Would getting a newer router help my performance?

Recently our exchange has been updated to ADSL2+, the result was a week of no connection, but once they tried a second time we got a connection that was about the same as the old one. We do live a long way from the exchange (5km). I was wondering if a newer or different router might give me better performance.

I have a Netgear DG834N V1 running the latest firmware 1.02.15.

The stats are
Downstream: 1973kbps, Line Attenuation 63.5db, Noise Margin 5.0db
Upstream: 554kbps, Line Attenuation 31.5db, Noise Margin 14.0db

I have tweaked down the SNR value of the router to get to these figures, currently running at 20%. The router is on a filter on the master socket, with the phones all off the other side of the filter. I have invested in a decent quality filter and nice screen cable for the router to filter connection.

I have read the V4 version of the DG834 uses a different chip set (Broadcom?) - is it worth spending the money on a new modem or can I expect no more than I am getting? Are there particular routers that work better with long phone lines?

Thanks
Mark

I would suggest you are out performing expectations already.

So would not pursue alternative routers.

There are only two versions of the 834N. The v1 that you have has Broadcom, the v2 has Conexant and is pants.

You are thinking of the 834 and 834G, where the v4s are the Broadcom ones. The GT and PN are also Broadcom.

As MrSaffron says, it looks as though you are doing well there. The true attenuation figures will be higher than reported, as that's as high as most routers report. Your 554kbps upstream suggests high attenuation.

Which ISP out of interest, and what noise margin if you connect without a tweak? (Don't try it when it is dark - I expect you know that gives lower speeds).

You might get faster speeds if you can force it to use ADSL2 only or even ADSL1 (G.DMT).

That's a good point on that connection .

@GWMark, are you familiar with telnet, or willing to learn? There are a couple of programs you can download that will do that setting for you, but telnet takes less time to learn than those programs do!

Scroll down this page to Tweaking through the CLI. The CLI is the Windows Command Line Interface.

Thanks for the feedback everybody. To answer the various questions, the easy one is that the ISP is Demon.

Running my router with default settings this morning I get
Downstream: 1281kpbs, Attenuation 63.5, Noise Margin 10.5 Upstream 554kbps, attenuation 31.5 Noise Margin 15.0

I tried forcing different modes, with adslctl configure --mod, but the only options that would sync were the a and d modes, and the figures were pretty much the same.

I once again tweak the SNR setting and have now taken it down to 5 and get
Downstream: 2043kbps, Attn. 63.5, noise margin 4.4, Upstream 554kbps, Attn. 31.5, Noise margin 14.0

However it is not very stable with an SNR of 5, so I moved to SNR 7 and I get
Downstream: 1973kbps, 53.5dB, 4.8dB Upstream: 554kbps, 31.5dB, 14.0dB

Thanks again
Mark

Sounds like you are tweaking using RouterStats?