway, he reckoned he could see that my line has been degrading since February, so he must have access to some historical info. And something was going up and down (sorry, can't remember what) when it should be steady. I think he told me that small, rural exchanges (like mine) lack the equipment needed to quickly match the IP profile to the BRAS profile, that's why it takes a few days for it to catch up

So, a BT engineer arrives tomorrow, (booked by Zen I might add after reading the other thread on "BT eng coming").

And, at the risk of starting WW3 (I know there are a lot of Billion fans on here), I told him I'd recently bought a new router. He tried both. Now he didn't know which was which. This was a "blind test". But he reckoned that ye olde Speedtouch 585v6 was hanging onto the line better than the Billion 7800N I've just bought (boo hoo!!). This lines up with my observation that the Speedtouch reports a downstream atenuation of about 54db, the Billion about 61db. I thought maybe it was just doing it's sums differently, obviously not.

I think he told me that small, rural exchanges (like mine) lack the equipment needed to quickly match the IP profile to the BRAS profile, that's why it takes a few days for it to catch up [/i[

That was waffle, the rules for IPStream BRAS are well known, big changes in an hour or so, small changes may take five days. 21CN WBC is slightly more reactive mainly due to the fact it offers more IP Profile steps.

Not entirely true.
BTW have for some time been trialling a new profile system for WBC, where there are no profile bands as before, but rather the profile is set to 88% of sync at each sync event - i.e. no more waiting for profiles to change.

I have heard that (I think it referred to BT Broadband) that if you switch you router off for an extended period, it may take days for the ISP to 'retrain' it.

I switch off my router along with my computer every night and often during the day and this has absolutely no effect on the speed: the router's up to speed before the computer has finished booting. But I'm with Namesco, not BT Broadband and the router is a D-Link DSL2640R.
Was the same with the previous DG-843 except that the latter took around a minute to sync.

Regards,

Jim.