Great result (you posted as I was typing). The difference with that one single wire is, it imbalances the circuit and acts like an antennae for high-frequency 'noise' that combats your signal.
There could be lots more improvements to be made, ie- best cable to Cabinet, locating exactly which is the Master Socket, fitting an NTE2000.
See my post above for best results.
Thanks, definitely going to be taking all the advice on board and doing everything possible to get the best speed we can.
I *think* from what i've seen I see the route the wire takes, and thankfully seems like it does go direct from XNTE to the socket in the lounge first, but of course this is just an assumption at this point.
I've tried to explain below how I think it is wired, but it's not that easy to follow on a forum I know, especially with my amateur way of explaining it. Luckily we may not be in that situation where it goes to an inaccessible junction box, if it did then i'd assume that each socket would just have 1 "set" of wires coming into it. Looks like in our house they daisychain.
Which I reckon will make it easier to disconnect all but the first one.
XNTE => Lounge Socket (1 b/w in, 1 b/w out - 1 w/b in, 1 w/b out) => Bedroom right above (1 b/w in, 2 b/w out - 1 w/b in, 2 w/b out)
From here it seems the bedroom feeds one of it's "outward sets" of wires along to the hallway, which just has 1 of each cable and is the end of that branch
The other "outward set" of wires then goes to the smallest bedroom, which has 2 sockets. One of the sockets has 2 sets of wires (1 inward, 1 outward), the second socket in that bedroom just has 1 set of wires, and there that branch terminates.
I noticed the sync speed seems really solid now, before I would refresh and the sync speed would change every few seconds. Now every time I look at the DSL page it shows a solid number that doesn't seem to be moving. That's got to help too
I'll update here with any progress, just incase anybody else has problems too.
If this works i'll be getting in touch with all our neighbours just to let them know what I did, of course I don't want to take any responsibility for the advice, incase they end up doing something wrong