Router

LittleJo

Hi,
I have just moved ISPs and my new provider advises that routers be left on permanently. They say that if you keep switching them off the system thinks that your line is unstable and not able to handle higher speeds so it slows you down.
Being a careful soul who turns off everything I am suprised, Wonder how much it costs to leave it on, probaly very little.
Cheers

Toxteth_OGrady

After the new 10 day ADSL learning period, turning off once a day will not affect your speed profile, the dynamic line management is clever enough to accommodate that. Your choice if you want to save a few pennies and/or reduce fire risk to zero when not needed.

A note of caution though, Fibre to The Cabinet DLM is very very sensitive to all reboots of the modem. If you have FTTC I would suggest leaving your modem on 24/7.

LittleJo

Hi,
Thank you for your advice, I suppose on balance it is better to leave it on as most things bust on me when I turn them on.
Cheers
Jo

closed

About £7-£10 pa, but you can switch it off with no ill effects (and possibly positive ones) after the first few days.

LittleJo

Hi,
Well £10 is better off in my pocket than in the utilities shareholders!
I will go for switching off after 14 days and monitor the results.
Jo

Notmyrealname

LittleJo wrote: »

Hi,
Well £10 is better off in my pocket than in the utilities shareholders!
I will go for switching off after 14 days and monitor the results.
Jo

If you switch it off more than once a day, your line speed will drop like a rock even after the 14 days because the exchange will register it as a fault and start slowing the line down until it doesn't drop.

Toxteth_OGrady

DLM only interprets loss of modem detection as instability if it detects > 10 instances per hour.

isofa

Notmyrealname wrote: »

If you switch it off more than once a day, your line speed will drop like a rock even after the 14 days because the exchange will register it as a fault and start slowing the line down until it doesn't drop.

This is a total misnomer.

For example: I have exactly the same reliable 6mpbs ADSL connection I had when I first set-up our router and left it on a week to settle down, as I do now 5 years later, and I turn it off every night.

I can log into the ISP portal (Zen, excellent) and check all the technical data from the syncs with the exchange and there are never any issues shown, and it's achieving pretty much the max speed for the distance from the exchange too.

I turn everything off in our home office when not being used, it's far more efficient than leaving a swath of electronic equipment (we have a large home-office!) either running or in standby.

AlwaysSomething

I clocked my modem at about 3 watts. That means about £3 per year. I leave it on all the time. I have a separate router which uses slightly more. That can be turned off without risk of upsetting the line diagnostics.

John_Gray

If you leave your modem / router on all the time, it just means that you are heating up the room ever-so-slightly, thus saving a minuscule amount on your central heating.

When summer comes, err, err...

j.smith1981

It's always a good thing to leave it on for 10 days after it being installed, then the profile your line, after that you can turn on and off as you wish.

That's if the company even does that though, I mean there are some specialist ISPs that do, some don't it's like when I wanted to say if I went with one where they let you downgrade your download speed, to make way for a larger set of broadband on your upload speed and they realise you can have x amount of download speed on your line and just want to profile that.

It's entirely up to you, but I would allow them to profile it personally, very few [if any] of the bigger ADSL companies will allow you to do this, it's just ones like Be Internet would (I know this since a friend at works on their network and he is our network admin).