Could a kind soul explain a small problem to me?

[#1]

I have tested my line with BT this morning
    IP profile for your line is - 7150 kbps
    DSL connection rate: 832 kbps(UP-STREAM)  8128 kbps(DOWN-STREAM)
    Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 6583 kbps
This equates with a business type of connection.
Yesterday I tried on the beta my broadband speed:
Coming up to 5 I got these
Yesterday 16:50 6577 kbps (822.1 KB/s) 717 kbps (89.6 KB/s) 
Yesterday 16:49 6830 kbps (853.8 KB/s) 723 kbps (90.4 KB/s) 
Yesterday 16:48 6715 kbps (839.4 KB/s) 512 kbps (64 KB/s)

Between 8 to 9 last night
Yesterday 21:28 1185 kbps (148.1 KB/s) 464 kbps (58 KB/s) 
Yesterday 21:18 480 kbps (60 KB/s) 522 kbps (65.3 KB/s) 
Yesterday 21:17 2266 kbps (283.3 KB/s) 376 kbps (47 KB/s) 
Yesterday 20:36 710 kbps (88.8 KB/s) 549 kbps (68.6 KB/s) 
Yesterday 20:12 122 kbps (15.3 KB/s) 652 kbps (81.5 KB/s) 
Yesterday 20:11 162 kbps (20.3 KB/s) 238 kbps (29.8 KB/s
This morning
Today 07:43 6776 kbps (847 KB/s) 724 kbps (90.5 KB/s) 
Today 07:42 6824 kbps (853 KB/s) 567 kbps (70.9 KB/s)

Now on my FTP program I was seeing 15k to 50k download speeds .. hence the testing on my FTP program wheras it is usually 300 to 400 at night. Nothing else was being downloaded. I work in the evenings sending stuff to national newspapers.
Given the upload speed is more or less a constant .. is this a problem with my line or contention on PNs network? My exchange is on GREEN  Only time I have seen this problem was August Sept last year when PN had serious capacity issues. I am not happy to go through this again with them telling me to do BT tests all the time. I am no where near my PAYGO limit.
I was connected to the "Telehouse North, Juniper 2" gateway. This gateway is sometimes known as ptn-ag2. I tried to change gateways but seem to land on this one all the time. Bit scared to try too often otherwise the profile will change being on Max.

[#2]

Hi there,
The network was a little unbalanced last night, due to a drop on one of the gateways.
In addition last night was 'patch Tuesday' which is when everyone downloads the latest Windows updates. This means there's a massive increase in Gold traffic, and if you were on a congested gateway this would take priority over FTP.
I'd be willing to bet that a combination of the two were the cause of your slow speeds, but if you still have issues this evening let me know and we'll take a closer look.
In the future if you do need to disconnect and reconnect I'd recommend doing this from your router's interface rather than by causing a resync, as this way it won't affect your sync speed.

[#3]

Thank you for your time and trouble in explaining.
Hopefully tonight will be ok .. if only the folk I spoke to last night had explained it that way. The response I got was very cut  & paste .. especially the bit that said "According to BT, this speed is within the limits of acceptable performance for broadband service."

[#4]

Quote from: moemoff

According to BT, this speed is within the limits of acceptable performance for broadband service."

This sounds like the automated faults checked reply, we will be rewording this to include more explanation and helpful advice.
Let us know how the speeds go tonight and we'll investigate from there if they haven't improved.

[#5]

Worked fine last night .. many thanks!

[#6]

Glad to hear it.