Poor Speeds, SNR and Router dropping out!

[#1]

Hi all, would appreciate any help!  As the title states, we are getting slower speeds than what I believe we should be receiving, the SNR is high, and the router is also dropping out!  I include a picture of my SNR from router stats.  Any help at all would be really helpful.

[#2]

Hi there,
Your latest connection has been ongoing for over 18 hours, the one before that was over 19 days so it looks like the account attached to your forum username is working fine. It may well be a reporting blip rather than any loss of connectivity if this is the account you're talking about?

[#3]

Hi Mat, thanks for the reply.  No it is the same account.  I only started using Router Stats yesterday because for a good while now whilst using the internet it will work fine then all of a sudden the pages wont load up and will take up to a minute before you can refresh them so that they will load.  Another thing that made us notice ii that we have a sure signal box, and that would also go "down" corresponding with the router having its blip.

[#4]

What router are you using?
Are you using LAN or wireless?

[#5]

Hi, Im using a 2Wire BT2700 and use a mixture of both wired and wireless.

[#6]

Hi sorry to keep annoying people about this, but I cant figure it out.  The reason I first started querying our speed is that Our in-laws live a further 0.5 mile up the road (Further away from the exchange) have a 20+ year bt line installed and average around 3.5Mbps with Pipex.  We live in a 1 year old new build house, complete underground Bt cable ( Ive checked all internal wiring) and at best get 1.7Mbps.  We have had thunderstorms which took out the electric for a few hours this afternoon so that put paid to my monitoring with Routerstats.  Our speed is now at 1.6Mbps with a a Ip profile from the Bt speedtester at 1750 Kbps.  For the first few months of our connection we were showing a connection of over 4000Kbps.  Couple this to the problems which appear to show the router dropping out, im really scratching my head.

[#7]

This is a latest capture from routerstats over the last hour.  When the noise drops out to 0, then it definitely affects internet access.

[#8]

I'm not sure those apparent drops on the SNR graph are 'real' ones. RouterStats will report 0 if it fails to get data from the router.
Can you post the DSL diagnostics info from the 2700 , that might give more information as to any drops.
If its a v5 firmware its here :- http://home/xslt?PAGE=J42&THISPAGE=A02_POST&NEXTPAGE=J42 , not sure where it is on a v6 firmware I'm afraid.

[#9]

Hi MisterW, and thankyou for your help.  I include the diagnostic results as a attatchment.  I appreciate what your saying that the ruterstats might be spurious, but the internet definatley drops at the same time, For example you Get the error on the internet browser saying the page cannot be loaded, then after a short period of time it all works again.  Like I say, we also used to connect at above 4000kbps many months ago, we now connect at 1700kbps.  Anyway, I really appreciate you taking the time to help.

[#10]

If these 'drops' were genuine it would be unusual for the noise margin to return to exactly the same value afterwards. Does the sync speed change?
I think these 'drops' are nothing more than RouterStats being unable to get a sample from the router so it reports 'zero'. The usual cause of that is the router being busy, but difficulty receiving pages at the same time suggests problems with the connection from your PC
Having said this, your noise margin is significantly above the normal target value of 6dB. Disconnections or high error counts in the past could have caused the DLM to increase your target noise margin perhaps to 15dB. That would account for most of the drop in sync speed you mention. Were you having connection problems around the time your sync speed started its downward spiral?

[#11]

Well, there's no history on that diagnostic , it looks like you manually forced a resynch at 17:06 but there is nothing before , are you turning the router on & off. Much better to leave it on all the time.
There is something on those diagnostics that's troubling though the 'Suspicious Impulse Noise detected', that's quite often a result of a failing microfilter. Have you got another one you could try ?

[#12]

spraxyt, thankyou for your help.  Id say that the problems probaly started to occur when we kept getting power cuts during the bad weather, so I guess that could tally up with the drop in speed?  I also agree that the current noise margin is very high!
MisterW, I just changed over both the microfilters, and on the diagnostics page the Suspicious Impulse Noise has now cleared down.  Would it be worth trying to force my DSL into learning mode?  Again I thank you both for your help.

[#13]

Are power cuts a regular problem in your area? Could play havoc with Internet connections if power goes off and on again several times in a day. This would appear to be a 'dropping connection' to the DLM at the exchange.
If Plusnet are willing to do a reset on your line that should increase your sync speed - and transfer speeds once the DLM catches up and increases your IP Profile. However power cuts could cause the problem to return.

[#14]

Hi spraxyt.  I live in a rural area and a while back a tractor hit a electric pole which caused intermittent problems with power outages.  This hopefully seems to have cleared up now.  I have been around and checked all the internal cabling, and re-kroned any connections in sockets.  Is there any other way to de-crease the noise margin?  Will a reset from Plusnet have the desired effect?  I know im never going to get super fast speeds (Even tho Bt have fibre to our local cabinet, but it isnt active yet, another story)!, but I would like to at least be able to get a speed on par with my inlaws, who live 0.5 mile further up the road, and are on a 20+ year line.  I really appreciate your help.
dick:quote

[#15]

If power outages are a regular problem why not invest in a UPS.  I had Router problems from power cuts,  but about £50 spent on a UPS cured all that (plus the obvious).