Is upgrading a Router really that Important

Jeramba · 6 Feb 2015 at 12:50

Hi I spoke to my ISP a while back about slow speeds <1MB. They recomended I upgrade my router. But wouldn't send me one of theirs (no longer under contract).

I just wonder whether a new Router is really that important ? I mean I would have thought the distance from the exchange was the main speed influence.

My Router is a Netgear DG834G so quite a few years old....

DaleTheWhale · 6 Feb 2015 at 12:51

What speed should you be getting?
What speed do you get when wired?

Evil-I · 6 Feb 2015 at 13:37

Can make a big difference in my experience.

I had a netgear (might even have been the same model as yours...), and had stability problems and all sorts that got worse as it got older. Switched to a Billion Bipack 7800n and had both better line speed and general stability. Also seems to deal much better with multiple connections, on the netgear if I was doing a download on one machine, you were pretty much buggered on any other for having decent responsiveness for browsing etc. On the Billion, you don't really know it's happening at all.

Also important if your line has been upgraded from ADSL2 to ADSL2+ for example to make sure your router supports the technology.

Jeramba · 6 Feb 2015 at 13:40

ThaReaperGuy said:
What speed should you be getting?
What speed do you get when wired?

Quoted 2MB. I get 1MB wired. I use Wired most of the time. I Have another line at home that gets a max of 0.5 MB.

I'm right at the end of the exchange....

Steveocee · 6 Feb 2015 at 13:46

A router swapout would be recommended as more of a last resort than anything else. Have you swapped your filter, rj11 cable yet? That may help a bit.

Also look in your router as to what speed your router is syncing at rather than what you are speed testing at.

ED209 · 6 Feb 2015 at 14:16

the distance from the exchange and the line quality will determine what speed your broadband connects at, login to your router and see if there is section that tells you what its connected at.

router will control speed to the PC's and network inside your home

Jeramba · 7 Feb 2015 at 12:30

ED209 said:
the distance from the exchange and the line quality will determine what speed your broadband connects at, login to your router and see if there is section that tells you what its connected at.

router will control speed to the PC's and network inside your home

Router is registering 1.2 MB while internet speeds are 1.00 MB. Did a speed test on my ISPs website and it said it was 'excellent'...

Orcvader · 7 Feb 2015 at 12:58

Any chance you can post the modem stats? Such as line attenuation, SNR, etc. This will give us a better idea of what your line is capable of. Ideally check while the modem is connected to the master socket/test socket, extensions can affect your broadband speed. Could also remove the ring wire in the master socket too if it's not disconnected already, that should give you a small boost.

Bane · 7 Feb 2015 at 13:16

What revision of DG834G do you have? Will list v2, etc on label.

Still using a DG834Gv2 myself as it matches Texas Instrument DSLAM at exchange. But it does suffer UI not loading in various browsers, including latest Internet Explorer.

Jeramba · 7 Feb 2015 at 15:15

Orcvader said:
Any chance you can post the modem stats? Such as line attenuation, SNR, etc. This will give us a better idea of what your line is capable of. Ideally check while the modem is connected to the master socket/test socket, extensions can affect your broadband speed. Could also remove the ring wire in the master socket too if it's not disconnected already, that should give you a small boost.

Ok 1216 kbps downstream 512 kbps upstream

Line attentuation 63 dB down 15.5 db up

Noise margin (same as SNR ?) 6 db down 9 db up

and the router is V3.....

Thanks

Morfinel · 7 Feb 2015 at 15:16

I got upgrade from talk talk and gained 2mb from 7mb to 9

Caged · 7 Feb 2015 at 15:36

Your line is crap, there's not much you can do about it.

tribz · 7 Feb 2015 at 15:42

A Billion 7800 or 8800 would allow you to adjust the SNR and give you a bit more speed at the expense of some possible disconnects.

Ev0 · 7 Feb 2015 at 16:03

ED209 said:
the distance from the exchange and the line quality will determine what speed your broadband connects at, login to your router and see if there is section that tells you what its connected at.

router will control speed to the PC's and network inside your home

Router can affect the connection they don't only control the internal network, it's not purely based on distance from exchange.

tribz said:
A Billion 7800 or 8800 would allow you to adjust the SNR and give you a bit more speed at the expense of some possible disconnects.

Bingo.

We're on a rubbish line here, on a Draytek 2860 we were getting line sync of about 1400 to 1600kbps downstream, connection was around 1.4Mbps.

Only by chance did I try another router (the BT HH we were sent) when I was doing some testing and noticed it was syncing higher, at about 1600 to 1700kbps downstream all the time.

Doing some reading seems that the Draytek whilst being very solid routers are rather cautious with the line and go for stability rather than out and out speed.

Pickup up one of the latest Billion routers so that I could have a play with the SNR values.

Out of the box without changing anything it was syncing at 2000kbps downstream. Bit of fiddling later and the line can be pushed a fair bit higher albeit I can see errors generated so don't like leaving it too high as don't want BT doing anything on the line to try and correct what they would think were problem errors (even when pushed high I never get any disconnects).

So I've gone from about 1.4/1.5Mbps to a day to day 2.2/2.4Mbps but can push it a bit higher if need to.

My line stats are 63.5dB attenuation downstream, 31.5dB attenuation upstream, currently sat with an SNR value of 5 with the router saying max attainable rate on the line is 3072Kbps and a downstream rate of currently 2400Kbps.

So router can make a difference

Morfinel · 7 Feb 2015 at 16:10

Would it not improve if you change provider?

Ev0 · 7 Feb 2015 at 16:17

In my case wouldn't have thought so, it's the physical line to our part of town that's the issue, might look into it once the contracts up on this one but will see.

MissChief · 7 Feb 2015 at 19:21

No Fibre availability? Www.superfast-Openreach.co.uk

modd1uk · 7 Feb 2015 at 19:26

^ Check fibre availability, how the hell can you cope with that internet speed!?

Ev0 · 7 Feb 2015 at 22:36

Nope no fibre, exchange is enabled but no cab upgrade.

Cope just fine now, might only seem like a tiny speed bump but has really made a difference upping by that meg or so. Can now stream all our usual stuff just fine, and my folks office 10 mins away has fibre if I need it (usually just for the odd large work download).

bitsNbobs · 8 Feb 2015 at 02:09

Jeramba said:
Quoted 2MB. I get 1MB wired. I use Wired most of the time. I Have another line at home that gets a max of 0.5 MB.

I'm right at the end of the exchange....

Jeramba said:
Ok 1216 kbps downstream 512 kbps upstream

Line attentuation 63 dB down 15.5 db up

Noise margin (same as SNR ?) 6 db down 9 db up

and the router is V3.....

Thanks

Buying a new router with those connection speeds would be an utter waste of time and money. ABout the only reason for upgrading your DG834 Netgear would be if you transfer files over the network and would prefer gigabit rather than 100MB ethernet that the DG834 has. Other than that it would be pointless, your connection is basically slow and spending silly money on a router even if it gave you a quarter of a Megabit more would IMO be pointless.

Id spend the money looking for if you can get a better internet service from anywhere first.