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[Sh4dow85]

canis - sorry yes I meant I fiddled with the one on the inside of the house - looks exactly as in the 2nd pic that Mephistopheles has posted a pic of (thank you!). That internal socket was where I plugged the phone wire in to test. My router wire however is a smaller, square-shaped 'plug' bit, that will not fit in that internal socket.
The socket I have has two holes - one horizontal rectangle shape hole, and a smaller square hole. I'll post a pic when I get home.

Actually, thinking about it, maybe I got my wires confused and the rectangle one is the router and the square one is the phone....

 

[Mephistopheles]

 

[canis]

Do you have a small box between your router and your phone socket, plugs into a normal phone socket with a small square connection on the other side for the router and one for the phone? If you don't have a filter like that is well worth trying one, can be picked up at a BT shop for about 50p last time I looked

Oh, and your router will have a small square connection on the end, there should be an adapter between that and the phone socket it is plugged into?

 

[Sh4dow85]

Ok, so I got some snaps - please excuse the crappy state of things, downstairs is still mid-renovation

I followed the wire from box to router, and there is no other box/filter connected at all.

(sorry about the size of the pics - can't seem to resize them...)

 

[Mephistopheles]

Yes that has a built in ADSL filter it should work fine as long as it has been wired correctly...

You should have some filters somewhere which came with the router it may be worth trying one of them straight into the phone socket to see if that makes a difference....

 

[ExtremeNinja]

Virgin. Been with them for years. They were crap when they were cable & wireless, then they were crap when they were NTL, but both those companies laid the infrastructure. Virgin took over and inherited crap but improved and improved and continue to improve. My service from them now is impeccable.

Booking engineers is a pain in the ass but I haven't needed one since I upgraded to TiVo when it launched.

At one time I will have the following devices hooked up with very satisfactory speeds.

• Sony Bravia TV
• Sony Bravia Cinema System
• 2 x Sonos media player
• TiVo Box
• Google TV
• Sony PS3
• Nintendo Wii
• iPhone
• iPad
• Laptop computer
• Desktop computer

My friend's devices automatically connect when they come round, too. The only problem I ever encounter is the odd IP conflict but that is solved by restarting the router and happens very rarely.
So, a glowing report on Virgin from me. Hope that helps.

 

[Tacitus]

http://www.speedtest.net/
Always fun to find out the true speed.

 

[Sh4dow85]

Thanks ExtremeNinja - will definately give them a look.

Tacitus - That's where I got my initial result from of getting 3.7mb d/l & 1mb u/l speed

 

[jez101]

Sh4dow85 is your problem a) that you have always had this speed, or b) that you used to get more and have seen sudden big a drop?

If it is a) then the type of noise issues that others have referred to (or line length) are most likely the cause. If it is b) then there might be something that you have changed (or been changed for you) that is interfering with the signals.

You should check your "line length", ie. the number of miles of copper cable from your house to the telephone exchange. You can find out which exchange you connect to here http://www.samknows.com/broadband/broadband_checker and it will tell you what you should be getting and what suppliers are available to you.

If your line length is >5 miles, then your speeds would be understandable. If it was ok before though and has suddenly dropped, then this and a whole bunch of other things cannot be causing the problem.

 

[Sh4dow85]

jez101 - It used to be better than it is now. It's only been the last few weeks I've noticed a difference.

I'm 0.7 miles from the exchange, so there should be no issues from cable length

Begrudgingly I emailed my ex the other night to ask if he'd ring up and either add me to the account so I have the same permissions, or see if they will provide a migration code - either so I can take over the account completely, or can use it to switch providers. He seemed ok about helping, but hasn't done anything about it as yet. We'll see how that goes... Until then, I can't get BE to do anything about even checking any problems out

 

[ExtremeNinja]

Isn't BE busy with a court case in Germany?

 

[canis]

If the speed has suddenly dropped off in the past few weeks, one think to check is the BT website to see when your postcode is expecting to get Fibre Optic. Check under infinity and it will tell you when it was due.

The reason why I say this is that some areas have reported difficulties while the fibre upgrade work has been ongoing due to the loss of some circuits and over subscription on the exchange for the other circuits to support.

(Not that I know both the Virgin, ex-NTL, ex-Cable and Wireless and BT broadband systems inside out or have worked on both of them in great depth in the past )

 

[Sh4dow85]

Heh well I can already get fibre optic, and as far as I'm aware we've had it round here for some time now, so I presume that's not the cause here.

Still waiting on word about the BE account details, so just trying to put up with things as they are for now