Stick on "PPP Connecting.." - who resolves it? OR or ISP?

Paying for service from Shell (formerly First Utility) for a 35meg FTTC. Shell have sent two different Technicolor routers that both behave the same, and they've sent OR engineers multiple times. OR have said everything works as far as they can see, and it's not their job now. Shell say "everything looks right on our end and it should just work". Triple checked the router settings to be as Shell recommend (VDSL, PPPoE, VLAN 101; resetting the router and letting it detect also produces this).

The Technicolor status panel has two boxes, one headed "broadband" and one headed "internet"; the broadband panel shows trained at 8 meg up and 35 meg down, the "internet panel" is just stuck at "ppp connecting". I haven't found any usable logs in the router pages yet that give any extra info on the state of the process..

Shell have ordered yet another engineer to visit (5th one now), claiming they will check this and make it work and Shell say they have already asked for "another port" whatever that means..

Any ideas who needs to resolve this, and what the process is?

That's easy: Shell resolves it.

The process is that you complain to Shell, and Shell takes full responsibility for fixing it. Whether that involves them calling out Openreach or debugging their own network or sending you a new router, it's up to Shell to decide what to do and to do it.

"Another port" would be moving you to a different port on the DSLAM line card in the cabinet. They seem to be theorising that even though the line has synced, somehow that particular port is unable to forward traffic to the backplane. That seems unlikely to me, if all the other ports on the same line card are working fine. But as a side effect, moving you to a different port would cause your service to be reprovisioned, which could clear the problem.

You might like to know that Shell are now by far the most complained-about ISP according to complaints received by Ofcom - managing to make even Virgin and TalkTalk look good.

Edited by candlerb (Mon 05-Sep-22 07:46:05)