Broadband Extender 500 Flex slow speeds seemingly randomly.

[Nessquick]

I've been using my flex 500 kits for years, gone through a few pairs as some slowly died, but I've recently been baffled by some slow speeds on my gaming computer. We typically get 70Mbps in a rural area, and typically it likes to cap out around 60-65mbps on a good day through ethernet. Recently howerver, I've been experiencing speeds as low as 20mbps only on a workstation connected to a flex device upstairs in my workroom. It seemingly happened at random, but I have tried almost everything to troubleshoot, I've replaced all of the Flex kits in the house with other ones that I know are good or should produce different results, I've restarted the router many times, changed ethernet ports, and checked other devices on the same network. My laptop (garuda linux) experiences the same issue when connected to the ethernet port on the flex, but from taking another flex around the house, different ports in the same room seem to have different speeds! There's no-one else that's exactly using all of the bandwidth as I'm the only one using the internet at all at the minute, and just one power plug over from my machine means the difference of about an extra 20Mbps up to 40Mbps, still not the 60 I normally get, but it's just confused me for these speeds to suddenly drop!

[countrypaul]

Could the contacts in the socket have got dirty, typically as things are plugged in/out.  If there is any dirt on the pins of the flex unit for example that could adversely effect things.  In some cases if the wires in socket at the back have not been tightened properly or have thermally cycled and loosened slightly that could adversely effect performance.  Given the recent very cold spell, if the socket is on an outside wall you might expect more problems.

Not normally recommended is using an extension lead with these units, but by way of experiment it might be worth trying the unit with an extension lead to see if there is any difference when plugging the extension lead into different sockets.

Just a couple of things that might be worth testing, no guarantee they will make any difference or even be on the right track, but might just help rule some things out. 

[Nessquick]

I've tried a few different sockets, and speeds seem to change per-socket; not really sure what's causing this though.

[Les-Gibson]

How recently exactly and is this at any time of day or just within peak hours? 

[countrypaul]

Have you installed anything with electronics new in the house recently? - just wondering if something could be putting interference on the mains?

[Nessquick]

No, although I did a GPU upgrade recently, it was happening prior to this; and yes it occurs at all hours of the day (and night)

kudos for the help.

[licquorice]

Christmas lights?

[Nessquick]

none up funnily enough, good point though

[countrypaul]

You've said different sockets in the house give different performances with the same flex unit. Is there any pattern that you can discern, such as closest to the east corner has poorest performance, or socket the shortest distance (over mains wiring) has highest performance - this may no be that easy to work out!

How close are you neighbours? just wondering if they might have something new which is causing noise on you mains.

[Nessquick]

detached form neighbours, but the farther from the room i'm in, the better. It seems that it's just that fuze loop, but makes no sense as nothing has changed within it.

Thanks!