I can't remember the exact number when it was left at the default setting but it was in the high 3's

I might try a faceplate splitter instead of a adsl splitter (one you plug in)

No need to apologise, sorry to hear your not very well.
Have a look at http://www.thinkbroadband.com/faq/sections/install.html I only just found it myself

Thanks for the advice mikel but as far as im concerned now is that ive given up all hope with sky giving me anymore speed

after 8 telephone calls to them these last few months ( and every advisor said that i should be getting a faster speed than im getting now }.. im not going to waste my time anymore with them

i must admit that at anytime these last few months no advisor put me through to the CST department in which ive had success with them before

ill just have to wait now until cable comes around here

Yeah I did give up hope a few times, just left it for ages, it would slowly go slower and slower in my case though, so that was always annoying!

You can just monitor it for a few weeks/months if you want, see what happens with your connection it may go up or down or stay the same

I'm just going through your messages now :

I could only check my address with the Sky broadband checker, it says 2 - 5mbps, which is about right however I don't think I will ever get 5mbps, so it does overestimate.

I was thinking of upgrading my router too, it costs £35 to upgrade your router to the latest one (its got wireless n which is twice as fast as wireless on older models - won't affect downloading off the internet though - just sharing files/streaming between networked computers) I asked the guy on the phone if he thought upgrading my router would give me a better connection, he wasn't sure and said its probably not worth it if I was looking to just increase internet connection, but that it would increase wireless speed (I pretty much knew this I just wanted his opinion/inside knowledge) When I have a spare £35 I may upgrade anyway. Its up to you if you want to try this though. (Your Netgear is older than my Sagem one I think? I came to sky about 2-3years ago I think)

I had the same problem, they put me up to about 2.6mbps but eventually it would keep disconnecting at night and reconnecting at a slower speed. This says to me that you have excess noise on your line.

I have rang them up so many times I can't remember what I have said to them. I think I asked them to take DLM (digital line management) off my line and also to put it on the "gamer profile" I'm not 100% sure what these are, hopefully someone can explain. I just read gamer profile lowers your ping (time it takes for information to travel from your computer to theirs and back to yours)

Changing channels on your router won't do anything but possibly increase wireless speed (if there is alot of interferance) it wont connect you at a higher speed.

About when you put the faceplate back on (was it off?) I don't think 61 down to 60 is anything really, they can go up and down like that with router/line resets, the extra connection speed is probably because it went down to 60db but then next time you reset/turn off the router it could go back up to 61db.

Did you ever try taking the faceplate off and puttings it into the "master socket" ? Master Socket It might connect you at a better speed.

If your faceplate has two sockets, one for broadband and one for phone like this then you can't improve the line much. However if you just have a standard looking socket then perhaps you can.
You can buy one of those in the link, but it requires removing and reinserting a few wires. If you don't want to touch anything you can get a iplate which I mentioned before.

There is something called a bell wire in your socket which was needed on really old phones, but isn't needed these days. It causes a bit of noise on the line, which makes it connect at a slower speed. If you can remove it then hopefully you will connect at a faster speed.

Easiest way to do it is to get a iplate, it just fits over your current faceplate and screws in. You can get it from here it is where I got mine from. There may be cheaper ones about but I prefered to get one from a reputable source. Get this cable for your modem 5 metre cable or 10 metre cable then get some new adsl filters I got 2.

The iplate comes with instructions and they are fairly easy to follow. Here is a video of Andrew himself!

After you have fitted all that there may or may not be a change, in my case there wasn't hardly any change. But I phoned up sky anyway, I just said something like I wonder if you can help me get more speed from my connection as its been getting slower for the last few weeks. They may ask a few silly questions, just say yes tried that etc. Ask to be put through to an engineer. Hopefully they will be looking at your line and will go away for a minute or so and when they come back its reconnected hopefully at a higher speed.