Strange problem since 8/12/2008

Hi all,

I've been a happy zen customer for a number of years - originally used their 512Kb service, been using their 8000 service for a couple of years.

I live a fair distance from the exchange, and have never got brilliant download speeds (somewhere between 2 and 3Mb). This has been fine until Monday. Since Monday, my download speed has dropped off dramatically - usually it seems to sync at about 400Kb. I have changed nothing at my end - I'm still using a good old draytek 2600 router.

In troubleshooting, zen is wanting me to do stuff like try another dsl router (amazingly I don't have a spare kicking around). I'm sure I'll manage to borrow something, but in the meantime does anyone have any idea what could have caused this (other than BT [censored] around with the line). I've checked all my DSL filter thingies, before anyone asks

All help appreciated!

christmas lights?

Had a similar problem with a Draytek 2600, and it turned out to be the power supply.

Might be worth swapping if you can find a generic one with the right voltage and delivering enough current.

don't think so.. at least not our xmas lights (tried unplugging them all), no change.

thanks anyhow for the idea.

ok, this is useful. I guess trying another dsl router will help me understand if the draytek has gone bad. I suppose with no moving parts, I'd always assumed a dsl router will pretty much either work (fine) or not work at all.

One thing (which might be related) - my wife quite often switches off the router, to get the kids concentrating on homework etc. I wonder if this switching off activity can break things?

A duff filter or a phone plugged straight into a socket that hasn't got a filter on it?

Lights within a short distance can be an issue, especially if you line goes past a house with the blackpool illuminations outside - though electricity bills I thought would have reduced that this year.

I had a 2600 which went bad as it took an increasingly long time - up to 30 minutes - to sync. Swapped it for a 2800 and problem solved.

Incidentally, Drayteks are not particularly good on poor lines, although you can tweak the 2800 to some extent if you want to get into command line stuff. Most people seem to think that routers with a Broadcom chip perform better - some Netgears and the Speedtouch (Thomson) range seem to be the best.

My draytek 2820 didn't like being turned on and off a few times (it was in a place where it had to keep being unplugged) - eventually it got corrupted and would only stay alive for 2 minutes then reboot, and so on, I had to reset to defaults, it has been fine for 2 months now ever since I put it in a location where it could stay on.

Also, my neighbour who I gave my linksys AG241 to kept turning it on and off and eventually it lost all settings after 2 weeks. (specifically after I told him to leave it on all the time - may i add )

Another friend of mine lost his port forwarding settings on his d-link router after a few switching it on and off every night.

I'd be inclined to say leave it on all the time.

In reply to:

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though electricity bills I thought would have reduced that this year

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I would have agreed with you Andrew, but having seen some of the "creations" that have appeared in the past few days around our way, I wouldn't count on it!