Why is my Billion so much faster than old router

[BTbroadbandUser]

We live in a small village about 500 metres from the exchange and get at best 7mb down and 0.5mb up on BT broadband, which is adequate for our needs.
A few months ago it completely bogged down – everything was so slow to load, and speed test reflected this. The router was a Netgear DG834 with default settings.
I kept having to rebooted it to get back to 7mb. This would last a few hours before slowing down again.
(My pc is connected via Ethernet cable but my wife’s pc had the same problem over wifi)

Looked like a faulty router so I bought a Billion BiPac 8800NL and everything is lightning fast now; pages load much faster than they ever did with the Netgear at its best.
It’s not just my imagination, even after a couple of months use it still seems amazingly fast. Yet the speed tests still say 7mb down and 0.5mb up.
Nothing else has changed, just the router.

Why is the Billion so much faster loading pages yet speed tests indicate no change?

[billion_fan]

We live in a small village about 500 metres from the exchange and get at best 7mb down and 0.5mb up on BT broadband, which is adequate for our needs.
A few months ago it completely bogged down – everything was so slow to load, and speed test reflected this. The router was a Netgear DG834 with default settings.
I kept having to rebooted it to get back to 7mb. This would last a few hours before slowing down again.
(My pc is connected via Ethernet cable but my wife’s pc had the same problem over wifi)

Looked like a faulty router so I bought a Billion BiPac 8800NL and everything is lightning fast now; pages load much faster than they ever did with the Netgear at its best.
It’s not just my imagination, even after a couple of months use it still seems amazingly fast. Yet the speed tests still say 7mb down and 0.5mb up.
Nothing else has changed, just the router.

Why is the Billion so much faster loading pages yet speed tests indicate no change?

It could be that your older router is a G router, where as the Billion is N wireless router

Another thing it could be is the processor inside the router

[Tomken]

The Netgear DG834 is a bit faster than a g router but not as fast as the 8800NL http://support.netgear.com/product/dg834gt

Check the firmware level on the Netgear and see if the 1.03.23 is later than what is installed and flash that one if not.

This could resolve the need to rebooting and would give you a serviceable spare router should you have any problems with the 8800NL and have those resolved.