Moved from O2 to Sky - now the internet keeps dropping out..

I've been with O2 a few years and things have been fine. Last week or so I've come home and found that whilst I have a broadband connection, I can't connect to anything on the WAN side of the O2 Wireless II box.

Looking in the router interface there has been an ADSL connection but not an ADSL2Plus or Static connection.

Sky "Technical Support" are an absolute joke as their "support" consisted of "Have you turned it off an on?" "Can you do a factory reset" followed by "It's an O2 router and we don't support those, we'll send you a Sky hub and you may have to wait 3-5 days".

So, after doing lots of power cycles I think I've spotted a bit of a theme, which is if the router get an IP address in the 9x.x.x.x range the connection doesn't work.

Get an IP in the 7x.x.x.x or 4x.x.x.x range and it does work.

Seems there is no way to speak to anyone technical at Sky so I'm stuck waiting on their router, but it would look like this isn't a router or line issue?

Hmm so I've tried two other routers and all show the same symptom which is that the DSL connection is up and the ADSL connection is up and an external IP is acquired but nothing, including the routers inbuilt diags, can get to anything on the WAN side.

It's almost pot luck when I reboot as to what IP address I get and whether it works.

Very tempted to just [censored] off to AAISP since this has been a real eye opener that it might be cheap but when there's a problem you get what you pay for.

So when your servive is ok and then when it is not ok, you can ping and get to.

Your router lan ip address
Your router web admin web site
The gateway address your router gets on the wan side
The dns servers your router gets on the wan side
The www.sky.com web site
The bbc.co.uk web site

Thanks Ian,

Internal is fine i.e. I can ping and browse the router website which is how I know I'm getting an external IP etc.

If I leave a continuous ping to anything on the WAN side I'll just see a timeout until after enough restarts of the router it eventually starts to respond - this is where I think the WAN IP address might play a part.

I tend to just use Google's DNS servers or the WAN default gateway so I'm pinging by IP - it isn't a DNS issue.

It's something related to the migration to Sky as I've been with O2 for around 3 years and have never had to so much as call them.

In reply to a post by hutchingsp:

It's something related to the migration to Sky as I've been with O2 for around 3 years and have never had to so much as call them.

It could also be a faulty router after 3 years.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by hutchingsp:

It's something related to the migration to Sky as I've been with O2 for around 3 years and have never had to so much as call them.

It could also be a faulty router after 3 years.

It could be, but having tried 2 others and seeing the exact same result (WAN IP assigned but can't get anywhere external) I'm pretty sure that I've ruled that out.

Some settings here:-

http://www.skyuser.co.uk/forum/o2-customer-informati...

Encapsulation: PPPoA (PPP over ATM)
login/username: [email protected]
Idle Timeout: 0
Internet IP Address: Get Dynamically from ISP
Domain Name Server (DNS) Address: Get Automatically From ISP
NAT: Enable
Multiplexing Method: VC-BASED
VPI: 0
VCI: 38

Edited by deleted (Sun 02-Mar-14 12:58:55)

Thanks, and done all that I'm assuming that if I'm getting as far as being connected with the WAN port assigned an IP address that the settings must be correct else it wouldn't get that far?

Thinking this might be the push I need to move to BT Infinity on the other line then cancel Sky Broadband and the BT line that it's running on.

Sounds as though somtimes after a reboot it is ok and you get an internet connection, then on other reboots you get a duff connection. I mentioned gateway and dns as these are normally allocated on reboot. If you write these down and check those in both the working and non working settings you may be able to understand more about what is going wrong.

Just by way of a little "closure" the connection stayed up for 3 days, the new Sky hub arrived and connected first time.

Still appalled at Sky's levels of technical support but I suspect that like many whingers, now that it's working it's cheap enough so I may just stay put.