What I've noticed is INP increased from 3.00 to 3.50
I'm not sure if that increase is significant or not. It is probably not the DLM's doing, if it changed at the instant that you capped the rate.
Perhaps when you cap the rate, what you're actually capping is the
net data rate, which does not include bandwidth used to carry FEC data. So with the rate capped, there's more bandwidth available to carry FEC data, which the modem might opt to use otherwise it might just be wasted. A line profiles specifies the minimum INP level and maximum delay, so the modem could work things out so that it has greater than the minimum INP level specified.