"Internet" drops, but DSL doesn't, AND speed slower than normal

[#1]

From a technical stand point it doesn't make sense but it's working in your favour so i wouldn't worry about the profiling too much at this point.  Perhaps it's because you are connected via the newer DLM but it's not something we have a lot of experience with as of yet.
There should be an update from James shortly regarding the VIS Radius project.

[#2]

Quote from: Alex

We can see here the IP profile at 4874kbps.  At the same time the profile on our network was 4500kbps.  This is why your speed came out at just below 4500kbps (4458kbps actual throughput).  I can see that your speedtest.net results was slightly higher than 4500kbps (4710kbps infact) which from a technical stand point does not make sense.  I'd say that this is just an anomaly.  I suspect if you ran say 10 tests in a row on that tester the average result would be just short of 4500kbps as expected.

Out of interest, I just ran 10 speedtest.net results in a row.  The results were all just above 4700kbps - higher than the Plusnet profile, higher than the figure Plusnet see as the reported BT profile, but just lower than the actual BT profile reported by the BT speed test.  It seems the Plusnet profile and the BT profile as reported to Plusnet are having no effect - perhaps to do with this new version of DLM?!
But as you say Alex, it's working in my favour so I'm not going to worry at the moment!  

[#3]

Thanks for the info snozboz.
I'll bear this in mind when looking at other circuits connected via the DLM quantisation system.