Huge bandwidth drop since Xmas eve.

[#1]

I have been with Plusnet for a few months now, and so far have been exceptionally happy with everything about the service. Great customer relations, fair prices, but most importantly - an extremely stable and fast connection. My exchange supports speeds of upto 8Mbps, of which I was fully receiving. I have the Plusnet Pro addon, and was getting ~800Kbps download speeds even at peak times.
Unfortunately, for the last week or so, it has not been the same story. On Christmas eve I had quite a few connection drops, I had to reboot the router a number of times (beforehand I only rebooted it once a month or so). Since then I have had poor speeds. Averaging around 1 - 2Mbps, which frankly I can't live with!
I have run a number of speed tests. Results have been: higher ping, lower down and up speeds. Note the time of the attached speed test: almost 3am. No other internet services were running whatsoever.
Nothing in my setup has changed at all. Same router, same wired connection, same speed test. Any idea what has happened?
Any responses are greatly appreciated, cheers.  
jim:green title changed to what was actually meant mod:end

[#2]

I think you mean huge bandwidth drop since Xmas eve.  What has happened is that there was something wrong on your line on Xmas eve and your router connected at a much lower speed ("sync rate") than is normal.  If things are back to normal now then restarting your router (thus forcing a re-sync) should cause your speed to recover but there may be a delay before you see a benefit and this delay could be several days if you are on an older telephone exchange.
By the way, a router should reconnect automatically after a connection drop.  If that fails to happen then 99 times out of 100 it means the router is faulty (1 time out of 100 it means the router settings have been changed to override automatic reconnection).         

[#3]

? I'm confused.
You say your exchange supports up to 8Mbps (Thats ADSL1  OK)
then you say you were getting the full rate.
....if you were indeed sync'ing at 8128 Kbps (thats 8 Mbps) the maximum practical achievable download is around 6900 kbps
(that 6.9Mbps)
Then you say you were getting 800Kbps at peak time?
Is this a misprint as 800 Kbps is 0.8Mbps
Now you saying you only get 1-2Mbps.....but this is greater than your 0.8Mbps you earlier quoted
You need to post you router's stats for someone to look at
See first post/sticky in the list of posts for the details required. (BT speed tester data, line sync up/down line attenuation up/down, SNR margin up/down etc)...........
Plusnet staff may ask you to put router in master socket to elimininate any possibility its your internal house wiring at fault.
As a wild guess and without any other data to hand I'd say that the disconnections & reboots have caused the exchange to drop the speed. Until the line has proved itself stable over a period the speed will not improve.   If there were a huge number of disconnections then the SNR target will have been increased as well which further decreases speeds and without intervention to reset the SNR target they will not return.
Sounds like you may have a fault on the line.....

[#4]

Hi bomster,
I've just tried to run some diagnostics on your line but can't get any results as you're not in sync at the moment. If you usually turn your router off when not in use I would suggest leaving it on 24/7, as this will allow for the best possible performance. Since provisioning, you've not had a profile above 3000K, but according to the availability checker you should be getting more. Let me know once your router is switched on and I'll take a fresh look for you.
Jojo

[#5]

HI there,
Firstly thanks for everyones responses. And yes I mis-typed the title, I forgot to include 'drop'. Forgive me, it was the early hours of the morning.
I have now switched my router back on. I leave it on 24/7, but switched it off last night to see if it would make any difference.
The sync speed is now 5056 kbps. Sorry if some of the details in my first post were confusing; I'm still trying to get my head around alot of this stuff.
Cheers

[#6]

Just for info, bomster, the original poster (or a Mod) can modify the title of a thread.

[#7]

HI bomster,
I'll take a look and see if there's anything I can do.
Jojo

[#8]

Thanks a lot Jo. I miss being able to buffer 720p YouTube vids on the fly!
On a side note, I don't suppose you know when(if) my exchange will be upgraded to support 20Mbps? Or even perhaps fibre?
Thanks again,
Tom
Also, thought I would add some extra info from my router: see pic

[#9]

HI Jo,
I have removed the faceplate and connected the filter into the socket. I have attached a picture, just to make sure I have done it correctly.
Cheers,
Tom

[#10]

Hi bomster,
I'll leave the investigation to Jojo but regarding the upgrades I'm afraid I can't see any scheduled for your exchange (either for 21CN or fibre) I'm afraid. For reference I checked on http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange_search and http://www.dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/adslchecker.welcome.

[#11]

Hi Matt,
Cheers for finding that out, even though it's bad news  ;D. East Anglia seem to be getting a bum deal.
Cheers,
Tom

[#12]

HI Tom,
Looking good now. Profile up to 7150. I've just changed it on our side, so you should see that increase in the next 15 minutes.
Jojo

[#13]

Thank you so much Jo.
Will let you know if it's a success.

[#14]

Just run a speedtest and am now sitting pretty at 6.63Mbps. Thanks so much for your excellent customer service, Jojo.
Brilliant.
Cheers,
Tom

[#15]

Great news, You might as well leave it in the test socket, just push the cupboard back