Broadband dropouts

Like a lot of people, I'm an ex-O2 customer (excellent, stable service etc!) who, in my case, sold my soul for free satellite TV for a year and moved to Sky.

Recently (4 weeks or so) I'm getting random disconnections whereby any internet related activity will hang for up to 2 minutes - browsers display "page not found" errors, Outlook gives server unavailable messages etc - so it's obvious that the BB has dropped, which is confirmed when the connection comes back as 99% of the time I will be allocated a new IP address. This problem occurs across all devices, both wired and wireless and is not OS specific.

Having heard how sorry 1st line support were to learn of my problem I was contacted by second line who arranged for a line test, which showed a problem at the local cabinet. This was apparently fixed by Openreach but still the problem persisted.

Having told Sky that If I try and access the Sky hub (V2, black model) during times of 'outage', I can't - the hub is unavailable via 192.168.0.1 and pinging the hub results in 100% packet loss they agreed to replace the hub. New hub, cable to the socket and microfilter later and...... still the same problem.

During the course of another phone call with them, noise was heard on the line (first time I have heard noise tbh) and so Openreach were again invoked. This time the engineer replaced the master socket (only socket in the property) but still no joy.

Back to Sky, they ran a number of line tests which pointed to a faulty (new) microfilter which was replaced. All ran well for about an hour, then the BB dropped again.

Since this last attempt to resolve the problem my speedtest results have slightly dropped to about 6.2 / 0.6 (it was 7.5 / 1) but I can appreciate that this is because Sky will possibly have dropped the gain on the line because of the disconnections to see if this makes any difference (it hasn't) and my ping has gone from about 15ms up to 51.

BQM for current configuration is: http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/098d9102590...

Router stats:

Broadband Link D/s U/s
Connection Speed 7450 kbps 797 kbps
Line Attenuation 43.0 dB 27.5 dB
Noise Margin 6.9 dB 14.14 dB

The only changes from O2 days (where the connection was rock solid) are the router and, obviously, the ISP. No cabling changes nor new electrics at home so I think we can rule out anything that is within my control.

Any suggestions as to what might be causing this? and, more importantly, what can be done about it - apart from keeping on at Sky of course!

Thanks, in advance, for your help...

Edited by deleted (Wed 26-Mar-14 13:46:04)

No suggestions as to the cause? Anybody?

Some routers just don't like certain lines, ie. the noise environment is different and your old hardware just may have accepted the errors the noise caused.

Is the Sky hub one you can extract the login details from, and may be try different modems on the line.

The ISP answer will probably be to slow you down until the disconnects stop happening.

Thank you MrS, I was thinking something similar myself. The speed has stayed around the 7.5 / 0.75 mark for a couple of days now, which is not too bad for my distance from the exchange, however my ping has gone from about 20mS up to about 50.

I'm also running RouterStatsLite and this showed over 25 disconnections from 00:00 to 13:00 today.

I have given Sky 14 days to sort it out, otherwise I will try and cancel my contract under their Ts and Cs. If I can't get them to go along with this then any suggestions as to a "noise tolerant" router? I've always been a fan of Netgear kit myself but would welcome your experience in this area.

Thanks,
Dave

My BT ADSL2+ line hated a DG834GT, but loved an original 834 (one of first into UK - no died and recycled). DGN2200 was good on that line.

Specifically for Sky kit, the Asus DSL-N55U gave slightly higher sync speeds with no loss of stability, but generally now just stick the SR101 hub which is rock solid for me.

Never tried my Fritzbox 7390 (that got killed by lightning) on the Sky line, but did give you lots of tweak options to handle the noisy conditions.

It is entirely possible that the issue is simply the wiring changes at the exchange if you have moved from O2/Be kit to Sky kit and the random risk of a slightly less stable connection.

Thanks for the info Mr S - your last point about changes to exchange tin makes perfect sense to me and does seem like the most logical explanation, I will keep on at Sky to resolve it. Pardon my ignorance on these matters, but I assume that the kit used at the exchange will be different for fibre connections than that used for 'plain' ADSL2? If this is the case then I might try and force an upgrade out of Sky to see if it makes a difference.

It's now at a stage where I am getting the disconnections c. 30 times per day - what's left of my hair had now been pulled out - and I'm just about to rebuild two windows machines so will be hammering the connection with multi-gig updates.... well, I'll be TRYING to hammer the connection!

Thanks again for your assistance.

In reply to a post by davidjfirman:

I'm just about to rebuild two windows machines so will be hammering the connection with multi-gig updates.... well, I'll be TRYING to hammer the connection!

Consider WSUS offline updater. This provides an ISO for an install with all current updates - office as well.

http://www.wsusoffline.net/

On FTTC the kit is in the green fibre twin in the road, and Sky accept a simple fibre connection at the exchange.

The voice side still comes across the old copper wiring still.

Thanks for the link, however Avast AV went apoplectic with all manner of virus warnings when I tried to d/l the .zip file so I think I might pass on it for now.

Thanks for the confirmation Mr S. Sky have booked a broadband engineer to visit on Wednesday.

I'm using RouterStats_Lite to poll the Sky hub every 15s or so to get connectivity readings (noise and u/l & d/l speeds). What I find intriguing (and to my mind, points to an exchange kit issue) is that when the d/l line drops, the u/l line stays up - board fault in the exchange? Who knows, if Sky can't fix it then they're history and I'll go to someone else, probably PlusNet.