Is my DG834 telling the truth?

My DG834v2 router reports SNR figures which, today for example, have steadily dropped from 20dB at 13.00 to 3dB at 21.40. Yet it also reports these downstream stats:
Connection Rate: 1152
Line Attenuation: 54
Noise Margin: 3

Interleave CRC: 0
Interleave FEC: 0
Interleave HEC: 0

Fast path CRC: 319
Fast path FEC: 0
Fast path HEC: 0

In another thread I read that errors are greater the lower the SNR, so are these figures consistent with the reported 3dB? The connection is always rock solid. Or is this a misreported SNR?

if you restart it does the SNR jump back up ? This seems to be a feature of Netgears, I think they store the SNR margin data from startup in a capacitor and keep reading it from there

Exactly so. Restart can take it right up back to 18 or 20, then the decline starts again.

The relevance of the question is deciding whether to go for Max or stay on a stable fixed 1m connection. If these troughs in SNR are "real" then I assume I would get a poor and erratic performance from Max.

If they are not "real" I am not sure how to decide on Max or not!

I understand from other 834 user postings that it hangs onto the line despite the statistics.

That has certainly been my experience. It will hold sync when reporting 0dB, and sometimes weird and unlikely minus figures.

Am I right in thinking that on a Maxed line these low SNR reportings would not matter and that only a loss of sync would trigger a winding down of connection speed?

If that is so it would seem a good router for Max.

errors, resyncs and sync speeds are what drives Max as far as I can tell.

Sorry - I don't follow the logic of that - why should having a bug that reports the snr incorrectly make it a good router for max? I would have thought the precise opposite as knowing the correct snr value is useful information.

Yes I see what you mean. I was referring only to the ability of the 834 to hang onto a connection, thus reducing the number of resyncs. If the snr it reports is not accurate, then of course one does not have the full measure of just what it is coping with.

The ideal router would be one which reports snr accurately AND hangs onto the connection well. I must say that after browsing these pages for a long time, I still have no clear idea of which routers meet that spec. People on lines with seemingly similar stats do not necessarily seem to agree on how given routers behave.

So that is why I came back to thinking "is it holding sync - must be good".

The Netgear is actually pretty good at maintaining sync on long and noisy lines. Its a TI based chipset and the TI's are generally rated as being good in this department.

Certainly that has been my experience of the DG834V2. Mine is considerably better than my Speedtouch 585V6 in this respect.

Chip

I'm interested to hear that. Routers seem to have their enthusiasts who praise them in the forums, but there is much less info from people who can directly compare them from personal experience. And especially on lines like this.

I had hovered over trying a Speedtouch 585v6 but I think I'll stick to the Netgear. Thanks