Improved speeds after SamKnows box locked

[#1]

I have one of the SamKnows performance monitoring router boxes from which I've picked something up. If you look at the attached image you will see the three graphs show a noticeable improvement occurred yesterday.
Yesterday afternoon I lost all broadband connectivity, I also was unable to access my router. I could however access other PC's on my network. I rebooted my router and still couldn't access the router. I then tried plugging my PC's cable in to my router instead of the SamKnows router and found that worked, so I rebooted the SamKnows router, put everything back to normal and all is well.
Today I looked at the dashboard and saw the improvements. It seems there are two possibilities: rebooting the routers has made a difference or by rebooting my router I've ended up on a different gateway and the new one is better than the one I was on previously. I'm currently on ptn-ag02 but I don't know which I was on previously.
Has anyone else running one of these boxes seen anything similar?
Has anyone got a little application which will automatically keep a log of which gateway I'm connected to (perhaps record it once an hour).

[#2]

Yes
I did a gateway hop from PCL AG01 to PCL AG03 on the 26th

[#3]

What do you do to hop between gateways? Just reset the ADSL line and hope you get attached to another gateway, or is there something else you can do?
Graham

[#4]

use disconnect and reconnect in the router - don't do a resync
This is what it looks like on my Netgear

[#5]

And this is the Thompson one 192.169.1.254

[#6]

Could the reboot have flushed the router(s) DNS cache?

[#7]

probably, but I didnt reboot, just disconnect and reconnect - post two for effect

[#8]

Mine wasn't a DNS issue - I couldn't ping my own router - it was definitely the SamKnows router that stopped forwarding traffic (there's no DNS that I'm aware of in the SamKnows box).

[#9]

Thanks for the info on disconnecting to do a gateway hop. I don't think I have that facility in my ancient ZyXEL P660HW-61 - certainly not in the web interface. The nearest thing I can see is 'Reset ADSL Line' (in 'Diagnostics'), and I'm pretty sure that does a resync.
There may be a ZyNOS command that can be entered via the telnet interface. (Following a quick look) Hmm. Not sure. Possible candidates include:
wan adsl close | open (but I'd have to find good docs to see if that causes a resync - looks like it might)
wan node disable | enable (sounds a bit drastic)
Can't say at the moment if either of those (or any other command) corresponds to 'disconnect' on the Netgears and Thomsons. So I'll assume I can't do it. It's no great hardship.
Graham