I have had to replace 3 (yes 3) ADSL routers in the last few months, and the causes have all been quite bizarre to say the least, certainly worth documenting I thought seeing as I could find no solutions on Google myself only people with similar problems and so answer to their dilemma. So read on and prepare to enter "The router twilight zone"
Issue 1 – my router hates Microsoft
This is the most bizarre problem of all and I spent weeks and weeks trying to figure this one out so this is going to be a long one.
One day I tried to visit the Microsoft forums (social.Microsoft.com) and the site simply would not load giving me a "web site not available" type error, naturally I just presumed their site was down as everything else was working fine. After several days I finally realised that it was only not working from home as I was always able to access the site from work, so I then tried www.microsoft.com and this also did not work, so I tried a few other Microsoft.com sites with the same problem, it seems I could not access any Microsoft site at all (ending in Microsoft.com) but every other site I tried worked.
The obvious thought at this point is that something is blocking these sites, so I turned off my firewall, but no joy, I checked the router firewall but nothing was blocked. My next thought was "oh shit I have malware", so I checked my hosts file, no suspicious entries there either. It is also common knowledge that some malware will block access to anti-malware, anti-virus or other security sites so that you cannot install any removal software or update your existing software, so I tried all the common security sites and they loaded without any problems. Just in case I also ran some extra malware scans and clean-up tools for this type of issue.
Ok so I was stumped now, didn't know what else to try, so the next step was to determine the source of the problem, was it my ADSL connection or was it my laptop. So I jumped on my wife's computer and tried the same sites, they worked fine, so the finger of suspicion was now on my laptop, so on my wife's suggestion (yes really I had actually dismissed doing this already) I took my laptop into my office to test from there, and everything worked fine. WTF!! now I was confused, I couldn't access any Microsoft site from home but only on my laptop, other computers worked fine, but my laptop could access these sites fine from the office, what on earth could cause this.
I have tried both IE and Firefox which are my normal browsers, so just for kicks I thought I would download Google Chrome and try that out. Ah ha it works, I was able to access all the Microsoft sites, so it seemed like a browser issue, but this still did not explain how it worked form my office.
Anyway I logged in to the forums to catch up and BLAM everything suddenly stopped working again, no sites would work, what had I done to cause this? All I did was login? Ah maybe that is it, some weird cookie issue, I deleted my cookies and everything started working again. So I deleted cookies on all my other browsers and they started working as well. So I some more test, and determined the problem occurred after logging in with my Microsoft password to any Microsoft site (this goes via live.com btw).
So I tested this theory on my wife's computer and my sons laptop, and found the exact same behaviour on both, thus why they had worked before as neither were logged in to windows live.
The only conclusion I could come to here was that was a problem with my ADSL line, so I contacted my provider (PlusNet) and as you can imagine convincing them that the problem was not my computer or browser was a challenge. But finally I did, and their reply was "we sell routers, you can buy one for….". Not very helpful, but in their own way they were saying my router was faulty. I hadn't actually considered this as I cannot imagine what type of router fault would cause only Microsoft websites not to work.
Anyway I dug out an old router, and then had to dig through the garage for an ac/dc adaptor (luckily I have a box full of them), connected it up and voila no more problems. So the only conclusion I can come to is that there must been a packet related fault on the PlusNet router that only affected very large packets, and only being logged in to windows live while using a Microsoft site generates packets big enough to trigger the fault. Go figure eh!
Issue 2 – I have the power (not)
So I come into work one day and I have no internet access at all, bugger. So I do all the usual things, reboot the router, ipconfig yada yada, still no joy.
All the lights on the router are green, a NAT IP is being assigned to my PC, so I login to the router and check the status and notice that it kept connecting and disconnecting from the line. So there seemed to be a connection issue.
I contacted my provider and at their end it was showing a failed login, but the login was fine, I had not changed it.
So I did a factory reset and started from scratch, with the same result. So I had a spare Netgear router kicking about, so I decided to give that a try.
This is where is got weird, as this router did not work either, but with a totally different issue, even though both were the exact same model DG834G, except one was a slightly newer model.
Router 1 - DG834Gv4 would not connect and was totally inaccessible via LAN, no DCHP, could not ping, nothing. When attempting to do a system reset I got a flashing red and green power light.
Router 2 - GB834Gv2 seemed to be working, assigned IP via DCHP, could access interface, but would not stay connected to line, kept dropping connection. At the providers end it showed a failed login.
The only assumption I could make here was that I must have 2 faulty routers, so I popped out to PC World and bought a brand new router, brought it back to the office, set it all up and BLAM, no internet access again. WTF!!
Then I realised, the one thing I had not changed is the AC/DC adaptor, because all Netgear routers have the same input voltage/amps so I hadn't bothered. So I swapped it out for the AC/DC adaptor from the new router and tested, YAY it worked. So I thought I would test the other 2 routers with this new adaptor, and frack me they worked as well. So it was the adaptor that was faulty all along, but how odd that it caused totally different issues on each router. This is why it is a good idea to keep old/spare AC/DC adaptors, I told my wife my box of adaptors would come in useful some day 
Issue 3 – all your bandwidth are belong to us.
OK so I have my brand new all singing all dancing N300 dual band Netgear router setup in my office, what can possibly go wrong now.
My bandwidth could drop to a pathetic 516Kbps Down and 46Kbps UP that's what.
Naturally with this being a brand spanking new router I assumed this was my provider again, so I emailed them with the problem and while waiting for a reply I decided to do some diagnostics of my own. Rebooting router, re-entering all the setup details, reset to factory default etc. I also noticed there was a firmware update, so decided to install this. This is a totally automated process, you just click go and the router downloads and installs the update, however me having such good luck with routers at the moment in this case it failed and that was the end of this router, as a failed firmware update totally killed it, it was not possible to do a factory reset and get it working again.
As it was only a few weeks old I thought I would take it back to PC World, but could I find the receipt, of course not. So I got on to Netgear support and got an RMA for a replacement. In the mean time I had to buy yet another router as I can't really be without ADSL for 1 week and I could use the replacement one at home when it arrived anyway to replace the crappy old spare I have been using since Issue 1 occurred.
I have no idea what caused this particular issue seeing as the router got killed by the update before I could investigate, but with 3 router problems in as many months I am clearly in some sort of twilight zone router nightmare.
I really wish I could say this is the end, but sadly it isn't, my spare backup router that I am currently using at home is now also starting to overheat which is randomly killing the WIFI connection. I do hope that when my Netgear RMA replacement arrives this will finally be the end of my router nightmare, please lord let it be the end……
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