Alarm Monitoring Slowing Down Broadband?

[chilloutcolin]

We have adsl broadband which use to download at 1.6-1.8 Mb/s. Then after over a year of no problems the internet speed dropped to under 400kb/s. Where it has remained occasionally going even slower.

We've had numerous engineers up from our broadband provider(Magnet) and from the telecommunications company(Eircom). Both deny any responsibility for the problem. None of the engineers could offer any sort of explanation for the slow down until we mentioned to one of the eircom engineers that we have an alarm monitor in place. He insisted that it was the likely cause (and that it wasn't his responsibility) and told us we'd need to get another engineer up to rewire the system.

So basically after all that, my question is are we being duped or can alarm monitoring systems actually interfere with broadband speeds? has anyone any experience with similar situations?
Any replys are much appreciated,
Colin.

[Emrys]

Hi Colin,

How does this Alarm system use the ADSL connection?

Dan

[anthonyla65]

Lol agreed. Theres either something fishy going on with your ISP or your phone line is dodgy. 1.6mb-1.8mb/s? You sure? You using Optical Fibre? As far as I know ADSL only goes up to 8 megabits (800kb/s) but optical fibre can go up to 24megabits (2mb/s).

I advise you to try this.

[chilloutcolin]

Thanks for replying, not positive of the exact setup. As far as I know the phone line comes in the door, goes to the alarm box(so the alarm can dial out when it goes off) and then goes on to the wall socket where I plug in my wireless router. Phones and wired comps can connect to this router.

The telecommunications company engineers assured us the line is fine as far as the house(anything inside the house is not there problem).

Its a dodgy copper wire set up. No optical fibre. Its meant to be a 10 Mb connection. It use to download at 1.6-8Mb/s (160 - 200 kB/s) but just ran another test on speedtest.net:
Download : 0.36Mb/s
Upload : 0.56Mb/s
ping : 176ms

Sorry if I'm not giving enough info on the setup. Not positive about it myself.

[Hybrid]

Its UPTO 10mb, depending where you live from an exchange, most raely see those speeds on copper.

Cant you disable the alarm system (unplug it out of the phoneline?)

Regardless your physical phone and im guessing the alarm run on separate cores to the adsl on your line, that is why you can make calls while online these days.

Personally, they're talking horse shit and id tell them to get it sorted or you're leaving. It's important to remember the line from your house to the exchange is not their problem though, it's your telephone providers, so call them too and get it tested.