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Question

VERY slow internet - old router "fixes" the connection

Jan 4, 2013 8:39PM PST

when I connect an old router and establish a connection, and then immediately afterwards connect the current router, everything appears to work fine. but on rebooting the current router the connection is again "destroyed" :-

ADSL internet connection (wired to PC in bedroom & wireless) slowed to almost zero (10 Kbps! - the connection got slower & slower through time).

contacted ISP who suggested connecting to the test socket (in the hall).

decided first of all to connect an old router to the master (but not test) socket (in the hall) together with different cabling & splitter/microfilter - everything starting working almost perfectly (apart from downstream data rate was considerably lower than expected each time I connected - between about 1400 & 1600 Kbps - I have max. 8 Mbps).

when I connected back my current router everything continued to be OK (apart from low downstream data rate) - until I would restart the current router and everything went back to very very slow!

I then decided to replace current router with old router in the bedroom itself, so this time using the same telephone socket, cables etc. as for the current router.

Again everything started working well, but this time the downstream data rate is 6496 Kbps! I swapped back the current router, and everything is at this moment going fine.

BUT I just know that if I restart my current router it will be back to very very slow again!

does anybody know what's going on?!

(p.s. I had a problem a few months ago where the internet would go down for a time, sometimes for hours, but the ISP had no idea what was going on. I think it could have been a NAS drive connected to the router that was causing the issue - is this possible? It would seem that disabling the NAS drive would fix the problem - it is still currently switched off)

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Stumper. No make, model, firmware versions.
Jan 5, 2013 7:59AM PST

Given so little detail it appears the new gear is simply defective. You will encounter folk that this because it's now, it can't be faulty.
Bob

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make, model, firmware versions now added :)
Jan 6, 2013 11:22PM PST

I just wanted to keep it as brief as possible, thus I omitted the details of the routers, sorry about that.

The "current" router is not new, but is 2 years old.

I'm just wondering why the old router (Netgear DG834G) would "fix" the internet connection, and with the subsequent re-install of the current router (Belkin Play Max ADSL) everything continues fine - although it is likely that on each reboot of the current router the problem will reappear. Thus it would appear that the old router is having some influence over the current router's connection with the internet.

The Belkin Play Max router has the latest firware, and I will later reset it to factory default settings and reconfigure it.

The ADSL filter I used for the socket in the hall was completely brand new - but could perhaps have been an old model/spec. It could very well have been down to this filter as to why I was getting connect speeds of around 1.4 - 1.6 Mbit, but this is likely to be a separate issue to the far more serious one above.

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About the ADSL filter.
Jan 7, 2013 7:28AM PST

I only install the filter on non-ADSL devices. So your mention of that makes me wonder if you stuck a filter on this modem connection.

There is a bug in "latest" firmware of some makers. But I see you're going back to the original firmware so good luck!
Bob