I'm waiting on True to get back to me on a puzzling issue that countless Google searches using any number of synonyms have yet to cast even a shaft of light upon.

I'm getting around 12Mbps at the ADSL port on my router. The S:N margin is at 8.5dB. Attenuation weighs in at 21.5dB but upon conducting a speedtest.net test - on the Bangkok server, I might add - I'm clocking less than 1Mbps download speed.

Needless to say, this simply isn't cricket. Does anyone have any idea what could be responsible for such dramatic loss of performance? I've read phrases like "stuck profile" on a few tech-threads on the web but I'm no closer to a solution.

How is your PC connected to your router? If you have wifi G then you can wave goodbye to getting more than a handful of Mbits from it. Maybe much less if there are concrete walls etc between them.

Try and find a large file on True's own servers (maybe some sort of video clip?) and download that. What speed do you get?

The speedtest you tried wouldnt be indicating in bytes rather than bits, would it?

Other possibilites are that True are throttling your connection for reasons known only to them, or that there is a fault somewhere between you and the speedtest server. Try another speedtest.

The actual speed has little to do with the line speed, 12Mb/s in your case.

ISP's often throttle users, particularly heavy usage applications like torrents.

In Thailand there further throttling when you are accessing international sites,

there is just not enough bandwidth on the international links.

Think of it like a traffic jam on busy road.

The noise margin is rather low and should really be 20db+ for decent, reliable performance. Mine got so bad at one point it measured -1db - needless to say the connection kept dropping out!

How is your PC connected to your router?

The speedtest you tried wouldnt be indicating in bytes rather than bits, would it?

PC's connected wirelessly but at full 54Mbps from a wireless-G router so unlikely to be a problem there. The internal wiring was replaced 3 months ago at considerable expense but this was shared with the condo's owner - quite thick, single-strand copper wire which has to travel a mere 50 meters to the switching box downstairs. The syncrate at the switching box is over 16Mbps and although my eyebrows rise a little when the sync rate at the ADSL port in my apartment shows a mere 12Mbps (losing 4Mbps), it doesn't explain a 1Mbps speedtest.net result.

The results are definitely shown in Megabits

Of course, despite the new internal wiring, it could just be that the chimps who actually did the wiring just f***ed it up so they could nip off early to neck a few bottles of Hong Thong.