Oh no! Not another broadband speed topic!

[#1]

I've been a customer of Force 9 now since 1999, going through the various improvements in internet connectivity from ISDN through to ADSL.
I was a business customer until the start of 2006 and was getting a consistent 2MB ADSL connection without any issues.
I then changed to a residential account on the same phone number when I wound up the company that I ran from my home. At this point, despite being on a 2MB account from Force9, my connection speed dropped to 1MB. I was then upgraded to an "up to 8MB" account but my connection speeds remained at 1MB.
My exchange is Upton Park, London where ADSL Max has been enabled.
The downstream figures reported by my Netgear DG834 router are as follows (downstream/upstream):
Connection Speed: 1152kbps/288kbps
Line Attenuation: 41db/12db
Noise Margin: 27db/29db
So can anyone explain to me why I can only get a 1MB connection?
Regards
Philippe

[#2]

1152kbps/288kbps
Those stats tell me that you are on a fixed speed connection, I'll go have a look and upgrade you to MaxDSL if it is the case.

[#3]

Me again,
As I thought, you were on a fixed 1Mb connection. I've placed a Max regrade order to complete tomorrow morning, you should start seeing the higher speeds after aronud 10 days.

[#4]

Thanks for the amazingly prompt reply!
I've raised this issue several times over the past year or so with the F9 support staff and was consistently told that I was on ADSL Max and that it must be the distance from the exchange or capacity issues at the exchange that were causing the low speeds.
The drop in speed when I went from business to residential was explained by higher capacity and lower contention levels for business customers.
So I was on a fixed 1MB connection all along!
Look forward to seeing what happens when I get a Max regrade.
Thanks again.
Regards
Philippe

[#5]

I'm going to have a look through the history on your account and see which agents need educating on which areas.

[#6]

Quote from: Chris

see which agents need educating

http://community.plus.net/comms/2006/10/09/the-cricket-bat-returns/
?
Barry

[#7]

[#8]

Looks like something is starting to happen already. The statistics from my router now show:
Connection speed: 6528kbps/448kbps
Line attenuation: 42db/12db
Noise margin: 6db/24db
Over the 10 day period that was estimated for seeing a speed increase, should I remain logged on or should I regularly reboot the router?
Regards
Philippe

[#9]

Hi Philippe,
Hopefully you should now be seeing a notable difference in speed.
I would recommend rebooting your router on a daily basis for the first ten days.

[#10]

Well actually I'm seeing no increase in speed at all. In fact, at the moment the download speed had reduced from the 936.8 kbps I was seeing yesterday on my 1MB connection to 799.1kbps at the moment.
I assume that the download speed will fluctuate over the next 10 days while the connection stabilises.

[#11]

Philippe,
Have you rebooted today?

[#12]

I rebooted first thing this morning (powered off and waited 15 minutes before powering up again) when I noticed that the connection speed had increased. It made no difference to my download speed.

[#13]

Right, that probably means that our profiling hadn't caught up with BT's.  Because ours doesn't update in real time, but about twice a day, you probably wouldn't have seen the improvement in speed.
Hopefully if you reboot again, the speeds should pick up.

[#14]

OK, I'll give it a go now...

[#15]

And now I get 4309.3kbps download speed! 
Thanks a lot for your speedy, extremely helpful and effective advice and actions!
Regards
Philippe