Satellite Broad band drop outs

I have recently had Tooway 6 installed. By and large it is excellent with no loss of satellite links even in bad weather. However, I do lose the internet connection occasionally. This may happen on only one of the 3 PC's on my home network at any time. A restart solves the problem. Tooway have confirmed no problems with the satellite link when this occurs and all the lights are steady on the modem. It appears to be a handshake problem with the ISP at the far end. How can I find out exactly where the problem lies?

First step is to check whether your computers can see the local router at your end, i.e. ping the local gateway.

Then do a tracert to www.thinkbroadband.com and see at what point it starts to lose the data. If the problem was with the downlink from satellite and break out to the internet one would normally expect to see more users affected.

One possibility is that the issue is simply congestion, and that rebooting just gives enough time for a spike of traffic on the service to vanish.

"This may happen on only one of the 3 PC's on my home network at any time. "

Then it is an internal problem.

Are the PC's connected wirelessly? If so do they have a good signal? Are there any other wireless networks or devices that use 2.4Ghz (video senders?) that could be affecting the signal?

When I have a dropout it only affects the internet access, the local network is OK (see reply below as well). I have done a tracert with it working and now I will await a dropout and repeat it which at least should show me where to start looking. Thanks for the help!

Edited by deleted (Fri 27-Jan-12 09:10:28)

I have a mains ethernet system (Devolo - highly recommended!) which has not changed since I went from ADSL to Satellite. Also when I have the dropout I can still see the other computers on the home network. So to me it is pointing down the line somewhere. It is not a satellite signal issue as I have had the satellite company monitor the link whilst I have a problem. But they can only see the channel not the IP addressing/handshaking etc. I am trying tracert as above. Thanks for your help!