What seems to have happened is that you had already decided that you had aluminium cables and from then on you were following the well-trodden path of confirmation bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

Don't worry about it, they all do it.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

As several others have already correctly stated, there are no aluminium dropwire cables in use by 'BT'.

The only place on a pairs route to a customer where you might find any soldering would be if the exchange bar pair was of a tip solder type.

They used to tip solder eside hand twisted joints where there was a conductor poundage change.

Edited by deleted (Thu 20-Aug-15 21:35:01)

I'm familiar with confirmation bias, pretty important for me at work.

It was a genuine question and the reason I asked about Aluminium is because I'm wiring the house with Cat6 and had to be careful when buying the box that it was pure copper not copper clad aluminium. It just got me thinking about the BT wire that's all, and I did wonder why it was silver in colour rather than copper coloured..

The speed issue was a secondary afterthought, what was confirmation bias here was I spoke to a neighbour and he is getting 8Mbps so I assumed that was what the line was capable of despite dslchecker, so after going through the BT call centre trial and instead of being put through to technical support I got put through to sales and the lady not knowing what I was on about but said she'd put "an order in" without any further specification, order was delayed then fulfilled without any noticeable difference, I just resigned myself to that.

It was only the niggle in the back of my mind that my upload speed had improved that led me to ask a little more. MrSaffron's last post was when it finally clicked.

I assumed (never a good idea) that if I was on ADSL2+ my modem would automatically detect that, as it turns out it doesn't, I can choose only ADSL or VDSL on the WAN settings page, but then on a different page I can choose a DSL modulation setting.

Not denying I've been a bit of a pillock, but that was my thought processes behind it.

Thanks for the pie, it was delicious! lol

Hey guys, give me credit, at least I came and owned up, could have just disappeared like a man of mystery!

In reply to a post by CHBMB:

I assumed (never a good idea) that if I was on ADSL2+ my modem would automatically detect that

It's not up to the modem to detect that, the modem should negotiate that.

Well, I do see the difference, but the fact remains it wouldn't negotiate it automatically, had to set it manually for it to negotiate it.

In reply to a post by CHBMB:

the fact remains it wouldn't negotiate it automatically, had to set it manually for it to negotiate it.

I wonder how many other people haven't done that.

Well my next door neighbour is a likely candidate..

Only recently moved here, but he says everyone in the road gets 8mbps! I could make a few new friends here, he's already impressed with my knowledge of when FTTC is suposed to be coming!

Although he has a HH of some variety and I'm not familiar with the setup on those to be honest, I remember that there's not a lot of configration options that's for sure. I suppose it's possible he hasn't been moved to ADSL2+..

When I first got my broadband activated the HH4 was definitely on ADSL Max, so I'm guessing that when I rang and asked to be moved to ADSL2+ that's what actually happened.

They used to tip solder eside hand twisted joints where there was a conductor poundage change.

Yes, but unless the OP is working on the E-side cable run he is unlikely to come across this TBF.

Home hubs are much of an auto set up so will have dsl mode set to auto, which is the default for the majority of modems