18. Have your broadband line re-trained
A lot of ADSL ISPs will conduct a 10-day period of line training when your first join, which causes your speeds to be erratic as your connection is stress tested to identify the highest possible connection speed. However if you have since performed some of the above tweaks and believe that your line performance has improved then it can be worth asking your ISP to re-train again.
Just remember that the line will be unstable for another week or two and the connection/router should be left switched on for the entire period.
19. Disable your routers firewall (Temporarily)
In rare cases slow speeds and connectivity problems can sometimes be attributed to a conflict with your routers hardware firewall. Most firewalls can usually be disabled by a simple option on the router, although we do not recommend doing this as the risk to your security may be too great.
20. Allow the ADSL line to reset
It may or may not improve your connection, yet turning off your router for just over half an hour (+30mins) will allow ADSL “MAX” (up to 8Mbps) lines, and sometimes faster 16-24Mbps ADSL2+ lines as well, to reset. This can be handy in situations where repeated disconnect and reconnections have lowered the speed of your line, allowing some time for a reset may improve the situation.
21. Tweak the routers MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) to match your ISP
The Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) is partly responsible for determining the size of each data packet that passes over your connection, think of it as being a bit like the postal service where bigger letters cost more to deliver but can contain extra information. Bigger MTU values usually mean you can download a bit faster, while smaller ones may improve multiplayer performance because they will take slightly less time to deliver. Sometimes an incorrect MTU can also prevent websites from loading.
Most broadband routers will allow you to change this setting, though if you brought your own router (didn't have it pre-configured by your ISP) then you could find that the routers setting is different from your ISP (remember to ask your ISP what MTU value it uses for your connection). For example, our NetGear router had an MTU of 1500 but the ISP was 1458, thus it is usually advisable to make sure that the MTU is the same as your ISP.
Likewise you may also wish to change the MTU of your operating system software, although this can be quite complicated and the latest MS Windows Vista or newer Operating Systems (OS) will generally adjust it for you automatically; though they are not always reliable when doing this. Naturally you can also tweak the MTU value up or down to see if that improves your connection, but do not be agressive with it as that could cause problems.
