Broadband connection lost in heavy showers.

Our broadband connection is always lost during heavy showers, which are unfortunately now frequent in this district. The telephone seems to be unaffected. We can always hear and talk on the phone when the broadband disappears during a shower.

I suspect that the loss of the broadband is related to the showers, and is not co-incidental. Would that be right? If so, could it cause a drop in our download speed?

The broadband connection also drops at about 8.30 am and 5.30 pm every day, which I suspect is caused by some sort of switchover at the exchange.

Advice would be gratefully received.

I've never heard of anything at the exchange having that timed effect. What time does your central heating go on and off, or anything else that is on a timer?

What router make and model do you have please? There are a couple of programs around that would let you monitor some of what is happening on your line throughout the day, and we will be able to recommend one of them if your router is supported.

Re the showers, yes it is quite common for water to get into joints and mess things up. Although the phone still works, next time this happens try switching off the router and doing a Quiet line test - dial 17070 option 2. Preferably do that with a corded phone plugged into the test socket of the master without a filter. See the socket on the wall at the back in this pic.

Disconnections of this kind can easily cause a loss of speed, and it can take weeks to recover . Does yours recover as soon as you successfully reconnect?

Edited by RobertoS (Fri 22-Mar-13 19:02:47)

You should NEVER take a laptop into the shower.

Nick

Same here but it has literally only just started happening today. The DSL light on the openreach modem goes out briefly at random intervals.

Its been snowing heavily and the wind has been pretty strong here.

However in your case the same time everyday thing looks like a REIN problem combined with the weather disconnections (physical fault from water getting in somewhere)

Edited by deleted (Fri 22-Mar-13 19:05:13)

Many thanks to Roberto and Alex for these helpful and extraordinarily prompt comments, and to Lethe for making me laugh. (But he needn't worry, as our laptop is kaput, and we would never take a desktop into the shower).

I'll try your suggestions asap, but I can answer two of Roberto's questions straightaway. The download speed has dropped about 40 per cent from what it used to be. But it now seems stable at the lower level, and doesn't recover above that level straight after a reconnection.

Also, we have no timers set for 8-30am and 5-30 pm, but I'll ask the neighbours.

RobertoS

Our modem router is a Netgear DGN 1000. It's connected to the test socket by a one metre cable via a filter which also serves the only telephone which is itself connected by a short cable. The wireless on the router is turned off, and we never use it. All signals to the two connected computers are via separate ethernet cables. There is no wireless on the phone. There is a TV about 3 metres from the router connected to a different socket.

It would be great if either of the programs you mention will work on this router. I now think the connection may be dropping more often than we had supposed because at 8-30 this evening when I was looking at the router (not touching) to check its details, the connection dropped. This is not a time when we would usually be using the internet so this drop would usually have passed unnoticed.

RouterStatsLite. Just selct the DGN 1000 from the drop-down list.

I used to set it to 5 second sampling in order to get good detail. Also set it to log to a file as well as graphing, as with such a short sampling interval the file can be easier to scan visually than the graphs.

A tip - I always used to set the noise margin graph to go to one or two dB negative, as Netgears can hold that low, and the sync speed graph needs to go down to zero and up to only a little above your theoretical maximum. This gives optimum graphing and diagnostic info, as that combination of settings makes the difference between a spike and a reconnection easily spotted.

RobertoS

Many thanks for your reference to RouterStatsLite, and for your tips on how to use it. Unfortunately I have to be out most of to-day, and don't want to risk setting the program up in a hurry, but will start it asap.

This morning there is a light drizzle here, but no heavy rain, wind, snow (or sun), and the lights on the router are rock steady. At 0710 hours I tried turning the central heating on while watching the router, but the lights didn't flicker when the boiler started and the pump came on.

I also tried the BT quiet line test at 0715 hours. This ran in silence apart from a voice saying at intervals "This is the BT quiet line test" (or words to that effect). After 5 minutes 56 seconds the voice said "Thankyou for using BT line test facility." Then there was silence until the service turned itself off at 0755 hrs. Can I conclude from this that the line passed the silence test when the router lights were steady?

Yes. So far as I know the quiet line test doesn't test anything - it leaves that to your ears.

I would have been listening to it when turning the router on, but I don't really expect it would have made any audible noise.

ADSL frequency noise is outside the human hearing range anyway. The point of running the quiet line test (with no broadband or Sky equipment connected) is that if there is audible noise then there is very often ADSL frequency noise. If there is broadband trouble as well, then it's a dead cert. If you get that combination it is best to report the voice fault without mentioning broadband, as that is easier to get fixed. Fixing the voice fault almost always also fixes the broadband fault.

"So far as I know the quiet line test doesn't test anything - it leaves that to your ears. "

Spot on you use ears testing 1A for noise on a line , far better then a EXFO ! LOL

Many thanks to RobertoS and the other contributors for very helpful comments which have enabled me to make progress during the weekend when I had time to reflect, experiment, observe and check my records.

Most unusually, we have had 48 hours with no rain, light or heavy. During this time we have kept a close watch on the broadband (at least during waking hours), and no disconnections have been observed. So, the main hypothesis now is "heavy rain means broadband disconnections, no rain means no disconnections." I need to check whether light rain means brief disconnections.

I must apologise for misleading you (and myself) by saying that "the connection also drops at about 8-30am and 5-30 pm every day." It doesn't, at least not every day. I think the explanation is that these are the times at which I often switch the main computer on (8-30am) and off (5-30pm) , so I would be downloading and would definitely notice disconnections. I haven't kept notes about all these disconnections, so I'm uncertain about whether there was rain during them. During the day the computers are mostly used for typing and reading, with only occasional downloads, so disconnections could be missed. Observation and recording will be better in future.

As for the telephone, I have used the quiet line test to establish that the line is quiet when the router lights are on, and that it stays quiet when the router is switched on and off. But I need to check whether there is noise on the line during a disconnection. I'm also beginning to wonder whether the phone really does stay connected when the router lights go out. It takes me about 30 seconds to get from the workroom to the router and the phone, and it occurs to me that I may, for example, have noticed a broadband disconnection on the computer, come downstairs to check the router, and picked up the phone after the lights had come back up. So, more and better observation needed here too. The router is in the living room, and it's easy to see the router lights from there and from the kitchen. I have noticed them flickering and going out, and in future will check the phone straightaway, as RobertoS recommends. I take his point about voice faults.

This note is already too long, so I won't give details of my checks for electrical interference (nothing found). Thanks again.

Have you got RouterStatsLite running yet? It is best to leave it running 24/7 in a situation like this, which means leaving the computer on for a few days. Whether or not you do that, put a shortcut to it in the Startup folder and also set it to start on loading.

The point of RSL is that as well as the general monitoring of the line, with the 5-second sampling interval I recommend disconnections are very obvious in both the graphs and the log file. Make sure you set it to save graphs on closing, and to log to file.

Here Roberto I have to confess that for five years or so I have been giving myself an easy life by using Linux (Ubuntu), and have more or less forgotten about "Windows." But I do take your point about RouterstatsLite and the advantage of the monitoring it enables. I still have a Windows licence and a machine that can run it. It's just that I know I won't be able to set it up quickly. I'll do it as soon as I can, but it may take some time. Thankyou very much for the reference and the detailed tips.

PS I hear on the Linux grapevine that using "Wine" can be tricky.

What router do you have?

It is pretty easy in GNU/Linux to poll a router and use gnuplot to create the readable data chart.

e.g. see my post here

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/linux/t/4214138-tp-...

Let me know if you need a hand.

Nick