Yet more broadband speed confusion

[#1]

I have had a Metronet broadband connection since March 2004, which was upgraded to "Up to 8Mbps" in 2006.  I’ve only recently started checking the connection speed and it is consistently around 1.05 Mbps download and 0.23 Mbps upload irrespective of time of day or whether I’m using wired or wireless connections to my Netgear DG834G router. That seems to be well short of the 5 or so Mbps which I would expect. 
Looking through the threads on this forum has prompted me to try several avenues but I haven’t managed to get answers on any of them myself so I’d appreciate some advice on where to start looking.
According to http://www.top10-broadband.co.uk/ my local telephone exchange is capable of an “up to 8Mbps” service and I live less than 50 metres away from it so I’ve discounted that as a source of problems. (OK I may be optimistic but you’ve got to start somewhere!)
All the phone ports in the house  are filtered.
I’ve tried to get test results from http://www.speedtester.bt.com/ but haven’t seen any results comparable to others on this forum.  After entering my phone number and not being asked for a user name, it re-directs me to a different speeedtester site which gives me an average download speed (805kbps) but no information on IP profile.  I can’t tell therefore what BT thinks my connection speed is so does anyone know how I can find this out? (I tried to do this test more than once and got a very tetchy message telling me that I couldn’t do 2 tests < half an hour apart!)
I leave my broadband connection permanently on.  I do an occasional re-boot say every 5 or 6 weeks but no more than that.  Is this likely to affect my connection speed?
Does anyone have any suggestions please on how I should investigate this further?
Thanks in advance for any help.

[#2]

My guess is that you are on a 1Mbps fixed speed product despite your belief that you've been upgraded to "Up to 8M".
If you post your router stats (sync speeds/data rates, noise margins and attenuations (Downstream and Upstream)) it will help us to provide better advice.

[#3]

Thanks for the quick response.  I was kind of thinking along those lines myself.  My router stats are:
ADSL Link              Downstream  Upstream
Connection Speed   1152 kbps     288 kbps
Line Attenuation     6 db               5 db
Noise Margin         31 db               26 db
Any suggestions?

[#4]

Certainly looks like a fixed speed product, I'll go get the order placed to move to MaxDSL now for you.

[#5]

You're a gentleman. Thanks

[#6]

And with those figures you should easily get the Max 7Mbs speeds down (from an 8128Kbs sync rate) and 432Kbs up.

[#7]

The order should complete tomorrow morning, it may be worthwhile turning your modem/router off overnight so the profile doesn't get 'stuck' at the current 1Mb level.

[#8]

I'll make sure I do that thanks Chris.  Do I need to do a daily re-boot of my router  for the next 10 days or so to 'train' the BT conection?

[#9]

Hi there,
That's generally the recommended action, yes.  I'd also advise turning your router off when you go to bed tonight for optimal results.

[#10]

Just re-started my router this morning and hey presto - router stats are
ADSL Link             Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 8128 kbps     448 kbps
Line Attenuation   6 db             5 db
Noise Margin             10 db             21 db
I'll keep doing the daily re-boot but I've already noticed a significant speed increase on internet access. 
Thanks guys for all the speedy help, it's much appreciated.

[#11]

Those stats looks very good, you should see some good speeds from that.

[#12]

Hi there,
BT are yet to have set a profiled speed for you at their, but I've preempted the likely profile being set at a maximum of 7150Kbps and I've mapped this at our end.
If you reboot now, you may see higher throughput, but you may need to wait a little for BT to amend their profiling.