Something like PingPlotter might be useful.

Whilst playing around this evening, during another bad bout of "slow ADSL" (required about 7 router restarts to get back my normal speeds) I noticed that, whilst the slow connection is occurring, if I run the ping command from my laptop, it will generally lose some packets.

Hell no, 7 router restarts! That is going to cause DLM to think the line is unstable. Do not reboot the router... It may fix it short term, but by no means is that a permanent fix & it is bound to cause you more issues than leaving it longer term.

Hi ukhardy07.

I was a bit concerned myself about needing to restart the router many times; unfortunately, with download speeds of only 0.2 Mbps, the internet is basically unusable, and since I work at home quite a bit, leaving the router running like this is not much of an option.

Are you suggesting that if I left the router on at these super-low speeds, it might naturally correct itself after a while? The longest I have left it in "slow" mode is about 10 hours, during which time there was no improvement at all.

When you say "it is bound to cause you more issues"... what kind of extra issues would it cause?

Thanks for the suggestion. I have downloaded PingPlotter,ready to use next time the problem occurs. Will post the results when that happens.

It might not worry the DLM. He appears to be on TT LLU, and theirs may not worry about such things. O2/BE didn't - basically it was switched off after 3-4 days. Unlike the BT Wholesale one that does get upset.

Note, I'm saying "may not", not "will not" .

When it happens, does the sync speed also drop in the router?

TalkTalk line management is fairly strict, when it kicks it - it really goes more extreme than other providers... With this amount of disconnections and if the line is dropping sync speed, eventually the line management is likely to kick in. As an example, my parents turn their router off whenever they stop using a device - so around 10+ times everyday, talktalk has capped them at 3Mbps now despite the line being capable of 16Mbps.

I am not saying do nothing, I am just saying this is not the real fix... The real fix is to resolve the underlying issue. If it's the sync speed dropping then report a line fault, if it's the ISP congested (unlikely to go this slow) then move ISPs. If it's packet loss etc report a fault... You should not need to reboot the router, it is not a resolution.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Fri 23-Sep-16 09:54:19)

Hi ukhardy07.

A couple of the other guys on this forum who have been helping me got me to post my router stats during a "good" period and a "slow" period, and it seems that my line speed does not really change - even when I am getting download speeds of only 0.2 Mbps the router shows an ADSL line speed of around 10 Mbps still.

This led a couple of people to believe it wasn't line management that was the cause of the slowness, but badly-behaving gateways in the TalkTalk network.

I'll be phoning TalkTalk this lunchtime to report the issues I've had and see what they do.

In reply to a post by arnoldjrimmer:

On some occasions I've had to restart the router 5 or 6 times, and even wait a few hours before trying again, before normal download rates are restored.

Hello Arnold, as has already been clarified this is not a physical ADSL connection speed issue.
What the router restarts are doing is breaking and remaking the PPP connection.
The significance of this is that the entire ATM/IP channel is de-allocated and then re-allocated and may well use different routes and equipment depending on the prevailing load at the time, hence the change in performance.
You could also be suffering from some undiscovered equipment fault in your area causing many re-transmissions somewhere further up the heirachy causing your slowness, this will not appear in your router stats as they do not concern the ADSL link between you and the excahnge, it is rather backhaul problem or ISP equipment problem.

Edited by fourtytwo (Sat 24-Sep-16 09:46:35)

Thanks for your detailed hypothesis, fourtytwo! That certainly sounds reasonable. Something for me to suggest to TalkTalk in my discussions with them I think.

Definitely taking the right approach to report a fault.

Traffic management does not exist on TT as others have said and congestion does not really make things this slow.