In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Loss of broadban signal triggering another device is odd particularly if the phone is still working fine at that point

It is possible the line is within spec but just bad enough to cause issues with the alarm, one assumes it is a disller alarm that call a number when triggered

yes it dials when the alarm goes off and medics are sent .

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Double microfilters might help

Worth a punt !

its been tryed . faceplate filter and plug in ..

Land-line REN loading? What's the total? How many devices attached?

I'm confused about cause and effect here ... Just what is the cause of the problem, and what is a symptom, and what is unrelated?

Is the alarm causing a glitch on broadband, or is the broadband causing a glitch on the alarm?

My understanding of these alarms is that there is some form of trigger (such as a pendant fob, with a button to be pressed), and a dialler box connected to the line. Normally, the alarm dials the response centre - it does not make a connection across the internet. However, the dialler will complain audibly if it is not connected to the phone line.

Is all of that true here? Or does it work in some other way? Can we ask what the normal activation process is? The steps involved from a trigger being wanted, through to medic arrival.

I ask this because I don't see the role that broadband plays with the alarm under normal circumstances. And, because I can't see that, I don't see how a problem with broadband can cause an issue with the alarm under abnormal circumstances.

If there ought to be no linkage (beyond sharing a voice line), my next step would probably be to switch off broadband for a week, to confirm whether alarm-triggers are halted, or continue unabated.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

I'm confused about cause and effect here ... Just what is the cause of the problem, and what is a symptom, and what is unrelated?

Is the alarm causing a glitch on broadband, or is the broadband causing a glitch on the alarm?

I see things the same way. We have two things appearing to occur simultaneously - a spurious alarm trigger and a broadband disconnection - with no indication of which causes the other, or whether both have an external common cause.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

I ask this because I don't see the role that broadband plays with the alarm under normal circumstances. And, because I can't see that, I don't see how a problem with broadband can cause an issue with the alarm under abnormal circumstances.

If there ought to be no linkage (beyond sharing a voice line), my next step would probably be to switch off broadband for a week, to confirm whether alarm-triggers are halted, or continue unabated.

I would not be surprised if what is happening is the alarm is triggering spuriously, and the alarm dialling out is causing sync to drop on the broadband (as can happen with inadequate filtering of any voice telephony device or in some fault scenarios). It would be interesting to see if making an outgoing call using a phone connected in place of the alarm causes a broadband drop - if it does, that suggests the outgoing call is causing the broadband drop, rather than a broadband drop triggering the alarm.

If there is no clear correlation between outbound calls (or simply picking up a wired phone) and a broadband drop, I agree that the only way to troubleshoot this is to disconnect the broadband equipment from the line to see what effect, if any, that has spurious triggering of the alarm.


I would not be surprised if the alarm is spuriously triggering because:

• the equipment installed in the home is faulty
• there is some interference with a wireless triggering capability (especially if it uses 433.92MHz - so many low power licence exempt devices use that frequency these days including the majority of 'push button' car keys and radio controlled mains appliances - also there are licensed high power users of that band, including radio amateurs), and/or
• the alarm equipment has poor electromagnetic compatibility (to that extent, it might be worth winding the power, phone and other cables to the alarm onto ferrite rings as shown in Figure 4 of this reference)

I'm still not convinced the phone line is not dropping here, and the broadband is dropping at the same time. The only way to know would be if the phone line was in use at the time of the broadband dropping (i.e. call dropped, or not).

All we know is that there is no noise on the line, which doesn't prove it's not dropping (i.e. brief periods of no dialtone triggering alarm).

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

I'm confused about cause and effect here ... Just what is the cause of the problem, and what is a symptom, and what is unrelated?

Is the alarm causing a glitch on broadband, or is the broadband causing a glitch on the alarm?

My understanding of these alarms is that there is some form of trigger (such as a pendant fob, with a button to be pressed), and a dialler box connected to the line. Normally, the alarm dials the response centre - it does not make a connection across the internet. However, the dialler will complain audibly if it is not connected to the phone line.

Is all of that true here? Or does it work in some other way? Can we ask what the normal activation process is? The steps involved from a trigger being wanted, through to medic arrival.

I ask this because I don't see the role that broadband plays with the alarm under normal circumstances. And, because I can't see that, I don't see how a problem with broadband can cause an issue with the alarm under abnormal circumstances.

If there ought to be no linkage (beyond sharing a voice line), my next step would probably be to switch off broadband for a week, to confirm whether alarm-triggers are halted, or continue unabated.

he has 2 ways of calling help 1 is to push dial on the alarm and it calls for help and 2 he has a fall key fob alarm around his neck . ( at the min hes told the help line only to come if the fall alarm is set off )

Yes the only conection is the phone line as i have said not the broadband. He has had the tech guys out who he has his alarm off and all has been tested and diagnostics test ran and all is 100% .
I was around his house last night watching a film on apple tv and it stopped then the alarm start to dial so i cancelled it i had my laptop with me so i logged into his sky hub and 30 secs before the film stopped the router had dropped out .

9AM this morning his new sky hub turned up so i plugged it all in ect ect . just got back and so far no drop outs will check again tomorrow .

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Loss of broadband signal triggering another device is odd particularly if the phone is still working fine at that point

Very odd indeed, if the alarm doesn't connect to the broadband at all. Could it be the alarm itself that is a problem ?

diagnostics tests been ran and all is fine

In reply to a post by David_W:

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

I'm confused about cause and effect here ... Just what is the cause of the problem, and what is a symptom, and what is unrelated?

Is the alarm causing a glitch on broadband, or is the broadband causing a glitch on the alarm?

I see things the same way. We have two things appearing to occur simultaneously - a spurious alarm trigger and a broadband disconnection - with no indication of which causes the other, or whether both have an external common cause.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

I ask this because I don't see the role that broadband plays with the alarm under normal circumstances. And, because I can't see that, I don't see how a problem with broadband can cause an issue with the alarm under abnormal circumstances.

If there ought to be no linkage (beyond sharing a voice line), my next step would probably be to switch off broadband for a week, to confirm whether alarm-triggers are halted, or continue unabated.

I would not be surprised if what is happening is the alarm is triggering spuriously, and the alarm dialling out is causing sync to drop on the broadband (as can happen with inadequate filtering of any voice telephony device or in some fault scenarios). It would be interesting to see if making an outgoing call using a phone connected in place of the alarm causes a broadband drop - if it does, that suggests the outgoing call is causing the broadband drop, rather than a broadband drop triggering the alarm.

If there is no clear correlation between outbound calls (or simply picking up a wired phone) and a broadband drop, I agree that the only way to troubleshoot this is to disconnect the broadband equipment from the line to see what effect, if any, that has spurious triggering of the alarm.


I would not be surprised if the alarm is spuriously triggering because:

• the equipment installed in the home is faulty
• there is some interference with a wireless triggering capability (especially if it uses 433.92MHz - so many low power licence exempt devices use that frequency these days including the majority of 'push button' car keys and radio controlled mains appliances - also there are licensed high power users of that band, including radio amateurs), and/or
• the alarm equipment has poor electromagnetic compatibility (to that extent, it might be worth winding the power, phone and other cables to the alarm onto ferrite rings as shown in Figure 4 of this reference)

i just went around and uplugged his alarm n pluged a phone in and ran my house spoke to girlfriend for 2 mins then hung up.. looked then in the hub settings and still showing 3h 35min up time . so no drop outs due to making a call ..

In reply to a post by hotdogz:

he has 2 ways of calling help 1 is to push dial on the alarm and it calls for help and 2 he has a fall key fob alarm around his neck . ( at the min hes told the help line only to come if the fall alarm is set off )

So the alarm will dial out in both cases (pushing button on alarm unit *or* pushing button on wireless fob), but the response company can subsequently detect which button was pressed, and will ignore anything from the unit. Is that right?

If so, can you tell from the house (as you cancel the alarm) if it was triggered from one source or the other?

Yes the only conection is the phone line as i have said not the broadband. He has had the tech guys out who he has his alarm off and all has been tested and diagnostics test ran and all is 100% .

That isn't really a categorical "100% fine". It means that it was 100% fine when tested.

Unfortunately, your problem is intermittent, so the only time a part of the infrastructure can be declared "100% fine" is if it were being monitored at the actual time of one of the failure events.

In my mind, the alarm unit (including the wireless fob) is still as much suspect, as is the wireless spectrum they use to trigger.

I was around his house last night watching a film on apple tv and it stopped then the alarm start to dial so i cancelled it i had my laptop with me so i logged into his sky hub and 30 secs before the film stopped the router had dropped out .

So the order of events was:
- Router dropped out
- 30 seconds later, TV buffer was exhausted, and show paused
- After the pause was noticed, the alarm dialler started

How long after pushing the alarm fob does it take the dialler to start to dial? Would that amount of time correlate back to the time the TV paused? Or longer, and back to the time the router dropped out?

What log messages did the router put out to report the link drop?

With what you have described so far, it could be something happening on the phone line that both the router and the alarm take exception to. The modem responds by re-syncing, while the alarm responds by dialling. That could still be caused by the modem, alarm, or be something external (cable rubbing against power cable?); I don't yet see anything to point one way over the others.

It could be something RFI-wise that manages to cause a sync drop *and* triggers the alarm as though the fob had been pressed.

9AM this morning his new sky hub turned up so i plugged it all in ect ect . just got back and so far no drop outs will check again tomorrow .

Good thing to do. Eliminating one possible cause at a time.