First Utility - Random Drop outs

I am with First Utility Broadband and I changed because TalkTalk was proving unreliable and their customer service was rubbish.

Despite being powered by TalkTalk, First Utility has proven reliable and fast, until now. Recently I have experienced random dropouts, but FU can't find a fault and the router doesn't display anything. The dropouts effect both Wireless and Wired connections to the router.

Drop outs as in the broadband connection drops and reconnects, i.e. router is showing it is reconnecting

OR just that router is saying connected to broadband but you cannot access sites?

The latter, the router shows no disconnection and no connected device can connect to the internet, either wired or wireless. But every device is unable to connect to any websites for a couple of minutes at a time and this happens every day or so

Trying pinging an IP address that is known to respond next time, if that works suggests DNS look ups are failing and switching to OpenDNS may help.

If the ping also does not work and the DSL is remaining connected probably is to do with either very bad congestion or a provider issue, solution would be to move elsewhere.

NOTE: Resellers of the TalkTalk wholesale services pay varying prices and the quality of service varies accordingly in terms of capacity delivered.

Thanks, Mr Saffron, next time it drops out I will ping the BBC, which is a known, good website.

You need to check now that the site is responding to ping requests, not all IP addresses do

And remember to use the IP address rather than a name like www.bbc.co.uk