I wish I could remember what my sign up estimations were. I've drilled through my emails and order forms from 2013 and cannot find anything.
Perhaps you could find the estimates in your account?
I don't think I'd have much to stand on anyway, like you say it does look as if my sync is influenced by crosstalk more than anything else.
If it is below the estimates or minimum guarantee then you would have a leg to stand on, though they may only offer to release you from your contract (if you are in one still) without penalty. But if it is believed that significant improvements can be made or if the line is deemed to have a fault then an engineer could be sent out. But I should say that it doesn't seem there is a fault.
The new modem has certainly improved my latency though, that's something I've noticed. Not sure if that's a common find with the HG modems over the ECI?
I personally don't know if there would be any significant differences between using the ECI and the HG612 modem in reference to latency, especially without any stats from each of the two devices. Though, the differences in latency could be contributed to from your ISP routing perhaps taking a different path (because you have been given a different gateway for your PPP session)? It is not unusual for major ISPs to have multiple gateways that have varying latencies, though most are probably within a couple of milliseconds of each other.
Out of interest, what shows that I'm on fast path on the stats?
I know that if
Bearer: 0 exists alone then it is in the absence of G.INP (which is to be expected on ECI), but I cannot see anything in your stats that would imply you are on fastpath (your stats are truncated, so I can't see what the delay is). Though, on FTTC, it is a bit different compared to ADSL in the sense that you can still have interleaving in the form of G.INP on Bearer 1 but the delay on the main Bearer can still be set to 0 (no delay).
Back in the days of ADSL2+ I was with BE (amazing ISP for the techy types!) Having the ability to alter your SNR/Fast path via the control panel was epic, something I don't think is avaliable out there anymore?
On FTTC, no. If I recall correctly, the closest you can get to this is with TalkTalk's LLU ADSL2+ broadband where you can register and request specific profiles and the disabling of the DLM.
One thing I've always wondered about is DLM and what forces this to kick in - i.e. if I manually restart my modem a couple of times a week, would that force it to kick in?
The DLM records data over a 24h period. From that data, it decides on whether it needs to make positive, negative or no changes at all. There is quite a bit of information relating to the DLM on the kitz site (
http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/DLM.htm) which outline the thresholds. To put it simply, there are defined thresholds which allow the DLM to categorise the line through the Mean Time Between Errors (MTBE) and Mean Time Between Resyncs (MTBR) that depend on the stability profile set by the ISP. Amber just signifies no changes, while green and red will allow for positive and negative changes likewise. Changes typically take place early hours in the morning (I believe somewhere around 4am usually).
To answer your hypothetical question above, restarting your modem a couple of times a week wouldn't make any difference at all since on the Speed DLM profile (as an example) the MTBR would have to drop below 4200 seconds (or 70 minutes) so you would be able to restart the modem up to around 20 times a day in theory without any impact (though I wouldn't try it). I should go on to say that there's a chance restarting a modem may not be treated the same as a link drop because of something to do with a "dying gasp" ... perhaps
b*cat or some other experienced person could confirm.