D-Link DIR-860L Woes

For the past week our internet service has been slowed to a crawl. Like, dial-up speeds: 0.8/0,1 Mbps (so 100 kB/s down, 12 kB/s up). I tried restarting our 8 year old modem, our brand new router. I eventually gave up and called Comcast and had a cable guy come out and check the signal level. He says it’s fine, but our modem is the culprit. So, I figure he’s right and besides, it’s an ancient modem anyway. I one-day a new DOCSIS 3.0 one and activate it.

Nope. Same speeds. I’m convinced it’s something on Comcast’s side, but after calling their support line again and getting disconnected I realize I haven’t tried connecting directly to the modem. After the call dropped I figure I’ll try it and call back. Well, lo and behold, our full 6 Mbps is unleashed. The thought that maybe Comcast support dropped the ball and flipped our internet switch back to “Normal” from “Remind them how much they need me”, and in all the embarrassment he ended the call out of shame.

Nope. Plugged back into the router, and speeds are back down to 0.8 Mbps. Great. I had already tried updating the firmware, restarting, and changing some configuration options. So in frustration I changed about 50 settings at once: Disabled IPv6, disabled the second band at 5GHz, disabled QoS, and a few other things I can’t remember. Now it’s back up to the correct speed.

So, perhaps over time I’ll start enabling QoS and 5GHz, the only things I’d really care to re-enable. Until then, who knows what killed it.