Painfully slow uploads and everything grinds to a halt

[#1 · Accepted solution]

@chris2022 sounds like the new router isn't autoconfiguring to your account.

Browse to http://192.168.1.254, navigate to Advanced Settings > Broadband. If the page shows you as connected then click the disconnect button. Check the username that is entered. If it displays as 'setup@plusdsl.net' then overwrite it with <yourplusnetusername>@plusdsl.net (that's an 'l', not a '1'), enter the password you log into the Plusnet website with and then try reconnecting.

Let us know how it goes.

[#2]

That's cracked it!

I'm back online on the new router, and I've just tested a 100MB upload: it's slow, but I was able to work on other things while that trickled away in the background which is all I need. On the old router, I wouldn't have even been able to open a website while that was running.

Thank you all for your help:

@MisterW - it was indeed just the username

@jab1 - thanks for your patience and for pointing me towards a router swap

@Dan_the_Van - you have no idea how many times I've googled variations on "slow upload speed" without hitting on "buffer bloat"! Once I got that term it's like a Rosetta Stone for understanding what was going wrong

[#3]

@chris2022 glad that's got you sorted.

For information, when routers are dispatched, they are scanned and the serial number recorded against your account. All routers are initially configured with the setup@plusdsl.net account, this allows it to connect to the PlusNet servers (but with VERY limited internet access) whereby it should retrieve your account details using the serial number and autoconfigure with your correct account details.

There seems to have been one or two routers recently that have 'escaped' scanning and so do not autoconfigure correctly.

Manually replacing the username & password fixes the problem BUT beware that should you ever factory reset the router you will need to replace the details again.