I have a severe, intermittent latency problem which netalyzer suggests is probably due to buffer bloat in the router. Are there any suggestions? Perhaps a wired router with smaller buffers? Recycling the router helps sometimes but not always.

I had that.

The trouble in my case was that the broadband was being "upgraded." Coming in 3 km (2 miles) on a phone line I had first 2Mbit, then 3, then more. The line was good for 2Mbit. I ended up with a lowest connect speed of 2.3Mbit which went on and off like you describe. There's error checking in most routers - check it out. I ended up with the following choices
1. Continue paying for crap service.
2. Switch back to the more expensive isp attached to the phone company who owned my line in the hope they would fix it.
3. Do something else.
I chose 3, and never looked back. On principle, I wouldn't do 2.

Already checked that. It's not the problem.

Well, before you can do anything about buffer bloat, you'll need to analyse downstream access. Can the information get out? I see it as an isp issue.

The isp says it's not their fault.

Which ISP are we talking? Many ISPs will claim it isn't their fault in the hopes you'll believe them, regardless of truth behind it.

We're a few posts into this. As items are suggested, it transpires you already eliminated them and didn't tell us. What did you eliminate? What did you check?

If you go the complete loop (and you seem to know what you're doing) and find no solution, I'll tell you the problem: Something you are taking as OK is in fact NOT OK.

The isp is speakeasy/megapath. Their tech ran a check and it came out all right. The various on line dsl tests come out all right, yet pages often take forever to load. Not always. I found netalyzer through a link at wired .com, if I remember correctly. Sorry if I left anything out. It seemed to me that I had only one question.

That means you have a connection. Don't eliminate their problems on that score. Does the system misbehave at known busy times? (opening & closing office hours, saturday afternoon)

That means more, mind you, have you ever tried an isp test when things are bad? that's what I'd do. Also check locally on forums and see if anyone there is having similar problems.

There's a thing called Contention - how many customers are on your subnet. If everyone goes for the net together, access is painfully slow because things can't get to send a packet on the network.