Although I handshake at about 15MB, no test shows me getting >8MB sustained broadband since last December. Since moving to an ADSL2+ some years back, with the this same 2830n router, I've have d/l speeds as high as 14MB and certainly better than 8MB. My ISP (Demon since '92, now Vodaphone) seem to be out of ideas and happy to blame the router though unable to give any reason as to why. Sadly, since Vodaphone bought Demon support moved offshore and no longer seems to have anyone with tech expertise who can speak to customers. My ISP want me to try another router - which would mean me buying another one just to prove them wrong.

The router is a 2830n (single band), patched to date with firmware 3.6.8.4_sb_2471201. I'm apparently <600m from my local (inner city) exchange and directly across the street from the local cabinet. A BT engineer has already checked the line to the house and the internal termination (in fact, they fitted a new splitter box) and found nothing amiss. Generally, apart from poorer speeds recently the router has performed flawlessly since Feb 2013 without needing reboots except due to occasional WAN glitches/outages. IIRC, the router was changed as a result of moving to ADSL2+ as my previous '06 vintage Vigor couldn't do higher speeds. In 2013 I was getting d/l of around 15MB. In Dec 2015 Demon seemed to have some (acknowledged) major network-wide glitch, with speeds falling <1Mb, and after recovery from that I've never got more than 8MB down. My profile is not limited (I did check that first) and speed should not be limited other that by the line/equipment.

Are there any tests I can run locally to help prove the fitness, or not, of my router?

Thanks,

Mark

[edit: typos]

Sounds like a clamp at the ISP end to me, incorrectly applied to the account and then untraceable because nobody knows how to look for it. But that is really a bit of a stab in the dark.

Other things to check, though unlikely: -
* Turn off QOS if on.
* adsl rxpct & adsl txpct commands (telnet)

QoS is off (status: disabled). If I telnet from my Mac to the router (192.168.1.1) both adsl txpct/rxpct return an 80% figure. The router admin connection page's ADSL status shows a connection (handshake?) of 14012976 down and 575607 up.

Vodaphone engineers tried to 'improve' things by setting a 14MB cap. This is reflected by a lower handshake speed than before, i.e. 14xxxxxx rather >15xxxxxx. However, download remains obstinately the same and upload has gone from 0.8M to 0.3M. Not exactly an improvement!

The fact that speed tests, on at least 3 different test sites, all show the download starting >8MB but always tailing off to c.8MB (usually just under 8MB) makes it seem like a cap. Still, I'm not a network/hardware engineer so admittedly I can't claim to have an expert view.

Whatever, Demon/Vodaphone service is terrible right now. Not recommended to others. I guess support moving offshore isn't exactly a sign the vendor's committed to providing a commercial service. Their approach seems to be to blaime the line provider (BT) althuogh a BT engineer has given the cabinet to router segment an all clear for noise/connectivity.