Slower this Evening

[#1]

Just Speed tested (BTW Performance Tester) and found a Red Line on Down for the first time in yonks, have seemingly lost 5Mbps during the day from Down and Up is slower too, IP Profile remains the same.
Is this likely to be a capacity issue? the connection has been very stable for some weeks.
Not the happiest bunny tonight, can't abide a slowdown.

[#2]

Assuming that you did the test via Ethernet from the router or preferably directly from the openreach modem then it is the most likely culprit, what is your usual speed?
Also worth checking you have a dialling tone and that there is no noise on the line when in use as it could be a line/phone fault rather than capacity.
If it keeps happening then you should raise it to the faults team; www.faults.plus.net

[#3]

Thanks Blake, usual speed has been 45 Mbps connected, giving about 40Mbps at the PC either wired or Ethernet. Dialling tone and line sound good, but what I don't understand is the sudden drop during the day when we were out and no real traffic. , makes me wonder if "man made" somehow, cabinet intervention of some sort.
Speed this morning is still a very definite Red Line on Down, speeds unaltered from yesterday. It an annoyance that broadband is so prone to wobbling, and cannot just be stable, assume its similar to radio waves WRT reception and range.

[#4]

No probs,  happy to try and solve the mystery
There is a number of possible causes but I'm mostly intrigued what package you are on/how much your broadband costs (without a promo/retention discount)
Only reason is 40mbps is the cut off for speed on one of the newer contracts.

[#5]

Hi Blake, my package is Unlimited Fibre 40/20 and costs £22.49 per month. My original Fibre Package was Unlimited Extra (80/20) which achieved somewhere around 50Mbps, sometimes more, sometimes less, the predicted speed when taking it up was 47Mbps. That was about 14 months ago. Since the New Year, I experienced a slow down, and the BTW Performance Test began to lower the expected speed to keep the Down Speed in the green and therefore not qualifying for an engineer visit to investigate.
About March, having grumbled at PlusNet , they determined that they could no longer supply the Extra Service and I was downgraded to Standard Fibre Extra (40/20), the reason given was Crosstalk following take-up in my cabinet, I was even told that the local exchange capacity had been exceeded and that extra capacity was planned. Later I was told that this was wrong info, and no extra capacity was planned. I continued to grumble and a line check determined a copper connection issue and this was passed to BTW.
Out of the blue one Saturday a decent BT Engineer turned up on my door step to check out my line, (they are all decent, in my experience, but they approach a problem differently, usually they do the most expedient thing to get a result but don't go further, as each has their daily workload to achieve and "getting in and out" is paramount).
This engineer had apparently remade every copper connection on my line in both cabinets,  paring back and then remaking, not simply undoing and retightening he said, and the results showed improvement, and he said that one connection in particular had looked poor.
After a port reset, speeds were as new but soon these deteriorated (over a couple of weeks) and the IP profile on BTW Performance Test  dropped to about 28Mbps. Changing to the BTO supplied modem from the built in Modem in my ASUS router, and leaving it alone saw the speed improve to the current IP profile of 45.7Mbps over about 6 weeks and it remains there to this day, has done for perhaps a further 4 weeks (10 total?) but although still having this profile, speeds slowed yesterday like turning down a tap. I do not trust external factors, I think that both BTO and PlusNet are probably squeezing what they can from the system and throttling, but I cannot see why.
I may well be wrong, jumping to conclusions, but to me all things change for a reason, and if no changes are apparently made, yet definite change occurs, I assume that somewhere out of sight, a change has been made. If there was no capacity issue, why would anyone offer various packages at different speeds IF the connections themselves were all 80/20 as supplied by BTW?
Lots to think about anyway.

[#6]

Thanks for the info Dan,
By the sounds of it you are on market 1 prices and therefor probably a bit more rural which is the cause of many a broadband issue but not necessarily yours.
You said that the speed has dropped from 45 to 40?, it seems odd to me that you would get 45 on the 40/20 package in the first place and it may explain it if your profile at plusnet was wrong and is now correct to limit speeds to 40.
Once someone in office checks this over they will be able to tell us whether your virtual path/exchange is over utilized, whether your profile at plusnet has changed or if the sync rate has dropped or even if their is a copper joint impairment/line fault.
The products from BTW can be variable, it depends on what service was originally ordered when setting up your asset, it is possible to modify afterwards but wouldn't normally need to be done.
The limit is 80/20 but lesser products can be ordered.
I can assure you of one thing though, neither plusnet or BTO will be limiting the network to get more out of it, it will be one of the above scenarios that has caused it.
In regards to why an ISP would offer different packages is just because it costs less to provide certain products and gives the choice to customers that need less/more or perhaps cannot receive the top package due to line estimates or issues.
They cannot charge fairly if there is just one package available at one price but peoples speed varies widely.
It used to be done on a usage cap/unlimited basis but now plusnet only offer unlimited packages, it has to be separated by speed.

[#7]

Hi Blake. I've been getting 40Mbps at the PC, dropped yesterday to about 35Mbps but a modem restart this evening has seen that rise to 37Mbps. The IP Profile on BTW Best Permance Test shows 45.7Mbps, and a recent (two weeks ago) PlusNet line test showed me connected at 45Mbps. Presumably it is capped to 40Mbps Down and was until yesterday Rock solid 40Mbps on every test, then the annoying drop in speed.

[#8]

Ah I see, I wouldn't be too concerned, there are many factors and it may have been a very temporary drop.
Try speed tests when less users are online 12midnight-8AM and see if there is a difference.
Unless your sync rate has suddenly dropped then nothing to worry about, if it has dropped then the IP Profile will soon drop and reflect it most likely.
dick:quote

[#9]

I could easily ignore temporary speed drops, IF I knew they were temporary, but over time I've seen speeds gradually fall of before, and it always starts with a few Mbps, that then don't seem to come back and become the norm. Even BTW's estimate of your line capability drops to suit. When looking at speed, I pay more attention to UP than down, because Up seems an "immovable" constant (if down drops, but up remains the same, I can be pretty sure that Down speed has slowed temporarily, but if Up drops, the package has slows, as a rule of thumb).
In this case Up slowed about 15-20% and that's my worry, it looks like a deliberate slow down. That fact that good speeds were maintained for weeks, checked OK in the morning but were lower when I returned home later in the day, is a concern. The connection was not in use effectively in that period, simply connected and operating. If I was at home, we might have noticed that broadband went off (perhaps with work being done on the street cabinet, or a remote adjustment applied), but we didn't and have no way of knowing if that happened.
Because of my experiences with FTTC over about 14 months, I have become paranoid about speed deterioration, something that never happened with ADSL or ADSL2+ when we were on far slower connections. I find it hard to explain, but it really bugs when speed drops away. Judging by other posts it affects others too. The technology, whilst marvellous, seems very "hit and "miss", speeds are "suck it and see" and they vary. Making use of the copper lines was a quick way to achieve faster speeds, but a drive through any town shows much closer cabinets to properties than we have in the countryside and using the (longer) copper lines "in the sticks" perhaps isn't an ideal solution.
If you went into a pub, ordered a pint, but got a glass filled to all sorts of levels, life would be frustrating to say the least, and if you always got more in the boozer across the road, they'd likely get all the business wouldn't they?

[#10]

Yeah I know what you mean.
My circuit always syncs at 80/20 but my speeds are not always within 1 or 2 mbps of each other.
If tests are showing nearly always ok during none peak times and a decline during peak times then it is a congestion issue.
It would be good to know if you're virtual path is blue, green,  amber or red as this will indicate if BT are aware of congestion.
Unfortunately unless it has a status of red then the issue will not be treated most likely,  when it becomes red then BT recognise an issue and the need to upgrade the capacity.
I have also suffered from VP issues,  I once had 3mbps downstream on a 80/20 line direct from the OR modem,  the next morning at 8AM it was 75mbps