Modem Slowing To a Crawl.

For the last 14 months that I have been with the Post Office, my modem or router slows to a crawl every few days and needs a restart.
I never had this trouble with BT & the HomeHub 2. I have tried many many routers, from my Draytek Vigor 2710n, through to my current Apple Airport Extreme & Vigor 120 modem. The result is always the same. Almost stopped last night, then back to normal just a few minutes later with a modem restart. Could this possibly be ISP related?

Edited by deleted (Tue 19-Jul-11 21:18:22)

If it's cured by a modem restart I wouldn't have thought it's ISP related.

Agreed, more likely to be something like the NAT table filling up.

NAT table maybe but if using different hardware it is unusual for multiple devices to suffer similar fate

It may congestion, and restarting modem puts you onto a different less contended part of the network.

Thanks all. I thought ISP was a long-shot. It certainly is not hardware as I have tried many router/modem setups. I shall have to revert to my originol opinion that it may be line noise or degradation as I have not connected to my exchange at the full 8128kbps for some months now. I realise weather can throw up line problems, so I was not too woried during the dry spell, but things are still the same.
Since the restart last night, my line profile has upped to 7000 kbps again, which will probably signal a shorter time before modem stall, followed by a drop down to 6500 kbps again which will run longer before a restart is needed. It does seem that there is a problem determining a stable line speed. I had wondered if it was because I don't use the Post Office supplied cheap router, which is locked down to a special edition of P.O firmware.
Download speedachieved during the test was - 6057 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 600-7150 Kbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :8000 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 7000 Kbps

Edited by deleted (Tue 19-Jul-11 23:32:14)

Line errors or degradation would not normally improve by rebooting a router.

Could MrSaffron's suggestion be correct? Perhaps if you did a traceroute to bbc.co.uk before and after the problem you may see different routing.

Surely congestion would ease sometime and things would speed up. Also, the Post Office is one of the least congested networks. Modem stall apart, I get around 6500kbps round the clock.
It is really strange. I initially used my Draytek Vigor 2710n with the PO. All was well till a router firmware update. I could never sort the slowing problem after that, even reverting to the original Draytek firmware & factory reset. A fault report sent to Draytek revealed a problem when the firmware stalled. I have since gone through many router and modem router combinations, always with the same result of modem stall every few days. It was only after chasing my tail for so long, that I ended up questioning the ISP or their router with it's special version of locked down firmware.
The problem coincided with me switching to a Mac for my main pc. Typing �router hang every few days� into Google seems to show it as a widespread problem.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cocktail+audio+x10&...

Edited by deleted (Wed 20-Jul-11 08:50:54)

Doing a diagnostic traceroute can only help. If the speed increases/decreases and the routing has/hasn't changed it may help pinpoint the problem.

Can you provide a sets of line stats:

Just after reboot
When the slowdown starts
Just before reboot

In reply to a post by MHC:

Can you provide a sets of line stats:

Just after reboot
When the slowdown starts
Just before reboot

Not impossible, but a real pain in the neck. I cannot browse into the Draytek Vigor 120 modem from this iMac via the Apple Airport Extreme. The Airport & Modem run totally differend IP ranges.
The only way I can do that, is hook the Vigor 120 modem to my laptop & browse in via the 192.168.1.1 access. A look on the web, reveals both the Draytek Vigor 120 modem & my Vigor 2710n both have new firmware releases, so I am tempted to revert to the 2710n router for a while with the firmware update, at least I can get in for a look. Though today the Apple OS X 10.7 Lion should be released, so I will be burning the 4gb download to disk so I have a backup, then format & clean install this imac, so may be busy.

Edited by deleted (Wed 20-Jul-11 10:36:35)