Hey everyone,

We've always said powering down your router for half an hour or so occasionally is good practice. It is, but now it's more important than ever.

ISPs are now starting to use DPI (deep packet inspection) more and more,

although you may pay for 'unlimited' broadband they still want to minimise usage where they can to save costs 🙄 if you're a heavy user of Internet streaming at peak times they are now forcing packet loss to slow your connection.

Over the past few days I've had a few customers who's speed tests are good but they are suffering heavy buffering or have nothing showing at all. All of these have been fixed by powering down the router for 30mins - hour.

The reason this works is your IP address (which is what the ISPs are monitoring your connection on) is 'held' by your router,

when you power down this IP is released back in to the network, a new connection will then pick that IP address up and when you power your router back up you will be allocated a new one.

Sometimes when you power back up if there's been no new connections you will pick the same IP back up, the best way to check is to use whatismyip.com,

make a note of your IP address before powering down, then check again after powering back up.

If your IP hasn't changed then power down for a bit longer (some isps have a delay on ips being released) and check again.

It's been mentioned quite a few times but I'll say it again now,

an old school mechanical plug timer that you can pick up for a fiver is a great solution,

power down your router between the hours of say 2am-6am and you'll get a new IP address every day without affecting your usage or annoying other family members when you want to reset you IP at 7pm because the football is buffering.

This is IPTV, regular home network maintenance is a requirement for good viewing,

I know I'd rather spend 5-10 mins before viewing doing a bit of maintenance each day than paying £100's every month to receive the same channels and save myself 10 mins.

Jay