The number of private home routers being duped into living a secret life as part of a botnet or in serving up malicious DNS results to it’s users has seen a surge in the latter half of 2016. It’s thought that the majority of traffic in the DDoS attack on various gaming servers in Christmas 2015 was generated from home routers that had been compromised.
If you’re using your home phone line for internet connection, it’s likely that you’re connected to an ADSL line (Asymmetric DSL) but there are other variants of DSL that may be available in your area, with VDSL currently being rolled out across the UK offering higher upload and download speeds.
David Cameron has pledged that all UK homes and businesses will have access to fast broadband by 2020 backed by a Universal Service Obligation, giving the public the right to request an affordable, fast connection, making internet access a guaranteed service like water and electricity.
There are many reasons why your internet may not be trundling along as fast as you are expecting, from poor broadband supply to malware and viruses.