In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

Original socket shows it's the house wiring. No evidence on the street wiring!

Supposed to be getting 3.4-5.0Mb. Thus street wiring responsible for it only being 1.1Mb.

I had more than twice this speed at my last place and that was double the distance from the exchange out in the wilds of Wales!

Supposed to! Who said?

NM the road distance from the exchange, what was the line length in Wales compared with now? Do you know? What was the attn. in Wales? That's the limiting factor!

Unless you can get your attn. down to about 55 dB, you'll never get the speeds you dream of.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

Original socket shows it's the house wiring. No evidence on the street wiring!

Supposed to be getting 3.4-5.0Mb. Thus street wiring responsible for it only being 1.1Mb.

I had more than twice this speed at my last place and that was double the distance from the exchange out in the wilds of Wales!

It's a sad fact that many people with a decent connection for some reason or other need a second, (often so they have a backup if their ISP goes down), so get another line installed, and find the new one is several Mbps slower than the first.

The reason is that the second connection between the cabinet they are on and the exchange can be down a different main cable taking a totally different route, quite literally possibly all round the houses. So although neighbours' speeds are normally a guide, that is no guarantee.

But most BT cables come in pairs of lines, as mine do and give identical stats.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

It's a sad fact that many people with a decent connection for some reason or other need a second, (often so they have a backup if their ISP goes down), so get another line installed, and find the new one is several Mbps slower than the first.

The reason is that the second connection between the cabinet they are on and the exchange can be down a different main cable taking a totally different route, quite literally possibly all round the houses. So although neighbours' speeds are normally a guide, that is no guarantee.

Now that is a very informative answer, thank you!

Is there a chance that the isp might ask Openreach to swap my connection over to a better cable route between cab and exchange?
As my broadband dongle was almost half the cost to use compared to phone and adsl bb and ran at more than twice the speed I'm considering cancelling the latter if it can't be improved. The terrible house wiring isn't exactly helping the adsl look attractive either..

Forgot to ask; It has been puzzling me how the upstream connection attn and speed are so impressive when the downstream is much less so. The upstream has also been largely unaffected by use of different sockets in the house and the bellwire. Initially the upstream was much quicker than the downstream! How might this be the case? I would have thought that up and down are on the same pair of wires and thus both would be affected equally by noise and distance?

Upstream only uses a fraction of the frequency band that Downstream does, so is not so prone to noise.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

But most BT cables come in pairs of lines, as mine do and give identical stats.

You are talking about from the nearest junction point, in my case a telephone pole, to the premises, and generally that is the case. The route from the pole is probably also identical but could be any pair in that larger cable. The connection between each of your pairs at the cabinet could be to totally differently routed "trunk" cables.

I imagine relatively few cabinets have multiple routes to their exchanges, but it is far from unheard of on these forums.

As for the two lines giving identical stats, that is very rare. Even a pair swap due to a fault somewhere between the cabinet and the exchange can alter the stats.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

Now that is a very informative answer, thank you!

I'm not saying this is the case on your line, just pointing out it is unfortunately a possibility.

Is there a chance that the isp might ask Openreach to swap my connection over to a better cable route between cab and exchange?

Almost certainly not . Openreach merely have to provide a noise-free phone and 28kbps dialup facility.

Thanks everyone! Looks like I'm not going to get over 1.0Mb from the master socket or 1.1Mb from the test socket however much I plead with the isp or passing Openreach engineers so I won't try.

Just need to decide if I prefer 1-1.1Mb adsl for £26 a month or 2.2Mb mobile broadband for £15 a month.. What might your opinions be? I'm aware of most of the pros and cons. FYI I can get away without a landline so that isn't much of a benefit.

Should the adsl option be the best one then the next step is trying to work out why there is so much loss in the house wiring as it does look like normal cable in the walls [3 twisted pairs - orange, orange stripe, blue, blue stripe, green, green stripe, plastic sheath, no strain braid]. There are four sockets dotted around the place in addition to the master, one of which doesn't work at present, electrician due on Tuesday [free as new build house so why not].