Has something changed on my connection?

[#1]

Slightly odd this. My line has been returning speed tests of around 64 down for a couple of years now. A month ago it finally bounced (after 130 days uptime) and came back with 67 down which is nice. Now the puzzle is that sometime last week it dropped to 60 down but apparently stayed connected throughout.

My router reports a PPP uptime of 13 days and yet sometime after the 7th I've lost 7Mb/s of download. My Plusnet profile says:

'Current line speed:71 Mb'

One of BT's contractors is currently working on a second FTTC cabinet they've just added so I imagine it's something they've done. My first thought was that they'd triggered DLM to act (in which case I guess I can wait for it to come back) but a PN profile of 71Mb/s suggests that I ought to be getting better than 60Mb/s and possibly even suggests that I ought to be getting 67Mb/s.

Yet speed tests are consistently topping out at 60Mb/s. Suspiciously so - almost looks like a cap 

[#2 · Accepted solution]

As you've pointed out, the profile on our side is higher than the speed you're getting, so it doesn't seem like a cap on our side, however I've tested your connection and it looks like your line is in sync at around 60Mbps, so it could be DLM as you've suggested.

[#3]

Thanks @HarryB. Hopefully that means it is just a glitch caused by ham fisted engineers rather than crosstalk so will eventually bounce back. Just going to have to wait for DLM to recover. I don't know what they are doing to those cabinets. There have been people working on the PSTN cab and the new FTTC cab for a week now. They've had tents over them for nearly a week now 

[#4]

Huzzah! It's come back. Looks from my TBBQM graph like it bounced around midday. Seems a bit odd as I thought DLM worked in the early hours but perhaps there was another reason for it bouncing and DLM had already decided to relax.

[#5]

Glad to hear that's bounced back

[#6]

Um..something's not right tonight. I'm struggling to get better than 30Mb/s.

According to the BT tester:

Download speedachieved during the test was - 43.53 Mbps
 For your connection, the acceptable range of speedsis 40 Mbps-71 Mbps .
 Additional Information:
 IP Profile for your line is - 71 Mbps

So it's Plusnet not my connection. Is this the infamous new network? If so I ain't impressed.

[#7]

@Andrue

If you don't have a static IP then you can check your gateway at http://users.plus.net/@gateway/ If the gateway name contains the  sequence "-IR0" then that is the new network. 

[#8]

I do have a static IP address. The second hop of a tracert  to plus.net shows 'irb.'... which I've read might indicate I'm on the new network.

[#9]

I don't really know about  that. I think someone may have misread the bit about the letter sequence in the gateway name.

All the staff says it is impossible to tell for static IP's if you are on the new network or not from any source other than themselves.

I'm static and on the old network still. For comparison my tracert is

Tracing route to plus.net [212.159.8.2]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.0.1
  2     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  3     7 ms     7 ms     5 ms  lo0-central10.ptn-ag03.plus.net [195.166.128.192]
  4     5 ms     4 ms     5 ms  link-a-central10.ptn-gw01.plus.net [212.159.2.136]
  5     5 ms     5 ms     5 ms  xe-5-3-0.ptw-cr01.plus.net [212.159.0.108]
  6     7 ms     5 ms     5 ms  te9-4.ptn-gw01.plus.net [195.166.129.33]
  7    16 ms    15 ms    19 ms  gi5-1.peh-cr02.plus.net [84.93.232.61]
  8    17 ms    17 ms    17 ms  reth1.peh-elbfw.plus.net [84.92.0.103]
  9    15 ms    15 ms    14 ms  10.104.0.53
 10    16 ms    17 ms    17 ms  portal.plus.net [212.159.8.2]

Trace complete.

[#10]

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Andrue wrote:

So it's Plusnet not my connection. Is this the infamous new network? If so I ain't impressed.

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I'm not sure what's causing this, however I can confirm you're not on the new network.

[#11]

HarryB  Welcome back to the forum    

[#12]

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@HarryB wrote:

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Andrue wrote:

So it's Plusnet not my connection. Is this the infamous new network? If so I ain't impressed.

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I'm not sure what's causing this, however I can confirm you're not on the new network.

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Okay. Well it's fine again at the moment so I'll test it again later. The Cass engineers seem to have finished mucking about with the cabinets now so maybe that was just their parting gift.