Finally I got there in the end, and my pings are now dramatically reduced.
I thought it worth posting my experiences since there are some things that I've read on this forum and elsewhere that lead me down the garden path a little and I'm not sure are accurate
1. the key with sky is perseverance! don't give up, despite what they may tell you on the tech support line
2. Tier 3 support does exist
3. CST and Tier 3 support are not the same thing. From my expereince I believe that CST are the first line of support and will try to not pass you on to other people (I assume it looks bad on their stats if they don't resolve your problem)
4. Using the Kana form (online via web site) may have worked for some, but made things worse for me despite clearly stating what it was I needed help with (max delays). The key is talking to the right person on the phone in person.
5. Don't tell them you have a slow connection when you first speak with CST. Despite repeatedly telling the person on the phone I was not concerned about download speed, this is how my request was interpreted...they think that slow pings must equal slow connection, connection is set to max advised possible on the line via BT therefore errors on the line must be causing slow down, therefore they cap the download speed to see if errors are reduced and therefore hope pings response get better.
....but they don't, you just end up with a slower connection than you started with
6. So my line got capped in terms of download speed, despite CST telling me they had not done this. I rang back to talk to them becasue I had seen no improvement and they told me the incident had been closed and there was no ticket open! Thanks!
They logged me a new ticket and told me someone would call me back, because at the time there was a 30 minute wait.
Don't worry about this or that they might do the wrong thing and make your connection worse (my connection got capped a second time even lower!)
Just make sure you get a ticket number and they do not close the incident.
7. When you don't see any improvement call back. Don't tell them what the issue is! Just give them the ticket number and tell them that you have not seen any improvement and they should put you through to a Tier 3 engineer without prompting. The recorder message on the phone informed me I was being routed to tier 3 tech support.
8. Finally Tier 3 understand about max delays, see that the line has been incorrectly capped and sort things out in a matter of seconds!
Looking at detailed router stats (netgear dg834gt) and in the G.dmt and ADSL2 framing details there is a setting that indicates what maxdelays have been set. "D: 64 8" for example.
I have read the second figure should be an 8, but I do not believe this is correct. during the process of getting my download speeds capped incorrectly I have seen it changed from "64 8" to "32 8" apparently making no difference.
Once the Tier 3 engineer sorted things out the setting on my router now reads "D: 16 2" for both G.dmt and ADSL2
He also uncapped the line and tested it to ensure I was not getting lots of errors.
ping to bbc.co.uk is now 30ms and TTL=121
jolt.co.uk is similar
Sorted
so be patient and persevere until you get through to Tier 3, that'll get you sorted
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