Unexplained disconnects affecting profile

[#1]

I have been with PN since 2004 with no issues until the end of September when suddenly my speed dropped. 
To cut a long story short after raising a ticket and doing all the usual preliminaries such as connecting via the test and trying different routers etc, I raised a fault.
I have had a BT Openreach engineer out and he could find no issues in the house or with my line. He recorded a download speed of 5.5mbps and an upload of 1mbps on his equipment. This was the 3rd November.  I left the router connected for 72 hours but no speed increase happened. So now I have bought yet another router, a Billion 7700N, to see if that helps at all.  In total, since I first raised the issue i have probably gone through 4 cycles of 72 hours waiting for profiles to change. No luck.  I found out yesterday using the Exchange Checker that my exchange (wwship) has Virtual Path problems.  It is amber rather than green.  Not sure what that means?
Yesterday I had to turn the mains off for safety for a very short while.  This morning my ip profile from a BT speed test has dropped again.  It now is set at 2500 so my speed is typically around 2 mbps, when I was getting over 5mbps before all this started.  I rang PN this morning and apparently my line is still dropping.  I honestly do not notice the drops.  All I notice is that the broadband is slow and becoming slower.  Some pages take forever to load and I struggle to stream Iplayer etc anymore.
I know this problem is with the faults team currently but it is really dragging on and I am at a loss to understand what is causing this and more importantly how it can be sorted out. The stock answer always seems to be wait 72 hours but how many times are you supposed to do that before something different is tried.  I have been lurking on this forum for some time and am truly impressed with the level of help available here.  Certainly I have learned a great deal.  Can the collective wisdom here shed any light on my situation because I am completely at a loss?  I would be really grateful if anyone could.
I am new to this forum, and forums generally so I have not included the ticket number as I was not sure if that would break the forum rules.  I would add some router stats but I have not yet worked out ow to do that.  Cut and paste perhaps?
Thanks in advance.

[#2]

Hi drc, sorry to hear about the problems you're experiencing.

Quote from: drc

I found out yesterday using the Exchange Checker that my exchange (wwship) has Virtual Path problems.  It is amber rather than green.  Not sure what that means?

That means that when a lot of people are online (usually early evening) you may notice slowdowns as there's only just enough capacity there for all the connections to run at once (red means there isn't enough capacity and green that there's plenty).

Quote from: drc

Yesterday I had to turn the mains off for safety for a very short while.  This morning my ip profile from a BT speed test has dropped again.

When you have to do this, is it usually urgent or do you have some warning? If the latter it'd be well worth logging on to the router and disconnecting it from the broadband before you power down. The reason for this is so the exchange receives and acknowledges the disconnection rather than it suddenly being dropped, which is treated as a fault.

Quote from: drc

I know this problem is with the faults team currently but it is really dragging on and I am at a loss to understand what is causing this and more importantly how it can be sorted out.

Unfortunately that's the main issue with dropping connection faults - needing to find the cause. It's this that takes the time usually, and as such I'm afraid means we can't really give an expectation of when it might be fixed.

Quote from: drc

I am new to this forum, and forums generally so I have not included the ticket number as I was not sure if that would break the forum rules.

Not at all - though as your username is linked with your account we (staff) can find the ticket that way, and the ticket ID isn't any use to non-staff members so is a lot safer than including your username - not recommended.

Quote from: drc

I would add some router stats but I have not yet worked out ow to do that.  Cut and paste perhaps?

I think that's the way most people do it - visit the router's page in the browser, then highlight the text and copy, then paste into your forum post
Hope that helps,

[#3]

Hi Matt,
Thank you for your reply.
I did not know about disconnecting from within the router.  I did know I had to turn the mains off.  Stupidly I just turned off at the wall.  I won't do that again.  The explanation about Virtual Paths is interesting.  My problems began, coincidentally, the last time the VP's were showing as amber.  Might they put extra capacity at the exchange or upgrade to adsl2 if the exchange is at capacity ?  Can that be requested?
These are my current router stats.
Statistics -- xDSL
Mode: ADSL_G.dmt
Traffic Type: ATM
Status: Up
Link Power State: L0

Downstream Upstream
Line Coding(Trellis): Off Off
SNR Margin (0.1 dB): 186 220
Attenuation (0.1 dB): 410 280
Output Power (0.1 dBm): 185 119
Attainable Rate (Kbps): 3488 1064
Path 0 Path 1
Downstream Upstream Downstream Upstream
Rate (Kbps): 3168 448 0 0

K (number of bytes in DMT frame): 100 15 0 0
R (number of check bytes in RS code word): 14 16 0 0
S (RS code word size in DMT frame): 2.00 8.00 0.0 0.0
D (interleaver depth): 8 2 0 0
Delay (msec): 4.00 4.00 0.0 0.0
INP (DMT symbol): 0.26 0.06 0.0 0.0

Super Frames: 5439562 5439562 0 0
Super Frame Errors: 3589 0 0 0
RS Words: 50739722 12684737 0 0
RS Correctable Errors: 513674 0 0 0
RS Uncorrectable Errors: 6 0 0 0

HEC Errors: 6412 0 0 0
OCD Errors: 0 0 0 0
LCD Errors: 0 0 0 0
Total Cells: 189556057 0 0 0
Data Cells: 6250220 0 0 0
Bit Errors: 0 0 0 0

Total ES: 101 0
Total SES: 65 0
Total UAS: 257 257

The SNR downstream varies a lot throughout the day.  Is that normal?  The attainable rate has been much higher as has the actual rate but of course I do not see it because of the capped profile.  The router resynced again this morning (I saw it happen) and ended up with these figures.  I have read somewhere in these forums that it might be a good idea to resync the router in the mornings to get the rate up.  Is that only a good idea when your profile is back up where it should be?  How do I get the profile back up?  Can you request BT  to raise my profile?  If it were at least higher I might get the line stable at a decent speed again.  At the moment it seems to be capped in the doldrums.  I am not greedy for speed.  I had over 5mbps but a steady  3.5 to 4 would do me as I think I could then at least stream iPlayer in HD.
Thanks

[#4]

Hi drc,
The VPs will be upgraded subject to demand, the best thing to do is to keep an eye on the exchange checker as that'll either advise when the upgrade is due or let you know when it's been done. Having said that though the virtual paths won't affect your connectivity, so that won't have anything to do with the drops in connection. Unfortunately we're not able to influence when this happens though.
Those drops however will be causing the fluctuations in SNR you mention, and reconnecting won't really help with that even if you do gain a higher speed for a short while. I'd leave things as they are until the fault has been resolved.
I can see the fault's been escalated for you, we'll be back with more information on that as soon as we have any.