Plusnet 'Unlimited' - Download cap?

[#1]

Hi People,
I'm on Plusnet's unlimited package and have been for a long time now.
Recently I have noticed sharp performance drops, I only use my Plusnet connection on weekends since I have the pleasure of using BE Broadband's truly unlimited ADSL2 service in my own place of residence.
I think the problem I'm having stems from the fact the monthly data usage is floating around 50GB, since this connection is used by my family it seems to often end up around that mark by the end of the month.
Currently my connection is slugging along at 25kB/s which is really frustrating and seems to point towards an imposed connection limit (so much for unlimited), could a member of the Plusnet support team give me some clarification on this issue? That way I can get about either finding out whos using all the bandwidth or changing ISP while I'm around for the weekend.
BTW - Synch speeds are good and I'm not suffering any packet loss. Line quality seems fine.

[#2]

There shouldn't be any usage-based limits on the Unlimited product. However there are traffic-management limits (select your product on the comparison tool here for a pictorial presentation of these).
Speed limits are removed after midnight but P2P is in the bronze queue and shortly after midnight is likely to be slow due network congestion from others starting downloads in the off-peak time slot.

[#3]

I can't see it being usage
i'm hitting around 130GB a month with no slowdowns.

[#4]

I don't use this connection for p2p at all.
The slowdowns I'm getting are across the board, VOIP traffic, games and HTTP are all being slow.
If my synch speed is fine, no drops and a acceptable attenuation and noise margin then surely the only cause of this slowdown is my ISP.
I have ruled out my computer and checked the health of my ethernet network with wireshark.
My router is a netgear DG834G v3, I have been using it for this connection for 4 years now and the speeds have always been good considering this isn't an ADSL2+ area.

[#5]

What does a BT Speedtest tell you? There aren't any restrictions on Unlimited for reaching a certain amount of bandwidth use, only the rate limiting that has already been pointed out (and that's in place all of the time).

[#6]

Speedtest.net gives me this.
I've had the same results from a few.

[#7]

Heres the BT test.

[#8]

What does it say for Current line speed in the Member Centre here? That value should match your BT IP Profile (7150kbps) but the symptoms you mention suggest it is stuck at a very low value.

[#9]

Quote

If my synch speed is fine, no drops and a acceptable attenuation and noise margin then surely the only cause of this slowdown is my ISP.

Exchange contention is also a possible cause, what does http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges/ say the status of your exchange is ?

[#10]

Exchange is good.
Linespeed  

Quote

Telephone number:    XX Phone exchange:    XX Estimated line speed:    8 - Checked on 2010-08-07 00:55:48 Current line speed:    250

Do I need to phone up the help desk and be patronised by Indian call centre staff for hours (have you plugged your computer in? etc.) or can this problem be sorted quickly via the internet?

[#11]

Quote from: RichRich

If my synch speed is fine, no drops and a acceptable attenuation and noise margin then surely the only cause of this slowdown is my ISP.

I know you have looked at your network very thoroughly but I frequently see home networks where the actual download speed falls far short of the sync speed because of "noise" on the line, such as is caused by an unfiltered telephoneor Sky box.  Probably if I had looked thoroughly at the router error statistics I would have found lots of errors but my point is I know from experience that under the right set of wrong circumstances it is possible to achieve a good sync speed but a download speed that falls far short of it, and the root cause is nothing to do with the ISP.   

[#12]

Quote from: RichRich

Quote Current line speed:    250 Do I need to phone up the help desk and be patronised by Indian call centre staff for hours (have you plugged your computer in? etc.) or can this problem be sorted quickly via the internet?

That has identified the cause of your low speeds. Call centre staff can fix this for you and Plusnet's call centres are in Sheffield and Durban. If you don't want to ring them you could raise a ticket.

[#13]

See below.

[#14]

Thanks,
Really helps talking to locals, they make it less ovbious they are reading off a flowchart.
Problem is sorted, my line speed is back up to 7150, they said the reason for it dropping down was my router being turned off but its using a plug socket that i use for hoovering so its gonna drop once a week!

[#15]

Try to power the router off in a controlled way.
Or buy a multi-plug