A few general questions and issues

[#1]

Hey everyone, I've had a few weeks of really terrible internet and I'm at a loss as to what's going on. Here's a few questions.
1. Can someone from plusnet please check my local exchange/cabinet for any signs of issues? the last few days have been seriously bad in terms of continuous connectivity.
2. I'm not sure if I've had a really bad experience but the plusnet routers seem fairly rubbish...the one i'm currently using is the original one provided, and if i ever make any changes to the wifi configurations, it fails to restart properly and publish the SSID at all (sometimes it publishes the ID but doesn't allow registration). I am forced to do a factory reset after this happens and sometimes it doesn't even work after a single reset. The replacement I got seemingly fails completely at anything wireless-related - I can't make it work at all.
3. I'm really confused about the traffic management. I work from home some times via Citrix and to my understanding VPN traffic should be near the top of the QoS tree if not the top. However sometimes I can be streaming video flawlessly whilst my Citrix session is near unresponsive. Could this be another sign that the connectivity is highly intermittent?
When I first signed my contract I would get 55-60Mbps consistently, maybe down to 40-45 during peak hours. Right now I'd be happy with just a good connection.
Cheers,
Rui

[#2]

bump?

[#3]

Ok the connection is getting pretty unusable during peak hours. Is anyone from PN even reading this nowadays? I have only a desktop which is in another room to the telephone jack and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one in this situation. Does PN just assume no responsibility for anyone in without an ethernet connection to their router? I find it difficult to believe the any issues caused during peak times is purely down to the wireless connection - and if so PN should really supply a 5Ghz router to make up for this.
90% of my broadband experience is something like
and I'm really questioning why I pay for such an inconsistent service.
As a comparison i normally have ~50-55down/10-15up during quiet hours (i.e. early mornings).
EDIT: I should also mention that the packet drops/delays are really screwing with any real-time applications/games that I have...

[#4]

Seems similar to what I'm experiencing, before & after.
Service should be consistent, the price I pay each month is!

[#5]

There won't be any staff on here until Monday as the generally don't work weekends

[#6]

It just seems that the staff are more than content to reply to easy issues and when their service is running fine, but whenever there are weird ones I just see tumbleweed everywhere. I'm not fussed about waiting for a reply after some kind of SLA but I'm pretty peeved at the spotted nature of the responses.
Also I think I figured out that my one working router seems do dislike channel 1 and maybe 6 for wifi, but 11 works fine most of the time. Getting slightly hesitant to keep asking for more routers!
Edit for PG language

[#7]

So the issue only happens over wireless, and you've tried other channels?
Wireless issues are tricky as the signal can be affected by so many different environmental aspects, thickness of the walls, other signals, wireless adaptors etc etc

Quote

I find it difficult to believe the any issues caused during peak times is purely down to the wireless connection

Could you try an ethernet cable when the slowdown occurs and then see if it's just the wireless?
If you have any issues on wired connections too please report this at https://faults.plus.net

[#8]

Quote from: fugu

I find it difficult to believe the any issues caused during peak times is purely down to the wireless connection

It's easy enough to test if that's the case by running tests wired then wireless. If the results are the same then it's not wifi that's causing the problem. It could be though. You're competing with your neighbours and at peak time they will be trying to use their wifi connection as well.

Quote

and if so PN should really supply a 5Ghz router to make up for this.

I don't agree. It's an optional, free, router. I therefore don't consider it to be part of the service. Frankly I see it as a convenience for people who don't know any better or want the easy life. It probably does the job for most people and I don't see any need for PN to supply an expensive router just to cover a few people who need it. Those with a real need for a decent router should be willing to buy their own rather than relying on a freebie supplied by their ISP.
Anyway being 5GHz may not help. My laptops don't support it anyway and I'm probably not alone in that.