Something very strange is happening with sync speeds

Hi, after the training period on Sky LLU, my line stabilised at around 17MB sync. However, after being away for a few weeks, I come back to a download sync speed of 2MB, which then proceeds to drop 0.5MB over the next couple of days, leaving the line at 1MB down, 0.25MB up. I have no idea what is causing this, are Sky retraining the line, or do I have bigger line issues? Line stats are as follows:

System Up Time: 42:16:00
Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time
WAN MER 285595 1800348 0 324 0 12:39:01
LAN Down 0 0 0 0 0 42:16:00
WLAN Up 1845131 1204836 0 0 1205 42:15:38
ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 1020 kbps 253 kbps
Line Attenuation 23.5 dB 14.8 dB
Noise Margin 18.2 dB 16.6 dB

Have you tried re-booting the router by removing the power to see if that cures anything?

Connected to the test socket?

Sky have a target noise margin of 7.0db, as yours is showing as 18.2db that may indicate that sky's DLM has discovered errors and reduced the connection to compensate, normally a quick call to sky will get the cap removed.

I have tried rebooting the router, and I don't think this house has a test socket (it has an old BT master socket, a PC5). I have watched the router stats for a while, and they seem very erratic - noise margin is jumping between 25 and -1.5, while line attenuation has jumped up to 32. There are definitely big problems here, but I have disconnected everything in the house apart from the router. Am I right in thinking that this is now probably a router issue, or could it still be a line problem?

Have you tried to use a different microfilter? If not and you have one spare, try it and once you have done that, Don't restart your router. It could mess up the DLM more.

After a few days of constant disconnections, the line seems to have stabilised now, but at a much lower speed, and with strangely higher attenuations. Any idea what could cause line attenuation to increase to this degree?

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 1017 kbps 253 kbps
Line Attenuation 38.0 dB 48.0 dB
Noise Margin 7.9 dB 9.4 dB

Edited by AdvWar (Fri 13-Jan-12 17:54:19)

Any idea what could cause line attenuation to increase to this degree?

A HR fault at a joint, perhaps.

The 1017Kbps, I think that is Sky DLM system version of a 1Meg fixed speed, so you may have a fault that is also causing Sky DLM to play around too.

The attenuations are odd, generally upstream is half downstream, so the guess of a HR fault is a pretty good guess as a cause for now