Odd speed/connection problem.

[Sam.]

Hello all, first post here so go easy!

On Saturday morning I wake up to find my internet not working correctly. Pages would load slowly or not at all, then sometimes normally. I couldnt load many pages, including the Sky home page, speedtest websites, ebay etc. Setup is one phone socket in house(the master socket), microfilter hooked directly into test socket, phone and router coming off test socket with no extensions. Problem occurs on XP Laptop, Vista Desktop and Android mobile.

11am I ring Sky. The guy on the end of the line tells abruptly me my line speed is set too high (6.5mbps) and they reduce it to around 5.5mbps. I'm skeptical(never had speed or stability issues before, normal max speeds would be 700-750KB/s) but go along with it. I'm advised to put a brand new microfilter on the line which I do(one still in the router box) and reset the router.

This sorts the problem for about an hour, then it comes back.

4:30pm I ring Sky back, and start going through some more tests. He asks me to check the netstat connections on my laptop and desktop, and to try both wirelessly and wired which I do, and the problem is still present. We run some pings which come back with lengthy ping times and timeouts. So we try a hard reset on the router. Once it's rebooted he tells me to see how it goes for the next hour and to call me back, and that he would try and up my line speed back to where it was before.

5:30 he calls me back, problem is still present. He tells me that he'll need to escalate me to second line, and that in his opinion the router is probably at fault but there are some things 2nd line can try before they'd send a router out. I'm promised a callback within 72hrs. At this point I'm pretty happy, the guy was helpful and knowledgeable, offered to call me back as I was on my mobile, did everything he could and came across very geniune. Sunday rolls around and I'm able to run some speed tests, which either fail when they try to download the test file, or bring back results of 50-100KB/s.

I then had the idea of trying to max out the connection by torrenting the latest version of Ubuntu Linux. I start it going and within 15 seconds I'm seeing 650-700KB/s in uTorrent. The file downloads as normal in no time. So next I try downloading Ubuntu from a public FTP server. Maxes out at between 50-60KB/s. Try another server, same again. Torrent it again, speed rockets up.

Fast forward to this evening, the problem has remained through Monday, and with 72hrs having passed, I call Sky to get an update. Turns out the guy did not record any of the tests we'd run, or that the problem was present on all my devices, nor did he escalate the problem to 2nd line. He simply recorded that the problem had been resolved and to see how the line speed progresses over the next week

So I'm told that they can escalate it, but it will take another 72hrs for a call back.

I ask for account relations, and after refusing to put me through to second line tell me I can have my MAC Code or they can send a new router. I opt for the router. Now, I'm very skeptical that the router is at fault given I see normal download speed in uTorrent, but intermittent connection and slow downloads when using my browser or an FTP client.

Sooo after my rambling and long first post, has anyone else had similar issues and were they solved with the router being replaced?? I'm a little surprised they didnt put me through to second line and just threw money at the problem. Well either way, if the issue isnt resolved with the new router I'm cancelling. It's a shame, the speed and service has been great up until now, but they've dropped the ball on this one.

nb - just for the avoidance of doubt; KB/s is kilobytes per second.

[User05]

What are your stats (sync speeds, attenuations and SNRs)?

[Sam.]

Port 		Status 		TxPkts 		RxPkts 		Collisions 	Tx B/s 		Rx B/s 		Up Time
WAN 		PPPoA 		70931 		86842 		0 		182 		1456 		19:01:20
LAN 		10M/100M 	3806 		0 		0 		7 		0 		23:09:42
WLAN 		11M/54M 	93744 		78520 		0 		1243 		168 		23:09:35

ADSL Link 		Downstream 	Upstream
Connection Speed 	5803 kbps 	796 kbps
Line Attenuation 	48.5 db 	27.0 db
Noise Margin 		8.1 db 		10.0 db

How do I extract my SNR?