IP profile and speed down : will it go up again by itself?

[#1]

I have lost my internet connection and thinking it was the the router or the splitter, I have tried another router, and change the splitter. At the end it wasn't the router, and I could connect again to the internet, but I have done a BT test and my IP profile has gone down from 3.1 GB to 2.6 GB, and my speed has gone down from around 2.8 GB to 2.4 GB.  I know it's not much, but at the lower end of possible speed it's a lot.
Does Plusnet need to raise my IP profile and speed or will it eventually go up on its own?
I have another question : If I had to upgrade to fibre broadband, would my speed improve or would the state of my line prevent my speed to go any higher than what it is now?

[#2]

Quote from: Lolaan

I have another question : If I had to upgrade to fibre broadband, would my speed improve or would the state of my line prevent my speed to go any higher than what it is now?

If you upgrade to fibre (FTTC) your speed will bear no relation to what it is at present. The main factor is how far you are from the fibre cabinet. Distance to the exchange is irrelevant. I assume from your current/recent speeds that you are quite a distance from the exchange - either that or your wiring is rubbish!

[#3]

I think it's a bit of both. I am quite far from the exchange, and my line is rubbish. Saying that, I had some repairs done on my line at the beginning of the year, as I had some speed problems on my phone line, and the BT engineer changed some wires, then the maximum speed on my line has gone up from 2.5 GB to 4 GB. In general, my max at the best of time is 2.8, 2.9, coming down at busy times, to the point when sometimes I have some difficulties even watching iplayer or youtube, and I am fed up about it.
That's why I was wondering if my speed would be faster if I did upgrade to fibre. But I don't know how far I am from the fibre cabinet. How can I find out?

[#4]

There are ways and means of finding out which fibre cabinet you are connected to - assuming your cabinet has been enabled, but what do you get if you put your phone number in here, both for the ADSL speed and the fibre speed?

[#5]

I have been mixing up my GB with my MB It has been a long week..........
This is what it says :
Your exchange is ADSL enabled, and our initial test on your line indicates that your line should be able to have an ADSL broadband service that provides a fixed line speed up to 2Mbps
Our test also indicates that your line currently supports an estimated ADSL
Max broadband line speed of 1Mbps; typically the line speed would range
between 750Kbps and 2.5Mbps.
Our test also indicates that your line currently supports an estimated ADSL2+
broadband line speed of 1Mbps; typically the line speed would range between
1Mbps and 3.5Mbps
Our test also indicates that your line currently supports a fibre technology with an estimated WBC FTTC Broadband where consumers have received downstream line speed of 56.1Mbps and upstream line speed of 18Mbps.

I have included an attachment of a BT speed tester which indicates that my max download speed on this line is 4MB. My IP profile was about 3.1Mbps, and my download speed was between 2.6 to 2.8Mbps most of the time.
That speed was achieved after the last bt engineer visit in may. But there is no trace of this improvement on this result, just the same as before the BT engineer visit.
That would indicate to me that BT do not update their information when there is any change on the line. Or it would have shown in the test results above.
So I don't know if I can trust what it says for fibre, however, even if I don't get the speed indicated above but just a few more Mbs, it will be a definite amelioration.
I suppose the upgrade will be straightforward, will I need another engineer's visit?

[#6]

Quote from: Lolaan

Our test also indicates that your line currently supports a fibre technology with an estimated WBC FTTC Broadband where consumers have received downstream line speed of 56.1Mbps and upstream line speed of 18Mbps. I suppose the upgrade will be straightforward, will I need another engineer's visit?

BT make an almost identical prediction for us - our cabinet is about 400 metres away.
We actually achieve 80/20, but only just. I'm expecting it to start dropping as more customers get connected.
On the whole, BT's predictions for fibre are pessimistic, unless the installation exposes a fault on your line. There seems to be relatively little to worry about - except that you will indeed need another engineer visit. Installation is usually smooth - most of the hiccups seem to come in the process of booking an appointment.

[#7]

For comparison, my result is:
Your exchange is ADSL enabled, and our initial test on your line indicates that your line should be able to have an ADSL broadband service that provides a fixed line speed up to 512Kbps. However, due to the length of your line, an engineer visit may be required, who will, where possible, supply the broadband service.
Our test also indicates that your line currently supports an estimated ADSL Max broadband line speed of 1Mbps; typically the line speed would range between 750Kbps and 2.5Mbps.
Our test also indicates that your line currently supports an estimated ADSL2+ broadband line speed of 1.5Mbps; typically the line speed would range between 1Mbps and 3.5Mbps.
Our test also indicates that your line currently supports a fibre technology with an estimated WBC FTTC Broadband where consumers have received downstream line speed of 58.1Mbps and upstream line speed of 20Mbps.

So my ADSL and fibre stats are similar to OP's (apart from the nonsense "fixed speed" bit) and I am about 4.7km from the exchange and 450m from the cabinet. My measured fibre download speeds range from the low to high 60s - DLM tends to give me a period on the higher sync speed (low 70s) before deciding there are too many errors, switching on interleaving and knocking me back to sync speeds in the mid 60s for a few weeks. Then it decides the line can support a higher speed and puts it back up again. This goes on, ad infinitum. In practice it doesn't really make any difference, although it might if I were a serious gamer because the ping times double (around 10ms to around 20ms) during the periods when interleaving is on.
If you go for fibre, I promise you, you won't look back!

[#8]

Maybe someone at Plusnet can tell me  what would be the speed (roughly) on my line once I upgrade to the Plusnet Value fibre broadband,  my line has been messed about so much this year they must know it better than I do.
I can't  use the availability checker, they tell me to go to my account and upgrade.
I had to argue with the last Bt engineer who probably wanted to leave without doing anything, and it's only when he learned that I was with Plusnet that he suddenly decided to do something and have a look "downstairs" (I leave in a towerblock), then one hour later he came back telling me he had changed 2 wires, and my possible max speed on the line had gone up to 4Mb.
Last time I had to open a question with Plusnet was in august, for the same thing that had happened now (speed and IP down), they seems to think everything was fine, and were rather surprised that I could have a speed of 3Mb on a line that can only sustain a speed of 2Mb, it was nearly impossible.
When I told them of the improvements on my line, they didn't believe me and came up with the same results as above to prove their point.
At that time I had problems with the BT tester and could not provide a test, therefore for them I was a stupid idiot who thought my line was capable of a higher speed than what it was, while I was just reporting what I was told and what I saw black on white on the BT test.
How many lines could be improved and are not?
If I have to argue one more time about the speed of my line to get just enough speed to watch iplayer or youtube without seeing any buffering or stuttering, I will explode.
I am at about the same distance from the exchange than KevinG, but I don't know how far I am from the nearest fibre cabinet

[#9]

Quote from: Lolaan

Maybe someone at Plusnet can tell me  what would be the speed (roughly) on my line once I upgrade to the Plusnet Value fibre broadband,  my line has been messed about so much this year they must know it better than I do.

Plusnet will give you exactly the same estimate as the BT wholesale checker, 56.1Mbps. I would say that means you are between 400 and 500 metres from the cabinet.

[#10]

Quote from: Lolaan

Maybe someone at Plusnet can tell me  what would be the speed (roughly) on my line once I upgrade to the Plusnet Value fibre broadband,  my line has been messed about so much this year they must know it better than I do. I can't  use the availability checker, they tell me to go to my account and upgrade.

The PN checker will return the same numbers as the BT Wholesale one - they both use the same underlying source.
You can probably go through the beginning of the upgrade path to discover this - no changes will actually be made until you confirm things at the end of the process.

Quote

I am at about the same distance from the exchange than KevinG, but I don't know how far I am from the nearest fibre cabinet

The exchange distance won't matter to a fibre connection - that solely depends on the cabinet distance.

Quote

If I have to argue one more time about the speed of my line to get just enough speed to watch iplayer or youtube without seeing any buffering or stuttering, I will explode.

If you change to fibre, then you are likely to end up (from what you said) losing about 4.3km of copper from your broadband connection, and retaining the last 400-450 metres. That's 90% of the line gone - so there is definitely a much reduced chance for you to continue to have line errors. Fibre (FTTC) doesn't reduce the problem to zero, but it certainly does reduce it a lot.

[#11]

Can you chose which day of the week the engineer can come and am/pm? I am working all week and it's a bit of a problem having days off during the week.

[#12]

That's usually the first question PN ask once their faults procedure gets as far as deciding an engineer is necessary: http://faults.plus.net/

[#13]

Yes, you will be able to choose a date. If you were to look for a Saturday appointment you could face a bit of a wait for it.

[#14]

I have ordered an upgrade from Broadband Value to Plusnet  Value Fibre for the 5th november. Hopefully my broadband speed will improve, I am stuck at the moment with a speed of about  2.3Mb, and it is painfully slow compared to the 3Mb I used to have before the "accident". And I could not stand opening a question again and fight a Plusnet representative about the speed that I can achieve and the speed they thing I can have.
Their estimate are :
Current product :
1MB (down) / 1MB (up) (yeah, right ::))
New product :
40MB (down) / 10MB (up)
All that based on the details they have on my account (So they don't update their data when there are improvements on the lines then ::)).
I don't expect that speed though, so we'll see.
I hope I won't have any problems with my appointment, in the list of dates, only 2 slots were unavailable, it looked like there were not many people applying for fibre, somehow I don't believe this.
Some Plusnet customers seem to have had problems with the engineer not turning up and stating that no one answered the door, and got charged a penalty for it. Does it happen often? I don't like the idea that I can be penalised through no fault of mine.

[#15]

I can see that it's all booked in for you on the 5th November.
There have been some instances where Fibre appointments haven't been honoured, but this is very few and far between, you will tend to only see the issues on here where something hasn't gone top plan.
If for any reason anything was to change then we would be in-touch to let you know.
As for your speeds your line should be hitting top speeds on the Value product.