Broadband dropouts

Like a lot of people, I'm an ex-O2 customer (excellent, stable service etc!) who, in my case, sold my soul for free satellite TV for a year and moved to Sky.

Recently (4 weeks or so) I'm getting random disconnections whereby any internet related activity will hang for up to 2 minutes - browsers display "page not found" errors, Outlook gives server unavailable messages etc - so it's obvious that the BB has dropped, which is confirmed when the connection comes back as 99% of the time I will be allocated a new IP address. This problem occurs across all devices, both wired and wireless and is not OS specific.

Having heard how sorry 1st line support were to learn of my problem I was contacted by second line who arranged for a line test, which showed a problem at the local cabinet. This was apparently fixed by Openreach but still the problem persisted.

Having told Sky that If I try and access the Sky hub (V2, black model) during times of 'outage', I can't - the hub is unavailable via 192.168.0.1 and pinging the hub results in 100% packet loss they agreed to replace the hub. New hub, cable to the socket and microfilter later and...... still the same problem.

During the course of another phone call with them, noise was heard on the line (first time I have heard noise tbh) and so Openreach were again invoked. This time the engineer replaced the master socket (only socket in the property) but still no joy.

Back to Sky, they ran a number of line tests which pointed to a faulty (new) microfilter which was replaced. All ran well for about an hour, then the BB dropped again.

Since this last attempt to resolve the problem my speedtest results have slightly dropped to about 6.2 / 0.6 (it was 7.5 / 1) but I can appreciate that this is because Sky will possibly have dropped the gain on the line because of the disconnections to see if this makes any difference (it hasn't) and my ping has gone from about 15ms up to 51.

BQM for current configuration is: http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/098d9102590...

Router stats:

Broadband Link D/s U/s
Connection Speed 7450 kbps 797 kbps
Line Attenuation 43.0 dB 27.5 dB
Noise Margin 6.9 dB 14.14 dB

The only changes from O2 days (where the connection was rock solid) are the router and, obviously, the ISP. No cabling changes nor new electrics at home so I think we can rule out anything that is within my control.

Any suggestions as to what might be causing this? and, more importantly, what can be done about it - apart from keeping on at Sky of course!

Thanks, in advance, for your help...

Edited by deleted (Wed 26-Mar-14 13:46:04)

No suggestions as to the cause? Anybody?

Some routers just don't like certain lines, ie. the noise environment is different and your old hardware just may have accepted the errors the noise caused.

Is the Sky hub one you can extract the login details from, and may be try different modems on the line.

The ISP answer will probably be to slow you down until the disconnects stop happening.

Thank you MrS, I was thinking something similar myself. The speed has stayed around the 7.5 / 0.75 mark for a couple of days now, which is not too bad for my distance from the exchange, however my ping has gone from about 20mS up to about 50.

I'm also running RouterStatsLite and this showed over 25 disconnections from 00:00 to 13:00 today.

I have given Sky 14 days to sort it out, otherwise I will try and cancel my contract under their Ts and Cs. If I can't get them to go along with this then any suggestions as to a "noise tolerant" router? I've always been a fan of Netgear kit myself but would welcome your experience in this area.

Thanks,
Dave

My BT ADSL2+ line hated a DG834GT, but loved an original 834 (one of first into UK - no died and recycled). DGN2200 was good on that line.

Specifically for Sky kit, the Asus DSL-N55U gave slightly higher sync speeds with no loss of stability, but generally now just stick the SR101 hub which is rock solid for me.

Never tried my Fritzbox 7390 (that got killed by lightning) on the Sky line, but did give you lots of tweak options to handle the noisy conditions.

It is entirely possible that the issue is simply the wiring changes at the exchange if you have moved from O2/Be kit to Sky kit and the random risk of a slightly less stable connection.

Thanks for the info Mr S - your last point about changes to exchange tin makes perfect sense to me and does seem like the most logical explanation, I will keep on at Sky to resolve it. Pardon my ignorance on these matters, but I assume that the kit used at the exchange will be different for fibre connections than that used for 'plain' ADSL2? If this is the case then I might try and force an upgrade out of Sky to see if it makes a difference.

It's now at a stage where I am getting the disconnections c. 30 times per day - what's left of my hair had now been pulled out - and I'm just about to rebuild two windows machines so will be hammering the connection with multi-gig updates.... well, I'll be TRYING to hammer the connection!

Thanks again for your assistance.

In reply to a post by davidjfirman:

I'm just about to rebuild two windows machines so will be hammering the connection with multi-gig updates.... well, I'll be TRYING to hammer the connection!

Consider WSUS offline updater. This provides an ISO for an install with all current updates - office as well.

http://www.wsusoffline.net/

On FTTC the kit is in the green fibre twin in the road, and Sky accept a simple fibre connection at the exchange.

The voice side still comes across the old copper wiring still.

Thanks for the link, however Avast AV went apoplectic with all manner of virus warnings when I tried to d/l the .zip file so I think I might pass on it for now.

Thanks for the confirmation Mr S. Sky have booked a broadband engineer to visit on Wednesday.

I'm using RouterStats_Lite to poll the Sky hub every 15s or so to get connectivity readings (noise and u/l & d/l speeds). What I find intriguing (and to my mind, points to an exchange kit issue) is that when the d/l line drops, the u/l line stays up - board fault in the exchange? Who knows, if Sky can't fix it then they're history and I'll go to someone else, probably PlusNet.

In reply to a post by davidjfirman:

Thanks for the link, however Avast AV went apoplectic with all manner of virus warnings when I tried to d/l the .zip file so I think I might pass on it for now.

It's was a false-positive issue with AVAST in version 8.9.

I thought v 9.0 had cured it as shown here:

https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/ffa7bf1e6491d0c29...

Sure you have the most-recent definitions for Avast?

Sure you have the most-recent definitions for Avast?


Yes, double checked it to make sure. Not to worry, I'd rather get my money's worth out of Sky's "unlimited" service - when it's up that is!

In reply to a post by davidjfirman:

Thanks for the confirmation Mr S. Sky have booked a broadband engineer to visit on Wednesday.

Engineer came, found (and corrected) a wiring fault in the local cabinet - apparently a lot of the copper connections were waterlogged - and said that all will be well.

10 minutes later, disconnected. B0ll0cks! It just HAS to be an exchange issue.

"Hello Sky, about this supposed Broadband "service" you supply me with......"

Three / four weeks further down the line and the third engineer has just left. since my last post, Sky have:
1. uplifted my BB circuit onto a new rack in the exchange (made no difference),
2. played around with profiles (made no difference)
3. listened to me berate them several times over the failings in their call handling procedures (don't know if it has made a difference but it made me feel better!)
So, Sky recommended changing the copper pair from the DSLAM to my master socket (e-circuit?). BTO engineer basically said "[censored]" but did run a load of tests and changed a few crimps.

So far, it's been up for an hour.........

Edited by MrSaffron (Wed 23-Apr-14 12:29:24)

Do not swear - you are lucky the post has remained.

Apologies - I consider myself suitably admonished. Thanks for keeping the post.

Further update - it's fallen over again, this time both up and downstream links.

Dear Sky..... Goodbye!

Post deleted by celad2001

did i miss something ?:----
"If I try and access the Sky hub (V2, black model) during times of 'outage', I can't - the hub is unavailable via 192.168.0.1 and pinging the hub results in 100% packet loss"
isnt everyone looking in the wrong place.???

Hi,

Your story is very similar to mine, and we're not alone. If you sign in to the Sky forum there is a section for ex Be/O2 users, and its filled with similar experiences.

I was on Be and got migrated on the 31st of March. I've only had 5 days of working broadband/phone since then. During that time the voice side of my BT line has had many issues. I've had no voice line at all for the last 6 days (I can't remember any time I've ever had no working voice phone line, and especially for 6 days!).

It was supposed to be fixed on the 17th (I had to call BT at this point as Sky had washed their hands of it), but around that time they called to say they would be re-arranging the date to the 22nd. After complaining about the downtime, as I'm a disabled person and need the phone line (and net access) to order my foods and stuff) the advisor talked to BT Openreach team and I was told its because it was easter!

It's been a disaster. I'm trying to get the fault cleared and then I'm going to order BT Fibre so I can disconnect from Sky's bad equipment.

These issues seem to be disproportionately affecting ex Be/O2 customers on the adsl2+ packages, from my observations. I'm not sure if there is something deeper in to that or not.

In reply to a post by celad2001:

did i miss something ?:----
"If I try and access the Sky hub (V2, black model) during times of 'outage', I can't - the hub is unavailable via 192.168.0.1 and pinging the hub results in 100% packet loss"
isnt everyone looking in the wrong place.???

You might have missed something - what were you looking for?

Alternatively we might be missing something, where should we be looking, if not at the hub?

Hi,

Thanks for the message, do you mean the Sky forum at skyuser.co.uk or another one?

Sky 3rd line called me at lunchtime (as was agreed when the BTO engineer was booked last week). Straight away we heard noise on the line, the error count went stratospheric and my BB dropped mid call. From all the evidence it does seem that there is a copper fault so another BTO engineer visit is booked for tomorrow morning - hopefully this time he will move my connection onto a different copper pair.....

Breath, holding, not.

This is the forum http://helpforum.sky.com/ It's the official sky forum.

Yep, it seems that there are more than a few people with very similar symptoms to mine - overcapacity problems? As I live in a VM cabled area, most of my neighbours are with VM so it might not be a local congestion problem.

If my issue does not turn out to be a cabling fault then I think that my only option will be to leave Sky and go elsewhere - possibly BT or Plusnet (Yes, BT with a different wrapper!).

Watch this space (Gentle reader, I bet you can hardly wait....)

Congestion does not suddenly break a connection, and it would be visible in our speed test if that was the issue (hence why our test http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest.html) does two download tests and displays the graphs too.

The description of issues when the phone rings and picks up points to a cabling issue and most likely in the exchange if recently moved from one bit of hardware at the exchange to another.

In reply to a post by davidjfirman:

Sky 3rd line called me at lunchtime (as was agreed when the BTO engineer was booked last week). Straight away we heard noise on the line, the error count went stratospheric and my BB dropped mid call. From all the evidence it does seem that there is a copper fault so another BTO engineer visit is booked for tomorrow morning - hopefully this time he will move my connection onto a different copper pair.....

Hopefully your next engineer will be told to look for a voice fault rather than a broadband fault - they're a lot more focused on these. Anything from problematic NTE5 in your home to crimps under covers in the street are needed to be looked at. Good luck.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by davidjfirman:

Sky 3rd line called me at lunchtime (as was agreed when the BTO engineer was booked last week). Straight away we heard noise on the line, the error count went stratospheric and my BB dropped mid call. From all the evidence it does seem that there is a copper fault so another BTO engineer visit is booked for tomorrow morning - hopefully this time he will move my connection onto a different copper pair.....

Hopefully your next engineer will be told to look for a voice fault rather than a broadband fault - they're a lot more focused on these. Anything from problematic NTE5 in your home to crimps under covers in the street are needed to be looked at. Good luck.

Oh dear.......

Engineer came, found a copper fault between two junction boxes (voltage bleed to another conductor) so moved the circuit from one pair to another. PQ test passed (hurrah!)

10 minutes later, both upstream and downstream fell over, then again, and again...... AAAARRRRGGHHHH!!!!!!

So, it seems like the new pair is worse than the old - evidenced by the upstream SNR falling from 7.7 to 4.4 dB.

It looks like BTO will be coming back and laying new cable!

Many interesting posts re: BE/o2 to Sky.
I commented here months ago about similar issues i.e. bizarre financial complications regarding the move. Emails, texts and letters confused the issue even more. Some posters on here insisted that my problem was unique, no one else has these problems - it must be you!
Gratifying, in a perverse way, that so many people have since experienced similar problems to my sister: no comment from the deniers, lately.
I was castigated for daring to suggest that direct debits, to o2, should be cancelled and a new one set up with Sky. Had I not cancelled the DD for her, she'd still be arguing with o2/Sky about charges and devious offerings from Sky.
If there ARE issues, I'd suggest cancelling DDs - this will prompt them to get their collective fingers out.

This sounds very similar to a fault a friend of mine had and he jumped through the same hoops as you have only to find that another device in his house was causing interference with the Sky hub. So might be worth checking if the problem started around the time you may have plugged in a new bit of kit.

Most of these are different to your sister's issues.

You only talk about broadband issues. How is the phone line? Quiet Line Test, etc.

Is your router still accessbile when the line "disconnects" by going to http://192.168.0.1/ or has that part stoped now?

In reply to a post by TJNewton:

So might be worth checking if the problem started around the time you may have plugged in a new bit of kit.

I did wonder if this might be a possibility, however there has been no new kit installed anywhere in the home for ages, certainly not since I moved to Sky back in November and the connection was OK up until end Feb / early March.

The Level 3 engineer I have been speaking to has pretty much said that based on his experience and the type of errors that are manifesting, it is almost certainly a cable problem. The copper has been in the ground since the place was built 50 years ago so degradation of the conductor / crimp is highly likely.

In reply to a post by broadband66:

You only talk about broadband issues. How is the phone line? Quiet Line Test, etc.

NOISY! Lots of crackles and pops (No snap - but I never did like Rice Crispies anyhow) Further adding weight (unless I am mistaken - which is not unknown!) to cable faults.

In reply to a post by jamie543:

Is your router still accessbile when the line "disconnects" by going to http://192.168.0.1/ or has that part stoped now?

Nope - still can't see the SR102 hub when I lose service. Interestingly the Level 3 chap from Sky said that the hub has a self-heal facility which is invoked when it detects an abnormal condition such as excessive line noise or a dropped signal (or a short). In his opinion this is what is causing the hub to appear to freeze - it seems plausible to me.

Having spoken to Sky BB for the 3rd time today, a VIPER call has been booked for Monday morning. From what I have been told, these chaps will stay with the fault until it is rectified and the call will be kept open for a couple of days afterwards just to make sure.

Questions....
1. What he heck does VIPER stand for? (Got to love how big companies have loads of acronyms!)
2. Has anyone had any experience of the VIPER process?
3. Anyone else care to add anything?

That's VIP - you know, you're a Very Important Person now

And if it still does that when the broadband kit is unplugged, pushing a voice fault through the ISP to Openreach should be easier for them to deal with.

Self heal - yeah right - what they mean is that if you should get a page in your browser if trying to navigate somewhere saying your broadband is down and is served by the router, which if you cannot get into the web interface has either

1. Crashed
or
2. Very busy renegotiating with the DSLAM to get the ADSL back up.

Some routers can exhibit 2 and you usually figure it out by looking at the before and after ADSL stats in the hub

Does this happen on all devices connected to your network or just Windows ?

Just answered your own problem. Seems like a voice issue and should be fixed before querying broadband issues.

In reply to a post by broadband66:

Just answered your own problem. Seems like a voice issue and should be fixed before querying broadband issues.

The voice line was, initially, OK. However over the past 2 weeks there has been intermittent noise heard during voice calls and today the phone line has dropped 4 times.

The VIPER call took place on Monday and the BTO chap switched the E side pair. All was well for about 9 hours and then the d/s went back to it's usual "status-erraticus" of dropping the link. This has continued all day and, as stated above, has the added bonus of dropping the phone line as well.

Sky Level 3 support who, giving credit where it is due, have been exemplary, can see noise 'storms' occurring on my line which coincide with the d/s dropouts and the voice line drops. The thoughts are that it is either an intermittent copper fault or REIN. There are 8 crimps between my master socket and the local 100pair trunk, and an additional 3 to the local wiring cabinet - what's the odds that something somewhere has either degraded or else is intermittently shorting out.

BTO Engineer No 6 is booked for tomorrow morning and if this fails to produce a permanent fix then a joint Sky / BTO visit is being mooted.

I am fairly sure that going to VM will sort the problem (no BT copper) but even though my road is VM ready, I'm only paying Sky £12.50 for phone line, anytime calls, (intermittent) broadband and the full Sky TV package (exc movies & sport) and to get just the same voice and BB from VM will be over £39 (once the initial 6 month promo expires) - so that's not going to happen!

It's been a while since my last update, but not a lot has happened until today.

The last BTO engineer changed further crimp pairs but that didn't make too much of a difference so a joint BTO / Sky visit was arranged for today.

After some 6 hours on site, I now *appear* to have a stable connection, albeit with a slightly slower sync speed (6.7M as opposed to 8.0M before). BTO changed the E side (again) but performed a lot of tests on the pair to make sure that it was of good enough quality for ADSL2+ and he also fitted an internal RF choke/filter to the VDSL socket. Sky Level 3 can see that there is nowhere near as much RF noise on the line as there was before and I will take the hit on speed for increased stability.

The plan is to monitur the line over the weekend and then, if it is still stable, turn on DLM on Monday to see if there can be any speed increase possible - if not, then Sky will fix the noise level at 7dB and I will, hopefully, have a stable line.

Of course if it continues to fall over then the same BTO engineer who came out today has offered to come back as he is REIN trained (he did do some REIN tests today) and wander up and down the roads between here and the exchange.

Fingers crossed for stability, I can then start talking to Sky about the compensation they have offered.....

Looks like I spoke too soon as less than an hour after my last post I had a disconnection for about 90s - Oh <Expletive deleted>!!!

I've been thinking (dangerous I know!). If I still have a REIN issue, which is a distinct possibility, and this is affecting the Sky hub and causing it to drop out, would switching to a different router make a positive difference?

I still have my old O2 Wireless Box IV (which is currently working very well as an AP and switch) as well as an O2 Wireless Box 2 (not being used). All routers have different tolerances to line noise etc and as my connection was stable with O2, would I benefit from using the O2 box as the Router/Modem and then have the Sky hub piggybacking off of it?

I have seen posts where other people have attempted this but I can't see that anyone has actually got it to work. Your thoughts / comments etc would be most welcome - especially if anyone here has actually done what I am thinking of and has got it working.

Alternatively, if I can get a free upgrade to Fibre, does the fibre modem tolerate REIN any better than the SR102 Sky hub?

In reply to a post by davidjfirman:

I still have my old O2 Wireless Box IV (which is currently working very well as an AP and switch) as well as an O2 Wireless Box 2 (not being used). All routers have different tolerances to line noise etc and as my connection was stable with O2, would I benefit from using the O2 box as the Router/Modem and then have the Sky hub piggybacking off of it?

No harm in trying. Also, the O2 router will have more detailed ADSL error statistics than the Sky Hub does.

Since the work on Friday, I have evidence of nine occasions where the downstream has "frozen" for more than 15s (max duration about 2m 30s), plus another 32 instances where the noise margin has dropped to 0dB. But with no change in IP address it means that the circuit has remained up. To my mind this is a REIN issue which, to be honest, without Sky chucking a lot of money at it (via BTO), is probably going to remain elusive. Don't get me wrong, the connection stability (and hence traffic throughput) has improved - albeit with a drop in speed - but the problem is far from solved.

In reply to a post by Oliver341:

No harm in trying. Also, the O2 router will have more detailed ADSL error statistics than the Sky Hub does.

That's what I was thinking and if the issue goes away then it *suggests* a noise issue which the O2 box handles better. If not, then hopefully there will be more stats available for Sky to use (hopefully not ignore!).

Can anyone point me in the right direction re setting up the O2 Box please?

In reply to a post by davidjfirman:

Can anyone point me in the right direction re setting up the O2 Box please?

Factory reset, then plug it into the phone line. It should just work.

In reply to a post by Oliver341:

Factory reset, then plug it into the phone line. It should just work.

Thank you - based on what Sky say tonight when they call me back I might just be doing this.

Update time.....

I replaced the SR102 with my old O2 wireless box IV which worked straight away and just needed some parameters tweaking (IP address range) to fit in with my existing LAN. The noticeable difference was a loss of D/S speed of just under a meg but vastly improved line stability. I have heard unconfirmed* reports that the SR102 has a known bug whereby the BB connection will appear to freeze for about 20-40s (seems familiar!!) when a line is under constant usage (I was using the quality test and RouterStats Lite's ping tester which pings the google DNS servers every 15s). Sky are sending me a SR101 as they "handle constant traffic better then the SR102" as a temp fix until the SR102's firmware is updated.

So, all appeared well, I had a stable (but slower) line and a router that did not lock up.

Then, on Thursday I had a call from level 3 at Sky (A planned call to see if the change of router had a positive effect). During the course of the phone call the forward errors started to increase, peaking at about 10,000 per second (according to RouterStats) and then the line dropped completely, including voice. This all took place whilst it was pouring with rain and hailing. So, Sky ordered another BTO Engineer (the 8th or 9th visit, I lose count!) for this morning as "it has to be a copper problem" (Level 3's words).

Engineer visited this morning, found no problems (just for a change ), remade all the crimp joints he could get access to (some were under the pavement and he's not allowed to go there as he is not "cavity trained" and therefore can't go into manholes, which is understandable) between my place and the local cabinet and then left.

We shall see what happens......

[* from someone in Sky but Sky won't admit to it as it could (will!) cause a landslide in calls]

Just to add my two pennies.

Ive had exactly the same problems as everyone. Was with O2. Moved to SKY after the takeover. O2 was rock solid.

Sky Hub (SR102 black one) constant disconnects. Prob 10 times a day. SKY sent me a new hub. Same problem.

I had an old Linksys router lying about. I plugged that in (I was able to extract the SKY username and password from the SKY Hub using Wireshark) and the conenction has been stable for days now!

So in my view its a router problem.

Good to see your getting somewhere

i had a REIN issue for 7 months and BTO/Sky couldnt figure it out

but it just went away on its own and everythings been good for the last year or so.

I agree. I have had the problem with both the SR101 and SR102 (*2) routers. When I plugged my old O2 Wireless box IV in the problem went away, but my u/s and d/s speed dropped. I've just (20 minutes ago) installed a TP-link TD-W8970, with the help of wireshark etc. Let's see what happens now.

FWIW, in view of all the problems that I have "suffered", Sky have agreed to release me from my contract early, without penalty. Of course if they will reimburse the cost of my router then I might stay until the end of the contract, or longer if the price is right.

I thought it was time I provided an update, and closure, on this post.

As mentioned in my previous post, I bought a TP-Link W8970 modem/router and, following the excellent instructions elsewhere on the forums (fora?) entered my Sky username and password. That was c. 4 weeks ago and since then the number of pauses/dropouts I have had has been zero. None, nothing, nada, not a sausage. Unfortunately Sky reneged on their initial verbal offer to refund the cost of my CPE and so I'm off to PlusNet with a fibre connection.

So, the upshot of all of this is that the root cause of my broadband freezes has been proven to be the Sky SR101 and 102 hubs.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to this post, it's good to see such support - but a shame that Sky can't offer anywhere near the same level of support and technical expertise.

To FINALLY close this post off...

I moved to plusnet (PN) 3 days ago - the horror stories that are around did fill me with some trepidation, but everything went extremely smoothly. The connection is stable and PN customer service seem extremely competent - and a refreshing change from Sky, to be honest.

So... if anyone (especially ex-O2 customers) is considering leaving Sky, I can thoroughly recommend PN.

So, the upshot of all of this is that the root cause of my broadband freezes has been proven to be the Sky SR101 and 102 hubs.

I do find this really strange. I think there must have been something wrong somewhere and it is not the router. I have not read the entire thread but I assume Sky gave you another router and I assume this also did not help.

I can personally vouch for my Sky Hub, I used it on ADSL 2+ and on Fibre. At current on fibre I have around 3800 hours of uptime on my Sky Hub, that's over 5 months without a reboot. I have in total a possible 20+ WiFi devices connecting to it and it is flawless.

On ADSL I would often go months on end without a dropout using this router model.

There must be something about your line or setup which was causing issues. I think there is potentially an underlying issue and the Sky Hub just didn't mask it. Other routers, in particular Speedtouch ones I have found are very good at masking a 'flappy' line. My DG834G would drop out twice a day whereas a speedtouch 585 would hold onto the line for weeks on end. This didn't make the DG834G faulty, in fact it held the connection on my second line for weeks on end without an issue. The problem WAS my line, the speedtouch just hid the issue better. A change of hardware doesn't prove anything really.

What really gives it away for me is your very first post. I have noticed the Sky Hub router interface at 192.168.0.1 becomes inaccessible in virtually all of the cases when the broadband drops out, also a change of IP address indicates a dropout. I think the line was dropping out.

The best conclusion in my opinion isn't that the Sky Hub is a failure, it just for whatever reason didn't work well on your line.

I am glad to see you have found peace anyway, after all of these months. It has been far too long for you to be having these problems. I genuinely wish you the very best luck at PlusNet and I am hopeful you see no further problems

EDIT: Read my other post as well. It is directly below this one in flat mode

Edited by ukhardy07 (Thu 11-Sep-14 00:41:25)

This really reminds me of my old line at my old property.

Interestingly o2 provided Technicolor Speedtouch routers.
I was using a DG834G router many years ago, constant drop outs. I tried Belkin routers, other Netgear routers, a sky router, all dropping out (probably had over 10 routers). Then a speedtouch 585 would hold onto the connection for weeks without an issue.

At the time Sky sent multiple engineers and eventually held their hands up and let me leave. It seems they will not send out a REIN engineer, probably due to cost. When it got this far they let me leave and wouldn't send out a REIN engineer.

The non speedtouch routers were not faulty, in fact they worked on my 2nd line flawlessly for weeks on end. The issue WAS my line, it is just the speedtouch router somehow masked my issues.

What I find interesting is o2 customers are going from a Speedtouch based router, which I believe was a speedtouch 585 rebranded in some cases and onto a bog standard router. I can personally vouch for the 585 somehow masking REIN issues.

My experience here really proved to me that hardware can easily mask issues and just because one router works doesn't mean the other one is faulty.

I think I did eventually locate the source of my issues. A neighbour was building a plane in his garage, he had significant welding tools and all kinds of machinery. I realised this around 1 year after my issues and I correlated the drop outs with him being in that garage. So afterall it wasn't a faulty router, just an oblivious neighbour who of course had virginmedia and had no idea his garage being virtually next to the BT telegraph pole was causing issues.

I am now back on Sky broadband and also have BT, no issues but in a different property.
Using a homehub 4 and a Sky Hub which are both flawless for me.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Thu 11-Sep-14 00:44:59)

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

I can personally vouch for my Sky Hub, I used it on ADSL 2+ and on Fibre. At current on fibre I have around 3800 hours of uptime on my Sky Hub, that's over 5 months without a reboot. I have in total a possible 20+ WiFi devices connecting to it and it is flawless.

Yeah, same here, on ADSL2+. I have two SR101's, one from the initial trial, and one from when they sent me another when I tried to order a wireless booster. The only bad thing I have experienced is that the power and internet lights on the first SR101 have dimmed to half brightness, but the connectivity is rock solid.

This is probably a High resistance fault. Dodgy old crimp/joint.
Sky for 8 months no problem, then dropouts from hell. Mainly when using the net, also phone dial tone lost or calls dropped.
2 Bt visits and a bit of luck problem fixed.

Pairs changed all the way back to the cabinet.

Speed went up by 100%