A Perfect Router...

[im_caius]

Hey everyone,
I live in a house with 7 people including myself.. and we always are having problems with our internet.. We are up to our 4th or so router.. Sometimes they'll just stop working and wont connect.. or they'll slow down to 5KB/s speed (im on ADSL2+ and I dont go over im on 200GB plan i check usage).

I think this may be due to the fact that there is 10 computers, 4 ipod touches, 4 wifi capable phones. the most devices used at the one time would probably be 6 but that may be too much?
On a good day I get 15mbps (according to speedtest) (1.5MB/s when using torrents)

Anyway, today when I got home from Sydney for the day, the internet was painfully slow, I would restart the router and it would go fast for 5 minutes then go back to 2-5KB/s and it would continue like that. I changed the MTU to 1500 and it seems to be alright now.. still not the max speed though. (not painfully slow but not fast either)

Ive used a 2WIRE 2701hgv-w, and am currently using a Netgear DGN2000 (ive used more, one was a DLINK i cant remember models though)

So, I want to know if I've got settings wrong or if they arent good routers or whats going on. Do I need a Dual-Band Router? I'm pretty good with computers (alright with networking) but I need this information to convince my parents (bad at computers) if we need to buy a new router or anything..
So If I do need a new router I need Model Name, and a reason why its better than the DGN2000

thankyou heaps
Help would be great thanks

 

[im_caius]

edit: just checked and its downloading GParted at 7.5kB/s from Sourceforge.. so really slow.. also to make it clear our internet is ADSL2+ 200GB from Bigpond $89.95 monthly

 

[riser]

Drop your MTU to under 1500, try 1400. That probably won't matter much.

What all is being done on the network? Downloading, gaming, etc. all at once? This could limit your downloads.

Newer routers come with QoS like the Linksys E1000. You can set ports to have a certain level of quality (or amount of bandwidth basically) and other things to have less.

 

[im_caius]

mine has QoS i saw it last night. and most people in my house use facebook but sometimes I download, and im about to start online gaming too. But thats not it.. Because I'm not downloading as much now and its started to slow down... So what do I do with QoS can you give me a step by step?

 

[riser]

Try using an internet speed test. You can find one on Toast.net and another on Cnet.com. That will show your throughput and let you know how your connection compares to others with downloads.

QoS you basically can set a protocol, port range, or application to have a dedicated amount of bandwidth. For example, if web surfing was a priority, you could set port 80 (HTTP traffic) or even Internet Explorer (or other applications) to have 80% of available bandwidth.

That means your web surfing would get up to 80% of the bandwidth. If nothing else is in use, it will use as much as possible. It will guarentee you get 80%.

I would start by making one rule at a time. Maybe for downloads. FTP ports 20 and 21 should be set to X amount of bandwidth that you want to provide.

Depending on what you're doing, you'll have to figure out what ports are used -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_TCP_and_UDP_port_numbers

Web surfing, port 80.
FTP (Downloading in most cases) port 20 and 21.

Gaming will have specific port ranges and may be better off setting the application to have X% of the bandwidth, as opposed to trying to open all the ports. Some have multiple ports, others have one or none at all.

 

[im_caius]

This would all be good except for the fact that the internet WAS fast but now it is slow. No modem changes or anything..

I was downloading while at school today from Torrents and it was going <60kB/s normally i get 1400kB/s

 

[riser]

Call your cable company and have them update your modem, or request a new modem. It is also possible that someone else in the area recently had cable work done which may have affected your internet connection.

Have a tech out to review again.

 

[im_caius]

it was the vpi setting on the router.. all fixed now

 

[sollo]

could you please specify what the correct VPI setting on the router was -? I am having similar problems. Many thanks. J

 

[im_caius]

yeah, i just rang up Netgear and they gave it to me..
its under ADSL Settings and they are:
Multiplexing Method - VC-BASED
VPI - 8
VCI - 35

 

[sollo]

Thanks for the quick reply -