Ok, I had a BT engineer visit a could of weeks ago as I was experiencing a few issues. He replaced the BT wall box saying it was one of the original wall boxes when VDSL was launched and was "problematic". When he finish he asked me what line speeds I was used to, I said between 50-55mb. Oh, he said he test were showing 79mb on the line.

He tested the wire from the BT box to the modem, still 79mb. He then looked at the modem and said there's your problem, this is one of the original ECI modems, they are flaky, you should get a different one.

DrayTek has been my go to supplier of Network gear for at least a decade so I went out and bought a 166 to interface with my 3900.

Plugged it in and everything seemed fine, then the lines drops, and drops again and drops again all within a hour. No problem I thought, lets check the firmware and which modem code it's using....

Needed a firmware upgrade which I did

Looked at the modem code and switched that after the firmware upgrade. Runs for about an hour line drops. oh! 20 minutes later, it drops again.

Decided to turn off HA, the line seems to settle for about 8 hours. OK, it was HA.

You guess it, about an hour later, line drops again. FFS.

Oh wait, let switch back to the original modem code which I haven't used since I did the firmware upgrade.

12 hours later, the line drops again.

Sorry Draytek I run a business and NEED a stable line. Out goes the 166 to be replaced by the old BT(ECI) modem.

So have I missed something?

Or has the quality of Draytek products taken a massive dive recently?

This is the second new Draytek product I've bought recently that simply did not perform. About 2 months ago, I bought a 2927 to replace my aging 2862. It was great at first, but LAN DNS simply did not work and would return the wrong ip addresses. Took it up with support, who clearly thought I did not know how to use LAN DNS until I explained I had been using it successfully on the 2862 for the last 18 months. Demonstrated the problem and they could see it returning the wrong address, oh goes the support guy. I'll have to talk to software. Not heard a thing since. the 2927 was returned.

So another poor Draytek product???? It will shortly be returned unless someone has some insight to what I may be doing wrong.

Finally, has anyone got a recommendation on something I could use to act as the VDSL modem as a bridge to the 3900?

I had an experience of using 2762 on my relatively noisy line and it performed worst of all routers that I had tried (Zyxel, Fritzbox, Plusnet, Draytek). In the end, I settled with Fritzbox as it was relatively more stable. Some swear by Zyxel 8924, which is Broadcom-based and has an additional filter included in it, and some even claim that it'd be best to match the chipset of the router to that of the cabinet. I didn't find that a compelling reason, though, as I'm on Huawei (Broadcom) and both Zyxel and Fritzbox (Intel) had a comparable performance on my line.

My personal view is that if you have a problematic line (noise), then you'll have problems with Draytek, especially if you're on a VDSL line, which involves much higher frequencies; on top of everything, Openreach's network is poor in some places and using VDSL on a poor network (say aluminium cabling etc.) will always be an issue. But, that's just my take on this and based on my personal experience.

Your Openreach engineer would be required to replace your master socket, but the newer ones, i.e. the ones protruding and clipped on, are much worse than the older ones. The 'problematic' one might not have been problematic at all; quite the opposite: if it was one of the older ones, it might have had an additional REIN filter, which the current ones are made without. But, you don't know these things until they happen, which is what happened in my case, too.

There are two issues here: a) is your line without faults? and b) is Draytek the issue? You should phone your provider to test the line. You should also test it using a different modem to eliminate Draytek as a root cause. So, as an interim measure, you could do a couple of things:

- check your SNR margin on Draytek. If it's 3dB, raise it to 6 dB (https://www.draytek.com/support/knowledge-base/4800). Given that you're on 79Mbps, I presume taht you're on 3dB already. However, your speed being 50Mbps before may indicate that you were already on 80Mbps, but with a problem on the line, your speed gradually reduced as your SNR went up to compensate for a potential issue on your line. As I said above, I found that my Draytek was more susceptible to noise outbursts and so kept on dropping the line

- phone your ISP and get the profile set to stable, rather than performance, as well as getting the line tested

- get a good filter (ADSLNation) and connect it to the master socket (you'll need to take the cover off). From my experience, the slotted ones are suspectable to being knocked off and so noise outbursts , but others out there use them without problems

- test your line with a different modem

I can only post 3000 characters because of limits on this site and so here's the rest of my message.

What's unclear to me is how you're getting 79Mbps without knowing it. 55 vs. 80 are two different products and so you must have known about this when getting the connection, unless, as I said above, you've always been on 80Mbps, but due to frequent disconnections/noise on the line, your line eventually settled on a high SNR compensating for noise. Without knowing the history of your connection, it's just a speculation, but also a possibility.

Also, my experience of dealing with Openreach is very bad (2 yeas of getting my line fixed, which involved nearly 30 engineer visits), but I recognise that this may be an isolated case. Some are chancers and they know how to talk smooth. The ones I dealt with covered up a fault on their network for 2 years, blaming my WiFi. Complaining to CEO finally got things moving, but didn't get the line fixed straight away. It's a long process, not to mention issues with getting compensation from my ISP, which I'm now into the 8th month trying to sort out! (Openreach are always very keen to close the job as soon as possible, which then affects the compensation process. And the Head Office will work outwith the ISP's system, so there's never a written and accurate record of what they did, only what they choose to share with the ISP, which is very generic and laconic. After 2 years of dealing with them and the Head Office, I still don't know what the issue was on my line. They're pure charlatans.)

It'd be helpful if you posted your stats here, too.

Interesting.

I still run a couple of 2760 and they along with a 2860 and a couple 2862's are comparably bullet proof, so it does appear the more recent stuff is problematical.

I have two OpenReach modems, an ECI and an Huawei, both appear stable but I am unable to see the line statistics as they are both still locked to BT. The only other modem I have is in the 2862, which is now a backup device. That to used to be stable, but it is a major network change to switch from the 3900 back to the 2862 to look at its line statistics.

With regard to the 166, I understand the handshaking and that it should drop the line if it is noisy, but it should then resync at a lower speed until it finds a new stable speed. That's why I let it do its stuff initially, but became increasingly frustrated after a weekend of running that it still hadn't found a stable line speed, it also still appeared to be syncing at 79mb!

With regard to the BT box, yes he fitted the clip on variety!

I have been looking for just the VDSL modem I have looked at the Zyxel which so far appears to have a simple no frills VDSL/Ethernet modem which fits the bill. I will take a look at Fritz box, I have heard of them but don't know their product range.

Out of curiosity how do you find out the chip set of the cabinet?

One of my frustrations is that there are few manufacturer who just produce the modem, that is all I need, but most seem to bundle other features into their product, I am sure they do this to charge extra, but these extra's just get in the way of a solid modem.

Thanks for your help.

Fritzbox is very simple but well made. It's more for consumers, though, than businesses, given fewer functions. I didn't use most functions on Dryatek anyway. But, as a modem, it might do. There are different types of Zyxel and 8924 is WiFi 5 and with an internal filter in it. You can switch off the WiFi etc. and only use one as a modem.

Have you checked other forums for information? https://community.bt.com/t5/Home-setup-Wi-Fi-network/Draytek-Vigor-166/td-p/2134105

Here's how you find out the chipset of the cabinet: https://www.draytek.co.uk/support/guides/kb-dsl-status-more

Alternatively, go to Diagnostics > DSL Status. Vendor ID will display your cabinet's chipset. BDCM stands for Broadcom. IFTN stands for ECI. My bet you're on BDCM.

Oops, I hadn't read the additional message so apologies for not acknowledging the other points you made.

How did I not know I was on a 80mb service. I did, and had complained to my ISP (ZEN) about the slow speed, but they just said that the speed I got was clearly the maximum my line would support so just got used to it and eventually forgot. It therefore came as a nice surprise to me when the BT engineer said his test equipment was achieving a stable 79mb (stable is relative as the tests took about 5 minutes).

I am not a fan of BT either, but so far what the engineer has said has held up! The BT OpenReach (ECI) modem I now achieving 65mb download as measured by Speedtest.net so it's real world not connection speed. Therefore there was clearly some kind of problem with the original wall box.

I was therefore confident when he said the ECI box was probably holding the connection back that it was worth trying something faster as it was still the original modem that I got with the line. Hence the 166. But what a disappointment.