After a couple of years of (nearly) flawless service with my 2820Vn on a Demon ADSL2 circuit, I've had horrendous trouble today with packet loss - dropping at least 60% of packets. Speedtest.net reports my download speed is a massive 0.01Mb/s downstream (normally around 6-8Mb/s); however, my upload speed is unaffected.

Looking at the "online status" page on the router, I'm seeing several thousand RX CRC errs ticking up by the minute - no TX CRC errors reported. Demon say they've tested my line and can't find anything wrong, and suggest the router itself may be faulty.

I've updated the firmware from 3.3.3.something to 3.3.5.1_232201 with no effect (going back to factory defaults along the way). I've also tried the router on a different ADSL circuit (I have two in the same house, don't ask :wink: ) and I'm getting the same behaviour.

Does this really sound like a broken router, or is it more likely there's something up at my local exchange, or Demon themselves?

If you're using the 3.3.5.1 firmware on the router, I recommend trying the 211801 modem code or another one such as 2471201 and see if that helps - if you're getting CRC errors like that then it's normally the modem code that's causing them, just a compatibility problem with the local exchange hardware.

Couldn't get online yesterday to post a follow up I managed to borrow another ADSL router for a couple of hours to prove it wasn't a DrayTek-specific problem. The service suddenly "fixed itself" yesterday afternoon. I haven't had the official "all clear" from Demon yet, but the fact that I didn't do anything more or less proves that the fault was at the exchange.

On a side-note, whatever's happened to Demon's support team recently is a welcome change. The last time I called (maybe 6 months ago), it was the usual offshored try-resetting-your-router support. However, this time I got through to several different London-sounding engineers, all of whom really sounded like they knew what they were talking about. A welcome change!

Hi, I have been having a similar problem for some weeks now, with very odd symptoms: the router appears to be set up correctly, and I normally get a good connection speed (4Mb/s download) and ping times, etc., given my distance from the exchange.

However, once a day (usually between 09:00 and 11:00) there are intermittent problems, lots of RX CRC errors (but no TX CRC errors), and the internet becomes unusable although some packets get through. If I then reboot the router, everything goes back to normal (after a slower-than-usual start up) and then remains fine for the rest of the day, although RX CRC errors tick up slowly (about 30/second -- I am not sure what is normal).

Any ideas? I have tried an automatic boot (at 6 am) but that made no difference).

Mike

More information ...

Upgraded firmware to 3.3.5.1 -- no change

Happened to be looking at the status page when it failed this morning: the SNR number was 9, and almost no RX CRC errors (< 1/minute). Then suddenly ping stopped working and the SNR number dropped to 4. A few intermittent pings got through.

Rebooted, and the SNR figure went back to 9 and now (a few minutes later) up to 11.

Why does rebooting affect the SNR number?

Thanks -- Mike