Router slowing connection

Kit:

Service: Virgin Media - 4MB connection
Router: DI-624
1 laptop
1 Desktop

I have been tearing my hair out lateley as surfing and download speeds have been unbearable. Today I decided to experiment and was surprised at what I found!

The problem appears to be with my router and not the Virgin service ... or does it?

When connected direct to the modem (bypassing the router) I can achieve full speeds. As soon as I link the router back in and connect either by ethernet or wirelessly I see the speed drop dramatically and once again, browsing becomes a painful experience.

I am unsure as to whether the router is actually at fault as I have read about this problem elswhere. It seems to be cropping up with different routers but always with Virgin's service.

Any thoughts before I go an buy another router (which I am reluctant to do).

Thanks.

Buy another router and see what happens. If you still have the same problem then claim the router doesn't work and degrades your service and they'll take it back and you'll get the money back.

Not a bad suggestion - I was kinda hoping people would be having the same issue though as I am pretty sure the router is not at fault.

This is getting stranger. I have just set a torrent downloading as a test and I am getting speeds of 400kB/s plus through a wireless connection to the router.

Yet when I come to download a single file as a test (from the MS website among others), I get roughly a third of the speed achievable by downloading that same file connected directly to the modem.

Any explanation for this?

If you're running XP SP2 then I'd suspect it's a half-open TCP connections problem.

There's an explanation with a link to the patch in TorrentFreak's "Speed up Bitcomet and uTorrent"

Hope it works for you.

If a router is not coping with a 4Mbps connection something is wrong.

Possibly an MTU mismatch in addition to other suggestions