directly connect to bt vdsl modem and create a dial up PPPoE session, to check speed
 

Hello,
I went onto fibre broadband on Monday 15th April 2013, and I have complained about the speed I am experiencing. They have asked me to do a test where I connect directly to the bt vdsl modem, and not to the router. This is designed to see if there is a fault in the router. The router is a netgear DGND3700v2. I have had the router since November 2012. The ISP Eclipse.net only shows Windows and Mac ways to create a PPPoE dial up session, not linux. The linux distribution I am using in Linux Mint 14 Nadia. The netbook I am using is the Samsung NC10. I checked for similar threads, but none appear to exist. I also did a google search but that got results mostly about setting up a router that must use PPPoE protocol. I look forward to learning how to do this. In the mean time I am just going to see if I can learn about it by a little experiment-trial and error.
Regards Stephen

Huh...when I put in "how to set up pppoe in linux mint", I get lots of very specific results. Even more for just "how to set up pppoe in linux":
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=27314
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=150&t=99130
http://linux.die.net/man/8/pppoe-setup
http://linux.about.com/od/commands/l...l5_pppoeco.htm
http://www.roaringpenguin.com/products/pppoe

You should be able to use any PPP dialer on your system (gnome-ppp, etc.), and configure the DSL connection there through a GUI.

Hello,
I checked that the router was working properly by replacing it with another that supported fibre broadband, and then testing the speed. This then became stable at a higher speed. It was the ISP who suggested that approach of connecting directly to the BT fibre modem. Swapping routers was a simpler means of seeing if the router being used was faulty. It would have been even easier if the OpenReach engineers (part of BT) had tested the line while they were here.
Regards Stephen