Hi, I really don't know much at all about networking. However, I have been having on and off Internet problems since July 2016. I am currently using a 2Wire 2701HG-B with a Netgear router. We have DSL Internet that we get through a small, local company that uses AT&T lines and equipment.

At the time that we started having problems, our Internet provider separated themselves from another local Internet company, and moved buildings. I don't know the specifics of what changed on their end, but it seems like something did, because before that our Internet seemed to be running fine.

Internet pages seemed to take forever to load. I started looking up Internet speed tests to run, and I ran them several times a day, especially when we were experiencing a lot of problems. It would show speeds of close to 0.00 mbps for both download and upload, but especially for upload. I downloaded the free version of ping plotter to look at it. It showed a lot of latency and red lines at the second hop.

After 2 months of that, our ISP fixed some things on their end, and our Internet started working better. I checked ping plotter, and the second hop did not show the problems it had earlier.

Well, recently, within the last few weeks, things seem to be getting bad again. This time, though, the speed tests results are more normal to what we normally get. (1.00 Mbps download, and 0.32 Mbps upload). There is quite a bit of variation, though. I will run a speed test at one moment, then run the exact same one the next, and my numbers will be quite different.

The thing, though, is that we do get a lot of latency, especially at that second hop. We get latency as soon as we do something on the Internet -- anything on the Internet. I can type something into google, and as soon as I hit enter, my latency will spike at the second hop. When not doing something on the Internet, the latency at hop to is about 50ms. As soon as I do something, it spikes somewhere from 200-2000 ms, usually around 500-1000 ms. I don't know that this is normal. I doubt that it is, but please let me know for sure.

My 2Wire calls hop #2 the "default gateway" in the "View Broadband Link Details."

I looked up the 2Wire manual online, and this is what it says about the default gateway:
Part of the Internet address settings. The default gateway is a device your 2Wire gateway communicates with directly to give you access to the Internet. If you receive your Internet address settings automatically, the subnet mask has been set for you. If you manually set your Internet address (Static IP), this is the information that was provided to you by your ISP and entered by you during the system installation.

I think that there could be a problem with this "default gateway," but I am not sure what is going on.

Hop 2 is 108.73.171.254

There is a lot of red that shows in the charts due to the high latency.