Sync speed lower since stale session

[Chris_H]

I lost connection on Thursday following a reboot. I took two days to finally contact tier three support who fixed it in 30 seconds. However, after I'd reported it to tier one but before tier three even looked at it, when I rebooted the router trying to get a connection, it started to sync at 6880 down and 288 up. It won't sync higher than this now (in fact it ONLY syncs at this speed now). Before the problem I was getting over 8000 down and 416 up. Is there anything tier one could have done to cause this? I'm on mid with an attenuation of 37 and an SNR around 12.0.

[Saturday]

As seems to be very common, you contact Sky about a connection problem and you end up getting capped. It looks as though that's what's happened in your case.

You'll need to get through to T3 again to get uncapped, or at least, find out why if they won't uncap you. En route to T3, ignore it if T1 tell you "that's all your line can take". They're just reading from their screen and following what they've been told to say. T1 can neither cap you or uncap you.

[Chris_H]

Thanks Saturday. However, I believe this happened before tier 3 even looked at the problem. I waited until 2am this morning to phone them so I could be sure of talking to tier 3. The guy I spoke to on tier 1 said no one had updated my notes yet so I assumed it hadn't been looked at. I noticed the drop in sync speed on Thursday night when I was trying to sort out the problem. That was about 30 hours before tier 3 were involved.

[Saturday]

Well without seeing your full stats, what you describe certainly sounds like you've been capped e.g. same sync after every boot and a higher than default noise margin.

Only T3 can cap, however, contact with T1 can be enough to trigger what I believe Sky call "auto profiling" or something like that. Basically it appears to be some sort of automated process. One very common effect of this process is that unlike manual capping which is usually only done to the downstream sync, the auto thing also affects the upstream sync. Your upstream also sounds like it is capped.

There's no 100% way to test for a cap though what I described above is a strong indicator. An added thing to look at would be your max rate as shown in your detailed router stats. If that is significantly higher than your actual rate then that makes it almost certain you've been capped.

[Chris_H]

That will be very annoying and totally unjustified just for a stale session!!!
These are my stats although only for a short period:

/usr/sbin/adslctl: ADSL driver and PHY status
Status: ShowtimeRetrain Reason: 0
Channel: INTR, Upstream rate = 288 Kbps, Downstream rate = 6880 Kbps
Link Power State: L0
Mode: G.DMT
Channel: Interleave
Trellis: ON
Line Status: No Defect
Training Status: Showtime
Down Up
SNR (dB): 11.1 13.0
Attn(dB): 37.0 22.5
Pwr(dBm): 19.8 0.8
Max(Kbps): 9120 1184
Rate (Kbps): 6880 288
G.dmt framing
K: 216(0) 10
R: 16 16
S: 1 16
D: 64 8
ADSL2 framing
MSGc: 1 1
B: 216 10
M: 1 16
T: 1 1
R: 16 16
S: 1.0737 17.4545
L: 1736 88
D: 64 8
Counters
SF: 163133 163137
SFErr: 4 0
RS: 11093110 692830
RSCorr: 1198 0
RSUnCorr: 65 0

HEC: 3 0
OCD: 0 0
LCD: 0 0
Total Cells: 45000866 0
Data Cells: 1160299 0
Drop Cells: 0
Bit Errors: 0 0

ES: 3 0
SES: 0 0
UAS: 20 0
AS: 2773

INP: 2.35 5.81
PER: 1.87 1.90
delay: 17.17 34.90
OR: 29.80 29.33

Bitswap: 0 0

Total time = 46 min 40 sec
SF = 163133
CRC = 4
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 3
Latest 1 day time = 46 min 40 sec
SF = 163133
CRC = 4
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 3
Latest 15 minutes time = 1 min 40 sec
SF = 5900
CRC = 0
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 0
Previous 15 minutes time = 15 min 0 sec
SF = 52923
CRC = 2
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 1
Previous 1 day time = 0 sec
SF = 0
CRC = 0
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 0
15 minutes interval [-30 min to -15 min] time = 15 min 0 sec
SF = 52923
CRC = 0
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 0
15 minutes interval [-45 min to -30 min] time = 15 min 0 sec
SF = 51387
CRC = 2
LOS = 0
LOF = 0
ES = 2
Showtime Drop Reason: 0
Last Retrain Reason: 0

[Saturday]

No question in my mind. You've been (auto) capped.

[Chris_H]

Looks like another frustrating phone call then!!

Thanks for your help.