Unfortunately this time yet again the internet system up time has reset and this time my connection has been affected and dropped to a lower sync speed.

Internet connection speed is no longer syncing at 80 Mbps and this time the connection has only lasted for around 13 days. Perhaps the 30 days stability previously was simply a coincidence!

System Up Time 00h57m13s


Line 1
Downstream Upstream
Actual Rate [Kbps] 78159 19999
Maximum Rate [Kbps] 76862 19999
Noise Margin [dB] 6.50 15.40
Attenuation [dB] 18.10 0.00
Power [dBm] 12.80 7.60


I understand that there's a huge amount of storm right now and maybe due to Corona Virus there may be system congestion in the network with too many internet users.

It seems like my long term internet disconnection problems will never be fully resolved until indeed FTTP comes. After 10+ years of waiting on EO Line on ADSL, FTTC Cabinet arrival in October 2019 has not really improved internet connection stability.

Now I don't know what to blame here, the router or the noise margins. But once again I don't understand why the System Uptime should reset by itself even if it is related to noise margins.

You can imagine how if a connection can't be stable under a 6dB profile, God knows how many times the internet would drop out if the SNR was set at 3dB.

No wonder on ADSL I needed 9dB noise margin profile for connection to be stable. Unfortunately with FTTC it seems you can't have 9dB SNR. Hence my internet connection stability paradoxically ends up worse than ADSL.

I have strong intuitions, my worry is not without any base.. I was highly skeptical whether FTTC was really going to solve the problem when I asked previously in October 2019 when my cabinet went live. Experiences with FTTC obviously differ from person to person.

Network congestion has no impact on sync speed.

However, as more and more people take up FTTC, crosstalk does become an increasing problem, reducing speeds for everyone.

Ageing copper, detritus in joints, water and temperature can all have impact too, and vary throughout the year.

I do note that you do show a "system up time" of 00h57m13s, and this suggests that it's your router which has rebooted, not just the connection resyncing. Buying a better router may improve things.

When you say stability what do you mean? A router rebooting every 14 days isn�t an issue to worry about. Stability means your connection is up and down all the time. Yes, a better router might not need rebooting as often, but why do you care if it does if all what happens is ever so often you lose a couple of megs.

I really don�t get why people moan about a 3% reduction in speed, what difference will it make?

+1

In reply to a post by gary333:

When you say stability what do you mean? A router rebooting every 14 days isn�t an issue to worry about. Stability means your connection is up and down all the time. Yes, a better router might not need rebooting as often, but why do you care if it does if all what happens is ever so often you lose a couple of megs.

I really don�t get why people moan about a 3% reduction in speed, what difference will it make?

When I mean by stability, is the connection to not drop out randomly and at unexpected times. I want to see my connection up time 50+ days that's when I call it reliable!

On this occasion the router reboot happened after 12 days and 22 hours. If it had happened exactly on the 14th day or the 30th day then I may understand that it is programming.

I'm concerned that the router System Uptime was also affected. This happened with the old Plusnet router which is also Sagemcom brand and now it is happening with TalkTalk.

Ok, there's an interesting change I have just spotted. In the DSL checker it now shows WBC SOGEA Availability Date as Available and previously just a few days ago it was showing as -- not available. This is something new after 5 months. If an engineer worked on the cabinet, fair enough.

But I don't want this trend of drop-outs continuing. I'm fine with a slightly lowered speed. As I said I had 12 Mbps on ADSL and used to sync 56 days with Sky with 9dB SNR and the router never rebooted, it was on for 300+ days system up time.

But since around November 2019 shortly after the cabinet upgrade I have been noticing router system up time is no longer stable. Now I am in a dilemma whether the router is really faulty or something faulty in the cabinet or my electric extension lead becoming flaky.

Noise margin has now jumped to 6.80dB at 78.2 Mbps sync. Will have to observe again. I would be happy to buy a better quality router but I'm afraid that if it does not sort the issue then I will waste my money.

My Sky Netgear router never let me down, but I can't use it with TalkTalk for test purpose because it is locked to Sky.
I admit that there is also some construction engineering works done in my building for the cladding panel replacement they are going up and down with the external construction lift and using drill machine, not sure if these engineers have contributed to some noise on the line. I'm only speculating at this stage.

Your router rebooting is nothing to do with the line. It's just rubbish firmware in a cheap consumer router - most likely a memory leak or somesuch.

If you're happy to buy a top-end router or router + modem combination, then it won't reboot.

This is from my Mikrotik hEX PoE:

[admin@gw1]> /system resource print
uptime: 3w5d20h38m45s
version: 6.46.3 (stable)
build-time: Jan/28/2020 10:46:05

That's from when I last did a firmware update. It connects to both FTTP and FTTC (the latter via Draytek Vigor 130 modem)

The uptime on the modem:

> show status
System Uptime:2834:10:1

That's about 4 months, and it's from when I was having problems with my old UPS and swapped it for a new one.

Note: some people on this forum have said the chipset in the Draytek (Lantiq??) syncs at a lower speed than a Broadcom one. YMMV.

Nothing in the cabinet can have any impact on the system uptime of your modem/router.

It can only be your modem/router.

SOGEA being available makes no difference and no work was carried out to make this available.
SOGEA is now available nationwide. I believe it officially launched on March 1st but has showed as available to most lines for months now.
You probably just didn't notice it until now.

I want to see my connection up time 50+ days that's when I call it reliable!

You don't even get that kind of guaranteed uptime on leased lines.

It's entirely down to your ISP provided modem crashing/rebooting itself. They are cheap mass produced hardware not designed to provide anything like the uptime/stability you want.

Many thanks. The confusion I have with the TalkTalk WiFi Hub is that I am unable to determine if loss of connectivity has an impact on the system uptime or whether it is a bug with the router in itself or overheating issue. Or some other defect with my power extension lead.

I am beginning to think that Sagemcom branded routers are of poor quality. Old Tiscali Sagemcom modem in 2005 used to cause me this problem and a new Netgear router solved it.

The Sagemcom Plusnet ADSL router had the problem with the first router and then the second router replacement fixed it for a number of months before that was starting to reboot by itself.

This time it has happened twice with the TalkTalk WiFi router despite the fact that I have not witnessed low or unstable noise margins. The internet reconnected before I was able to find out if it had really rebooted by itself.

This is the warning log at the time of disconnection.
20.03.2020 12:29:56 Warning DHCPC
The WAN DHCP client process has successfully been terminated on Vlan 36

I don't know what that means.
But anyway, my router is now syncing at a slightly higher noise margin but at 78.2 Mbps.
Noise Margin [dB] 6.80 and 15.50

I will have to keep an eye on it again and see when next time the connection drops out whether the system uptime will once again reset.

TalkTalk responded on their forums telling me that they did a line test and couldn't find any faults.

The Sky hub router that I had previously for the entire 18 month contract never caused system uptime to reset. Only happened on a couple of occasions when there was a power cut. And I had 50+ days connection uptime on a few occasions and that's ADSL.

With FTTC I expect similar reliability unless the router is indeed causing the problem. Now my power extension lead that I have is over 10 years old, I will try and look into replacing that as well, not sure if this has gone flaky with time and whether it has developed a slight fault.

I'm not too worried about normal connection drop outs, but if the router system uptime is resetting at random days then that is what's making me concerned. If it was exactly 14 days or 30 days then I will have ignored this as an issue.

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

The Sky hub router that I had previously for the entire 18 month contract never caused system uptime to reset.

Is that not sufficient evidence to you that cheap ISPs are providing cheap rubbish routers?

If they stay up for 2-4 weeks at a time, that's good enough for most people. Most people won't notice a 30 second outage once per month. Most people don't even know how to login to their router to check the uptime.

An update regarding this, after nearly a month of being connected at 79999/20000 (there was a local power cut) my HG612 randomly resync'd at midnight one night last week.

24 hours later, last Thursday, the HG612 resync'd at 2am and the SNR was 4.9db so it's obviously dropped it down.

I've had nothing since, I was at 1080 errors at 28 hours DSL uptime.

Got a feeling the HG612 is going to pack up soon. It's started to make a whining noise.