Does your throughput vary a lot? if you have a static ip address you could set up a quality meter that will show any packet loss, or if not there is a small app with a free 30day trial, which will allow you to monitor for pkt loss once you have configured it properly it works by pinging the selected target address upto 1 once every second, it also measures jitter ect, more reliable than the pingtest.net though it did indicate that you had a problem at the time of the test ,Ping plotter pro 3.32

In reply to a post by tommy45:

Does your throughput vary a lot? if you have a static ip address you could set up a quality meter that will show any packet loss, or if not there is a small app with a free 30day trial, which will allow you to monitor for pkt loss once you have configured it properly it works by pinging the selected target address upto 1 once every second, it also measures jitter ect, more reliable than the pingtest.net though it did indicate that you had a problem at the time of the test ,Ping plotter pro 3.32

This graph shows how it has changed over the last few days the first bit shows where it recovered for a while
the lower speeds only show it at its best because when its very slow the speedtest.net wont run it get as far as the ping test then does nothing .

http://i49.tinypic.com/2jcwvt5.jpg

Sorry for the mis interpretation, but using speedtest .net for a guide is not conclusive enough, as it involves third parties, Here is an a couple of examples of what i was referring to Taken during packet loss & when no packet loss
Both taken whilst downloading a file that maxes out my connection, using ie7 with a addon calledIE7 PRO.COM it will get upto 10 connections to the server, try downloading a test file from BB NED.NL secect a test file 32mb-100mb-1000mb or from here , Think bb test files or here ubuntu-10.04-desktop-i386.iso and by recording the time that it takes from start to finish you can get a fairly accurate throughput speed result better than all the speedtest sites put together[

Edited by tommy45 (Sat 05-Jun-10 21:15:08)

In reply to a post by tommy45:

Sorry for the mis interpretation, but using speedtest .net for a guide is not conclusive enough, as it involves third parties, Here is an a couple of examples of what i was referring to Taken during packet loss & when no packet loss
Both taken whilst downloading a file that maxes out my connection, using ie7 with a addon calledIE7 PRO.COM it will get upto 10 connections to the server, try downloading a test file from BB NED.NL secect a test file 32mb-100mb-1000mb or from here , Think bb test files or here ubuntu-10.04-desktop-i386.iso and by recording the time that it takes from start to finish you can get a fairly accurate throughput speed result better than all the speedtest sites put together[
[/quote]

My ISP asked me to do the 50mb test file last week it took 37 min I've just tried it again now it started at 328 kb/sec the quickly droped to 40kb/sec .
When everything is woring properly a Ubuntu download takes 15 mins @ 862 kb/sec.

Is this the same as the example above I took a screen shot as it was downloading the 50mb test file.

http://i49.tinypic.com/30uy7o2.jpg

Is the program that generated the image installed of your pc?, i ask because it's what is recorded at your pc,that is the best source not what some remote server is recording,
but from what you say it sounds like you have some type of problem, but as to it's cause,there are a lot of possibilities, some possible causes may be found by the engineer during the SFI visit some would not, did you try the ping plotter s/w to see if you are getting packet loss or just crc errors, or both?

Yes its the computers own monitor in Mint 9 .

I've changed to windows now to run the ping plotter here are some results if I've done it right.

http://i49.tinypic.com/2yv5w76.jpg

http://i48.tinypic.com/21o0b3t.jpg

http://i47.tinypic.com/2vjr876.jpg

http://i50.tinypic.com/21jvfqs.jpg

http://i46.tinypic.com/2ce6mvn.jpg

There are different ways to use it, what i do i set the trace interval to 1 second
and increase the size of the packet it sends from the default of 56 to 1024bytes and ping the 1 hop after your router (exchange) that way you should be able to see if at least there is any packet loss between you and the telephone exchange,
leave it running over a long period if you can so you can build up a picture of what is going on, the problem maybe within the exchange or down to contention or the isp side of things

The packet loss is anywhere between 10 and 33%

http://i49.tinypic.com/3145xmh.jpg

http://i50.tinypic.com/2m3pd2o.jpg

The second test is from the test socket using a wireless router so I will have to set up a desktop in the Kitchen to use a wired router.

Edited by deleted (Sun 06-Jun-10 09:46:41)

The best I can do Test socket + wired router.

http://i47.tinypic.com/5cbsbb.jpg

if the line is fine then dont call the engineer. waste of time.

a dos ping itself will not discover line problems tho. When my adsl line is been jam packed with crc errors I can still ping bbc.co.uk without packet loss.