BT Hub does its fortnightly reboot..

Ok, last night the BT Hub does its fortnightly reboot. I was expecting it as I noticed that it had been connected for 13 days yesterday, and right on time it did it in the early hours of this morning.

I don't mind that so much. But everytime it does it the speed slightly reduces. It's been doing this gradually from day one. I suspect that its cross talk interference, though I'm not sure.

My question is.. if I was to swap the HH5 for this openreach modem + router;

1. Will these fortnightly reboots stop? and

2. Will I recover any speed by doing this?

I have a standard modem and a Billion 7800 router. I don't believe it has ever rebooted of it's own accord and speed is usually pretty consistent (very occasionally the line goes interleaved for a month and then goes back to fastpath - but that is some sort of DLM issue).

Whether you recover speed will depend on what is really causing the speed reductions. It is possible the modem might hold a slightly better sync (my modem I am sure was a couple of meg faster than the HH5 on connection). But, I wouldn't hold my breath for any miracle increase.

I've been looking at the stats in the HH5 and this bit is interesting;

6. Data rate: 20000 / 64902
7. Maximum data rate: 21248 / 75209
8. Noise margin: 6.1 / 6.5
9. Line attenuation: 0.0 / 18.1
10. Signal attenuation: 0.0 / 18.1

What could be causing the lower data rate being at 64902, while the max data rate is 75209 ?

The speed that the hub report as "max" rate may not be correct/accurate and actual data rate will always sync lower than this.

Possibly Interleaving, which takes a lot of bandwidth on FTTC, unlike on ADSLx. 10Mbps is common, along with an initial 8ms step up in latency.

How would I get Interleaving off?

I'm also still working on getting the ringer fault fixed too.. i.e. the phone constantly rings one long ring if a call comes in.

I'm just gathering information before I make that call as its not a regular issue they like to ask a lot of questions before doing anything.

In reply to a post by bowdon:

How would I get Interleaving off?

By fixing the ringer fault.

I'm also still working on getting the ringer fault fixed too.. i.e. the phone constantly rings one long ring if a call comes in.

I'm just gathering information before I make that call as its not a regular issue they like to ask a lot of questions before doing anything.

When did this start, and do you have an OR VDSL2 filter plate on the master or was it a self-install with dangly filters?

I believe these reboots to be caused by the BTAGENT app in the Homehub. One way to prevent it happening is to get an unlocked OR modem, a HG612 preferably, so you can stop the app running. There's no need to replace the Homehub too as it will happily run plugged into the OR modem.

As to whether your speed will increase, that may be something to do with the phone line issue you have causing odd ringing. This sounds like some wires are crossed in your extension wiring.

The ringer issue originally started when I was on Be and got moved to Sky ISP. It started literally after my connection dropped from one isp to the other. I'm not sure what Sky or the engineer did but that's when the ringer issue happened.

When I was with Sky for a few months, I did call up them and at one point an engineer at the exchanged phoned my house and said he knew what the problem was, but he had to order a part and Sky had to approve it. Then later in the day, the line went down and the ringer rang correctly. He called back and said he found a part already in the exchange that he'd used. So I thought that was the end of it. Then soon after the line went completely dead, and I had to wait 2 weeks before anything was done about it. Then eventually had an openreach engineer come out and he got the line up and running (I was on adsl2+ btw at this point). But the ringer fault had re-appeared. He said he couldnt go in to the exchange. But to call up BT and report a voice line fault and say its in the exchange. He said the current from the exchange is malfunctioning and sending a burst down the line. This guy was very knowledgable about this stuff. He was an 'old hand' at this.

I had thought at this point that moving from Sky to BT Infinity would have fixed the problem. Btw, I was never with either Be or Sky for my phone. I had been with TalkTalk. At the time I ordered BT Infinity I also transferred my phone line to BT also.

Unfortunately even after moving to BT for both my broadband and voice phone, the ringer problem as still persisted still.

The only issue that I'm cautious about is I've noticed people say DON'T mention broadband or they will send a broadband engineer. But what if they ask me if I have broadband? Do I lie and say no? Surely they would know I have their Infinity product?

At the moment I'm trying to think of the wording I'd use so as not to mention broadband.

Can't you just call 151 and report a phone fault. If they ask, say it's nothing to do with broadband...?