So engineer arrived nice and early today, just past 8am! He said he suspected low power stream and immediately installed an attenuator in between the coaxial cable and my hub, I suspect to even out the power levels of down and upstream coming from the connection on the street? He said something about the optimal number being 3db or something, he took a reading on his device thing he plugged in. He then checked the connections from the where the cable comes in to the house, and the box outside, which need a bit of tightening. Then took another speed reading which was what I am getting when the service is working properly.
I was advised to do reboots every 2 weeks, and if things are particularly glitchy then to do the pinhole reset thing.
It's only been a day but so far its all stable, will need to monitor for a couple of weeks to see if any of that packet loss comes back, as it was really bad last Tuesday evening.
What if VM do fiddle with the connection on the street in attempt to fix the SNR/downstream power levels etc? Will I still have to use the attenuator?