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[HPsauce]

Most speed increases are achieved by setting a higher RWIN more appropriate to your connection speed.

My experience is 100% in agreement with that. 

Whilst most of the tools available look at both MTU and RWIN together I've found that, in practice, MTU makes little or no difference but RWIN can have a dramatic effect, 4 or 5-fold increases are not uncommon.
However I've never seen it so bad as to knock an 8meg line down to 512k levels. 

[streetfarm]

I'm sorry about the long delay in posting a follow up to this problem.  It has taken this long for a resultion, but I'm pleased to announce that it was fixed TODAY!

The saga since my last post:

I attempted to post the problem on the BT forums website.  I failed dismally here, as my posts on that site all ended up as being posted by 'null' and no one could reply to them!

I called the BT help desk.  It was very difficult to get through and I gave up on the first couple of attempts.  I then submitted the problem on the BT support website.  Apart from the automatically generated reply, I received no response.

I tried the help line a few days later and got through.  They logged on to my PC remotely, opened the Home Hub control panel, and pointed to where it said connected at 8120 kbps.  I said NO it's throughput NOT connection speed, but they didn't understand.  Then there were fiurther calls saying they'd found a fault and fixed it and to switch off the router overnight and try in the morning.  It was no different.  The next time I called I was told the problem is because I have interleaving switched on, and i should call the 'Order Management Department' on 0808 100 2552 and ask them to switch it off.  I called the number she provided, and was told they cannot switch off interleaving.

I phoned the 'throttlecheck' number, 0800 707 6044, to see if I had accidentally been throttled due to FUP limits being exceeded, but they said no this was not the case.  I asked if there were any tests they could do, and they said no.

In desperation I decided to go for the BT Home IT Support Service.  This is where you pay a fee to get a problem looked at.  It costs £25 for a single problem.  There is a website which says 'click here and someone will phone you back within 30 minutes'.  I clicked this, as it seemed impossible to get through to the right person on the phone number listed.  Someone did call me back 3 HOURS LATER!  However, they were extremely pleasant and polite etc, and said they had been very busy, so I forgave them.  They 'did a line check' and apparently this revealed a problem!  They said they would log it with the faults department and someone would call me. 

Well, that was on 13/02/09.  Since then, there have been 10 phone calls between us, mainly stating that BT Wholesale have done a test and no faults can be found.  A lot of these calls have been with Beryl, a lovely lady who seemed very concerned about the trouble I'd been having.  I think it was finally due to her that an Openreach engineer visit was arranged, and this happened today.

So what did he do?  He rang just before he arrived and stated that he thought he knew what the problem was, and would be with me in 20 minutes.  He arrived on time, and after doing a basic line check which showed no problem, he phoned his Openreach helpdesk.  Using a 3-way call, the help desk then phoned BT Wholesale. (The Openreach engineer is not allowed to speak directly to BT Wholesale).  He allowed me to hear the conversation by putting it on speaker phone.  After a brief discussion, they reported that the problem was that my broadband service had been incorrectly built at 1Meg instead of 8Meg.  This had happened back in July 2008 when my old 1Meg Bulldog service was allegedly upgraded to 8Meg as part of the takover by Pipex.  They corrected this whilst the engineer stayed on the phone, and then when we tried  speedtester.bt.com, for the first time ever I got a throughput of 6488 kbps!!!  FANTASTIC!  Problem fixed.

I am really grateful to the engineer Andy, who really knows his stuff.

All that remains now is for me to try to reclaim my £25.

Thanks to all of you who have made very helpful comments and observations on my problem.

Regards,

Phil

 

[roseway]

Wow, what a tortuous way to get their misconfiguration sorted out! But you got a result in the end, and thanks for updating us.

[BritBrat]

All that remains now is for me to try to reclaim my £25.

I would be looking for more than the £25 as you did not even get the service you were paying for.

I would be looking for at least a 50% refund from the contract start date and that is not even taking into account phone calls and time wasted.

EDIT:

You are only a month in contract so not worth arguing over that, just be happy it is fixed and get the £25 back like you said.

[waltergmw]

Pipex is really the dreaded T word again !

Perhaps I could mention the Z word as an ISP far more adroit at grinding through the BT jungle to get problems solved relatively painlessly for the end user, though at a higher price.

Kind regards,
Walter

[kitz]

>> incorrectly built at 1Meg instead of 8Meg.

Thanks for getting back to us and letting us know how you went on.

Ive only heard of that happening once before, but it was a long time ago and before the days of bRAS profiles.  I would have thought that an incorrect build would have shown up either on your sync or bRAS but obviously not. 
iirc it may relate to how the older dslams used to work and back in the days when the line speed was set on the linecard at the exchange rather than remotely at the bRAS. 

[streetfarm]

Just a little update - BT have agreed to refund the £25 I paid for Home IT Support.  All is now well!

[kitz]

Nice one 
Thanks for letting us know