BT 20MB broadband, -Why did I bother

Question

The long and short, I had Bulldog 8MB broadband and recieved 7.7MB
I moved over to BT 20MB as the BT website said I should expect at least 18MB and I am 1.5KM from the exchange (by road / cable, not as the crow flies).
I now have BT 6,652kbps connection speed and an IP profile of 5500.
I recently had a line issue and have had the line from pole to shiny new BT master socket replaced, have tried both BT Hub 2 and old netgear router, numerous filters and no other extns of anything else connected.
Having moved to what I assume to be ADSL2+ I have a slower connection and downloads that my old ADSL 8MB connection.
I am somewhat confused by what I should expect, despite 15 years in IT and being involved in corporate SDSL, cisco networks etc.
My stats are
Connection          6,652kbps / 1,192kbps
VPI/VCI               0/38         
Modulation           ITU-T G.992.5      ADSL2+
Latency               Interleaved
Noise Margin        13.8dB/5.7dB        Pretty good from what I have seen of other peoples stats
Line attenuation   25dB/13.1dB        Is this high?
Output power      0.0dBm/12.5dBm  Not seen anyone else with a 0.0dBm reading?
If I had an 18MB connection, what would I actually see as a connection speed and what would my IP profile be?
I understand / believe that ADSL2+ uses multiple carriers to transmit data and therefore should transmit more than 6,552kbps on a 6,552kbps line, but what should I expect to see and get from a data transfer perspective?
If living 1.5km from the exchange gives a 6mb connection how close do you have to be to get a 20mb connection? next door?
Personally I think we are all being bandwidth throttled because the exhange is oversubscribed.....
Anyone have any thoughts? Should I give it up and go over to fibre (which I guess I should have done from the start)?
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Answer 1

Thanks for the replies, makes a little more sense now, (I am on the Chandlers Ford exchange btw).
I am still a little confused therefore why my download speed is so slow.....
My router info is as before;
Connection 6,652kbps
Type   PPPoA
Modulation   ITU-T G.992.5
Latency    Interleaved
Noise margin 13.5dB
Line attenuation  25dB
Output power 0.0dBm
If i put the downstream attenuation into the calculator on the previous link i get the following;
Approx line length 1.8km
dslMAX 8128kbps               IP Profile 7150kbps
adsl2+ (21CN) 18144kbps   IP profile 15000kbps
adsl2+ (LLU)  18144kbps    throughput 16057kbps
This is infering that I am only getting dslMAX connectivity or my adsl2+ connectivity is absolutly pants.....
I am only getting connection speeds of 6,500kbps and downloads around 5,500kbps consistent with my P Profile.
WHAT IS GOING ON?
Is there anyone from BT with half a brain who can give me a straight answer, because I am cancelling the contract as soon as I can if this isnt resolved.....
All I get from the Indial call centre is;
have you connected to the master socket?,..... have you changed the microfilter?,..... are you connected wirelessly?,..... have you got another computer you can connect with?
or you finally get through to an engineer, who says
we are really sorry you have this problem,..... we will fix it,..... bear with us,..... we have made some changes to your connection,.... it will all be ok now,.... please wait another 10 days to see the changes come into effect.
Guess what, after MONTHS and several calls I am STILL getting 6,500kbps and I can walk to the exchange in 3 minutes so its not exactly a long way away, so the other 90% of Chandlers Ford residents mush be getting REALLY POOR connection speed........ unless.......of course........its just me and there really is a problem.........
Who knows, I don't and certainly BT don't!