youtube and iPlayer slow, BT speed test normal, real head scratcher!

[#1]

Hi All,
Over the last 2 days (I think, tend to lose track of time!) I've had issues streaming vids from youtube and BBC iPlayer. This doesn't seemed to be linked to prime time as I had the issue from midnight to about 2-3AM, then again today from about 10AM to now which is 2PM.
I've checked my wiring and rebooted my router (a Netgear DGN1000), but I don't think the problem is on my end, nor is it in the last mile of copper. I say this because every single time I run the BT speed test I get the 7 to 8Mbps I expect for my ADSL 2+ line. Speedtest.net however was a very different picture with speeds ranging from 1Mbps down (up speed doesn't appear to be affected) to 7Mbps. Pings seem to be just fine, under 20ms during the night. the results on speedtest.net were very dependant on what server I selected. The London ones seem to be fine but the Kent ones (where I live) can have the same pings but show the worst speeds and sometimes timeout before the test even starts. Just done a few more tests and a Coventry server has given me the 1Mbps slow speed so it's not just Kent.
When I watch my network performance in windows task manager I can see a nice solid performance on the BT speed test but when I try to stream vids if it is in a good mood (I did get a few hours of good performance at 5AM) it will peak at a good speed and drop as it buffers the chunks it wants to, or if it is on a go slow it will be constantly fluctuating at a small value sometimes dropping to 0 for a few seconds when it is clearly out of buffer.
I have tried manually using the google DNS servers to rule that out, the streaming was just as poor. I've tried using IE instead of chrome, same problem. Ping and tracert do show the odd dropped packet, but it's not losing well over half of them so while I often see a few *'s during the plusnet hops it doesn't appear to be too unstable.
My connection speed is sitting at 9Mbps with a line attenuation of 34.8dB and a noise margin of 7.8dB on the downstream (up is 19.1 attenuation), so according to the noise to speed graph kicking about in these forums it's just about where you'd expect things to be.
I have a faceplate with a built in filter plugged directly into my master socket, I got it from Maplins and saw a speed increase as soon as it went in. I've had it for about 6 months now. There is a short cable from there to a UPS then another cable to my router (the UPS is just for the router, staying online in an MMO when the lights keep flickering off is great!). I have not yet tried to bypass the UPS filtering, I'd have tried that if the BT speedtest was showing a problem. From there I run a cat5 straight to my PC. I do have my mobile on wifi but it generally gets ignored while I'm gaming or watching vids so it will only be doing it's background data usage when checking for new messages (we're talking under 5MB of data each day).
My data usage is at about 17GB of 120GB on Plusnet Premium.
So everything looks good with both my hardware and on the BT network. Could it be a fault in the traffic management system? Any other tests I can run to dig out more clues? The further diagnostics screen on BT speed tester didn't show any problems.

[#2]

We've an issue with one of our gateways (PTW-AG01) - which you're connected to which is causing quite a few problems for a number of our customers.
Could you log into your router, click 'Disconnect' and 'Connect' again, this should hop you onto a different gateway and hopefully resolve the issue.
Can you let us know if this doesn't resolve the issue for you?

[#3]

Quote from: Chris

We've an issue with one of our gateways (PTW-AG01) - which you're connected to which is causing quite a few problems for a number of our customers. Could you log into your router, click 'Disconnect' and 'Connect' again, this should hop you onto a different gateway and hopefully resolve the issue. Can you let us know if this doesn't resolve the issue for you?

gah! so i was one more reboot away from a clear connection! disconnect and reconnect worked a charm!
out of interest, how do i tell which gateway i'm connected to so i can provide that information in the future? i'm sure way back when i was able to tell which gateway i was on, but i just can't remember where that info is hiding. might be due to the new router, the interface is similar to the old netgear that after years of service finally gave up the ghost last year but there is every chance it's no longer displaying such confusing info to the customer.
thanks for the prompt response

[#4]

No worries, you're welcome
You can find out which gateway you're connected to by visiting http://usertools.plus.net/@gateway/

[#5]

Quote from: Chris

No worries, you're welcome You can find out which gateway you're connected to by visiting http://usertools.plus.net/@gateway/

thanks, got it and bookmarked it
once again even though the phone team drew a blank last night (cos let's face it, my broadband wasn't broken making it tricky to diagnose the true fault) you've proved why i've stayed a loyal customer all these years
i love your no-nonsense approach to fault finding. the support team in general don't seem to feel compelled to walk through a script and are happy to listen to the steps i've already taken. sure today was a classic turn it off and on again, but i'll wager when i took that step the fault wasn't identified and the same faulty gateway picked up my connection again. i've been in the IT industry for over a decade now, mostly as a programmer but i've done my fair share of turning computers off and on again and it's always a pleasure to work with your support team as they seem to quickly find the right level to talk to me on allowing them to remain helpful without sounding patronising or coming across as just blindly reading a script.
to me this is worth more than jumping ship to get a faster connection or a cheaper price.
so, great work to you and the rest of your team

[#6]

Thanks for your kind words, it's really appreciated
It's really important to us and to our customers that we know exactly what we're talking about and that we're aware of any issues we're having (which can help us help you!)
I'm glad we've impressed again and we'll continue to ensure we continue to do so. As ever, if there is anything else we can help with, please let us know and we'll do what we can for you.