Anything I've missed?

[#1]

Do you mean you went through the steps in the fault checker and that didn't find a fault? That's not unusual - it's an automated knowledge-based system and it means it didn't find a fault, not that there isn't one.
The next stages will involve a member of the faults team taking a more detailed look. Hopefully their tests will quickly identify the problem and get it resolved.

[#2]

Quote from: spraxyt

The next stages will involve a member of the faults team taking a more detailed look. Hopefully their tests will quickly identify the problem and get it resolved.

I went through all the regular steps and members of staff did various checks and contacted BT Wholesale to check the exchange wasn't over crowded - nothing found.

[#3]

Checking for overloaded VPs in the exchange is to be expected, and is a common cause of the problem you are seeing. However that tends to show slow downs at peak periods rather than all the time.
Is your fault ticket still with the faults team for further investigation?

[#4]

No, the ticket is closed cos Plus Net said I was they did some "tests on your line which does indicate that you are suffering from a low throughput speed. As I can find nothing wrong on our internal systems, I have emailed our suppliers asking them to check the capacity at your local exchange as this could be affecting your throughput speeds."
Later... "The SVLAN for this circuit has been checked and has been found to be not over utilised." I'm guessing that's the techno jargon for the exchange.
Then there was a lot of graphs, tables and numbers that mean nothing to me. Finally Plus Net said they could send me a new router to try at a cost of £45 or me signing up for another year. I thought that was pretty opportunistic considering I've been a customer for about 6 years and reccomended them to other ppl - I didn't reply so the ticket was closed.

[#5]

Shame the fault ticket lapsed, how long ago was this?
If no faults were found I would have thought trying a different router would have been worthwhile. Do you have an ADSL2+ compatible alternative that you could try? If you haven't obtaining a TG585v8 from Plusnet would cost £4.99 P & P if you are happy to stay for a year.

[#6]

It was closed on May 10th. Giving Plus Net any more money is the last thing I want to do, I dislike the company for many reasons.

[#7]

It certainly isn't looking like there is a problem with the raw line itself.
General evidence suggests that the route to BT's Speedtester does NOT go via PlusNet's network - and so doesn't get traffic-managed - so if you have results that always show the 9-10Mbps region, it has to be somewhere else *before* Plusnet's network.
Exchange congestion is one possibility, but the effect usually changes over the course of a day. You'd get a wider range of results.
If it isn't the exchange causing it, then one of the next problem areas would indeed be the router itself.
My questions would be:
- How consistent are you results at BT Speedtest at different times of the day?
- How consistent are they at external test sites, such as mybroadbandspeed.co.uk or speedtest.net?
- Can you try *any* router as an alternative - even if you just borrow it for a while?

[#8]

Ting!  I just had a thought...
The speed result you are getting is very close to 10Mbps - which is the speed limit for plain ethernet.
Can you check what speed the link between your computer and the router is working at? It might be shown by the colour or number of the LEDs lit.

[#9]

Quote from: WWWombat

Can you check what speed the link between your computer and the router is working at? It might be shown by the colour or number of the LEDs lit.

The LEDs are green but the image of the globe forever randomly blinks. Sometimes I do speed tests on sites like speedtest.net and it rockets up to 15MB, then I do it again a minute later and it's back down to 9MB. I don't really know what to make of sites like that seeing as Plus Net and forum users direct me towards to BT Speed Test so I would assume the BT Speed Test is the industry standard and most accurate?

[#10]

I meant the LEDs that are part of each ethernet port, rather than on the front panel. Sorry I didn't make that clear.
For example, the attached image shows what happens on the Speedtouch 585. My netgear switch does something different, as its LEDs show whether it is running at 10Mb, 100Mb or 1Gb.
But this is probably not your problem - not if you are managing to get 15Mbps sometimes.

[#11]

Ha, I'd never even noticed those lights before. There's no lights like that on the router but the end of my ethernet cable that's plugged into my laptop is lit solid green on the right hand side but pretty much dead on the left hand side - it coughed a few flashes of amber when I plugged it in though. What does that mean?

[#12]

It will depend on the make/model of the laptop. They all have very different indicators, and the manual will probably tell you
Another way to tell will be to look at the status window on the OS. Not sure what you are running, but on Windows it can be seen from the "Network & Sharing Centre", either by right-clicking on the icon on the system tray, or from the control panel.
Then click on "Change Adapter Settings" in the left-hand menu.
Then right-click on the interface, and on "Status" in the menu.
Mine shows a speed of 1Gbps, as I'm on a gigabit switch before it drops to 100Mbps to the router.

[#13]

Your test results and description sounds very similar to my own. This turned out to be a local problem in my computer.
Have you tried running the tests from different machines?
If you don't have access to more than one machine you could try booting from a live CD of some type to rule out incorrect local network settings.
What sort of computer are you using?
Steve

[#14]

The status of my wireless connection says 54.0mbps and the status of my ethernet connection says 100mbps.
I use 2 laptops. One with Vista, one with XP. I use the XP notebook more than the Vista laptop but the problem happens on both.
Is the BT Speed Tester the most accurate? Yesterday I did a speed test on speedtest.net and it came out at 15MB, then I did BT straight after and it said 9MB?! I don't understand what that means.

[#15]

I have found that on mine, if I run ethernet they are nearly the ame but on my de4sk top if I run it WiFi the BT test is a lot lower