New router, not sure whats going on.

Naf

I've just forked out and upgraded my router to a DrayTek 2830 series from a Thompson thing that my ISP supplied.
The Thompson never gave any really useful (from my perspective) stats about my line, or the actual speed I was getting; but the DrayTek is, and I'm wondering if someone can confirm what I think I know about the figures its giving me.

Basically on the 'Physical Connection' page, it gives me the connection and speed info about my ADSL line; with the Thompson I had been experiencing what I took to be signal dropouts, but now I'm not so sure. The same a the old router, I have the ADSL connections Up Speed (1229122) and Down Speed (14618256), which look pretty much the same as the old one always gave me, so I assumed they are the same, in bits/sec (my line should get around 16Mbit, these two add up to just short of this)? However the old Thompson did not give any further statistics. The DrayTek does; separately I have Tx Rate & Rx Rate, and what I want to know is if these are what I think; the current actual speed of data transfer from the network itself? i.e. Tx is the rate that its currently giving me to send/upload data from my network, and Rx is the rate at which I can currently receive/download it to my computers? Or is it the rate that is currently in use?
Certainly the Rx Rate fluctuates from 4k up to 300k, but the Tx Rate doesn't seem to change an awful lot from around 80-100k.

The main issue I am trying to resolve is why my VPN seems so unreliable. I have it set up on my iPhone, iPad and laptop (each with a different username), and its all hosted by the new router. Sometimes the connection works, sometimes not; and I can't seem to find anything that's stopping it; no line disconnections at home, it has the same problem whether I use 2G, 3G or a BT Openzone hotspot. Just sometimes the connection works great, others it fails to connect to begin with. But even when I can't connect to the VPN, dialing in to my router's setup pages remotely is no problem at all; so the internet connections all must be fine?

free4440273

how are u setting up the vpn? via windows or with a third-party program? one thing that can affect the reliability of a vpn is a third-party firewall.

ChiefGrasscutter

Don't know about the Draytek series .......
but often Rx is the line synchronisation speed downstream
and Tx is the line Synchronisation speed upstream.
These as sometimes called the 'Line rates'

These are not the actual download speeds but a the speeds that the router is "communicating with the exchange at"
due to line overheads and checksums for data validation etc etc actual achieved speed obtained are always less. They remain fixed at the values until the router reboots or resyc's with the exchange.


Typically for a sync' speed of say 8000 kbps downsteam on ADSLmax
your IP setting will be 7000kbps
and the best you will actually get in real download speed will probably be around 6100kbps - thats at 6am on a sunday morning. Idon't have ADSL2 at my exchange so can't comment. I think that on ADSLmax the Tx upstream sync rate is always 448.

Lots of disconnections might either be due to an intermittant fault on the line - often heard by crackling on the line when making a call, or by a dodgy router.
Snag is lots of discon's and the exchange equipment will mark your line down a "crap" and then even after the problem has been sorted getting the line reset can be difficult. Some long lines are of just crap naturally of course.......