9100em can't handle 70 Mbit download?

[Amon3]

I recently upgraded to the new highest FIOS speed available in my area, which is 75 Mbits down. Few services seem to actually send data that fast, but one that does is Steam.

When I'm downloading a game from Steam, I can see that my connection is hitting about 70 Mbits down. At the same time, my 9100em stops responding to DNS queries and won't serve up the web interface, either. Pausing the download solves the problem, and resuming it reproduces the same issue.

For now, I've worked around the problem by changing my PC to use Google DNS instead of the router. With this configuration, I don't notice any issue when the router is saturated except that I can't access the router's web interface.

So I'm guessing that 70 Mbits is about all this router can handle, because when it's dealing with data coming through that fast, it won't do anything else. The Google DNS workaround is fine for my desktop, but when the family is connecting to the wireless with phones and tablets, it's a huge pain to manually set external DNS.

Is there perhaps a firmware upgrade that will fix this? Do I need a new router? Should I consider a third-party router?

Thanks for any input.

[Hubrisnxs]

try testing at http://speedtest.verizon.net/fios300  that router should do upto 90 mb over coax.  most of the speedtest.net servers are not using the newest ookla client and can't accurately test the quantum speeds.

the lock up's are abnormal for that router, so yes if that kind of testing reveals that it locks up at 70, then you might need the actiontec router instead.   You should be able to do an over the counter exchange at the local verizon store.   

[smith6612]

For the Westell, I'm not sure if anyone has really tested how much it can take before slowing down. You may want to try shutting off the 9100EM's Firewall if it is on, and disabling some services such as UPnP. Tricks like that are what I use to re-purpose older hardware on faster connections where some features such as SPI aren't exactly needed (eg: Gaming where SPI is more likely to break things).