AOL evening slowdowns

I went from 2meg to ADSLmax and my line is approximately 6meg with 550kbs download speed.

However, after about a month the line went to hell in the evenings with speeds between 1700hrs and 0000hrs being 70-80kbs

The indian engineer I phoned said it was my fault as I hadn't reset my Thompson Speedtouch 576 wireless router enough since getting the line (only had 4 sessions to date) and that the line/router hadn't "learned" what speeds I was capable of.

The engineer said to reset my router 4-10 times a day (wierd!) and in a week it would get better. I reset it about 8 times that week or something and then exactly a week later my line started getting lots of little disconnects interfering with online gaming and uploads and my speed was temporarily 225kbs during that evening slot.

I haven't been resetting the router, but I did slap my old USB Modem on the line and was seeing the same speeds, 550kbs during the day and night, but only 70-80kbs in the evening.

The recent BBC piece suggests a user could have their gear set up wrong. How do you find out how to set your gear up right when you are using AOL and their software on disc is supposed to do everything for you and the only input you need to make is username and password.