So this morning started far too early with taking the dog to daycare. Then it started again at about 10AM. DLM hadn’t kicked in on the Zen line and it was still shit, although email was getting through. I decided to do a bit more investigation. I set a netbook up with a Dreytek in the lounge, then chopped the external cable and mounted a master socket and filter through the existing wall cable. Magically it synced at over 7mbps. Okay, so dodgy cable, bad master socket or filter I thought. So reconnected it all back upstairs, back to 4mbps. Changed the master socket and then the filter, still the same. I was about to try the alternate pair in the cable but before that I decided just to power stuff off around it in case it made a difference. Killing the phones and the work PC made no difference. Disconnecting the PABX, again nothing. Then I killed the filter side of the UPS, magically the sync jumped right up. So it was a case of eliminating each plug one at a time. It turned out to be the Netgear 16 port switch. As soon as I disconnected it the sync shot up, as soon as it was connected it lost sync. It apparently has a life time warranty but it’s years old and the receipt has been filed long ago. I’ve ordered a new one off Amazon prime and it will be here tomorrow. That’s goodbye to a hundred quid for the sake of a hardware failure. That’s the second switch that has failed in the past couple of years. Still at least that’s got to the bottom of it, the line is now stable at around 7mbps. I’m sure the margin will increase again to 9db, but it should settle at 6mbps.

The rest of the day I did a bit of systems work I was asked to do. Then finally got round to playing with my new toy. It’s very good.