Bt engineer coming monday worry

[SkeeterUK]

Im on adslmax, with zyxel 660 HW 61 router, 1 bt box in the house. I have bad pings and shaky speeds which can go right down to 0.5mbp sometimes which is annoying. Pings when gaming is increasingly becoming 150-200 often which is getting my kicked off my clan server and also when im not kicked is unplayable.

So my isp is sending a engineer out since they cant find a fault. My tracerts to twang and google.co.uk can vary very fast from being good 25.25.25.25 etc to 100.150.200.205 etc can fluctuate randomly a lot. Sometimes its good on cool days sometimes it can be crap when hot. So im thinking theres somit from the weather causing the probs. Which is my worry.

If a bt engineer comes which he will be on monday following this week. If he finds my bt box is fine which im 50/50 thinking it is and isnt. Then what else will he be testing. Will he check the line from my flat to the telegraph pole for any cuts or scrapes that might be catching when its windy or other such probs. Maybe crossed line somewhere?

So here i am, woundering if anyone has had kinda the same experiance or any experiance where you had to get a engineer out. If so what did they do and how far did they go with testing. And do they test your router and computer for problems.

I have just installed vista and got same problems with a clean install of that, using a dual boot system xp/vista so i know it cant be my pc. My router, well usually its fine but my settings are left alone mostly due to i dont know squat what all that DoD stuff is etc.

My stats are iffy true. BUT it shouldnt be effecting my connection this bad since sometimes i can go a week with no trouble which is rare but does happen.

relative capacity occupation: 0%
noise margin upstream: 20 db
output power downstream: 17 db 
attenuation upstream: 31 db
tone   0- 31: 00000002566777777777776665555200
tone  32- 63: 00000000000000000000000000000000
tone  64- 95: 00000000000000000000000000000000
tone  96-127: 00000000000000000000000000000000
tone 128-159: 00000000000000000000000000000000
tone 160-191: 00000000000000000000000000000000
tone 192-223: 00000000000000000000000000000000
tone 224-255: 00000000000000000000000000000000

Thats upstream stats

relative capacity occupation: 0%
noise margin downstream: 8 db
output power upstream: 12 db 
attenuation downstream: 56 db
tone   0- 31: 00000000000000000000000000000000
tone  32- 63: 004577999aaaaa9abaabaaaaaa99aaaa
tone  64- 95: 09999999999999999999999998888888
tone  96-127: 88888888877777787777777707707060
tone 128-159: 55000000000000340505000500000000
tone 160-191: 00000000000000000000000000000000
tone 192-223: 00000000000000000000000000000000
tone 224-255: 00000000000000000000000000000000

Thats my downstream stats.

So any advise etc is welcome.

 

[NickR]

The engineer (who will most likely be from Openreach) will test your line and your BT NTE5 termination in your flat.

He/she will not test any 'diy' wiring beyond the termination point or your Router or PC as that is outside their remit.

 

[SkeeterUK]

Will he test the line from outside like where it comes into my flat right up the telegraph pole in the street. Will he check it all the way to the exchange which i hope he/she does as there maybe a prob somewhere between me and the exchange.

The main worry is if they dont find anything and blame me in someway then i think i have to pay them a lot. Which i just dont have the money for.

Btw heres my sync details.

System up Time: 59:36:15  

CPU Load: 0.38% 

  

WAN Port Statistics: 

Link Status: Up  

Upstream Speed: 448 kbps 

Downstream Speed: 2912 kbps  

Node-Link Status TxPkts RxPkts Errors Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time 

1-PPPoA Up  1475602 2149369 0 0 0 51:04:50 

 

  

LAN Port Statistics: 

Interface: Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions 

Ethernet 100M/Full Duplex 2126643 1477108 0 

Wireless 54M 0 0 0

Btw never normally this low the sync, its usually 3800kbps and can go to 4400kbps sometimes.

 

[Pulse]

you shouldnt have to pay for the BT engineer, if they have booked him to come out they should be liable for the charges. thats what happened to us as we had the exact samething, flucuating speeds and connection drops, engineer was here bout 2 and 1/2 hours, so ran them up £450 and then 3 weeks later we swapped to sky broadband

seems it was tiscali that was the problem as before it would go down to as low as 15kb/s (just better then dialup) for several hours if not days and we would only see more then 1mb on the odd occasion even though we were meant to have around 2mb, now with sky i constantly see 1.5mb+ depending on what time of day and how many other users, on a good day easily up to 3mb, most my line can carry