Broadband problem: packet loss

I have been with TalkTalk for almost six years now, and apart from a small niggle with the broadband at the very beginning have been a happy customer so far.

However, I experience problems with my broadband that TalkTalk do not seem to be able to help me with. Here the short summary:

Since Sunday, 22/07/12, from about 3pm my internet connection is no longer working. The router has not problems to establish a connection (which appears to be stable), but I cannot use the internet. The reason appears to be lost packets: E.g. if I ping 212.74.99.30 (i.e. www.talktalk.co.uk) I get between 20% and 95% packet loss.

I get the same behaviour if I use the master test socket. My router is a Netgear DG834Gv3. I have not changed anything on my side, the problem on Sunday started suddenly.

I phoned TT CS on Monday morning. They did a quick line test (?) and could see no problem on their side. But they could see loads of dropped connections. They arranged a call back for the evening to look at this issue in more detail. During the evening call back they did an extended line test (lasted about 2 minutes), which again did show up no problems on their side. They reset something at the phone exchange (?) and told me to use the master test socket (they call it test socket) for 24h and call back if the problem persists.

Of course, the problem persisted so I called TT CS again this morning. They repeated that they can see no problem from their side, but notice loads of line drops. And then the guy told me, as the problem persists with the master test socket, the issue must be my internal wiring! This cannot be right, can it?

I asked to talk to the manager, and he only promised me a call-back within 8 hours.

I am not sure what to do now. Any advice on how I can resolve this issue?

Some more details about the connection: My exchange is Isleworth, London. I have been LLU'ed many years ago.

Example numbers from yesterday evening: Down 1307 kbps / 45 db / 10 db, Up 1002 kbps / 13.5 db / 6 db.

If I check the router's logs I can see that there are up to 20 minutes between "LCP is allowed to come up" and "LCP down". But in between I cannot use the internet because of the packet loss issue. This morning I also found "Loss of synchronization: 1" in the logs once.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

UPDATE: I got the call-back from the manager before lunch today. He repeated that the issue must be with my internal wiring and the only option he gave me was to book an engineer's visit for £50. I have done this, although I am not sure whether this will be of any help. Will the £50 be wasted?

Edited by deleted (Tue 24-Jul-12 12:50:11)

Just out of interest have you unplugged your router from power for a while (maybe 30 minutes) as that might help the situation.

In reply to a post by techguy:

Just out of interest have you unplugged your router from power for a while (maybe 30 minutes) as that might help the situation.

Yes. E.g. overnight from Sunday to Monday, and again overnight Monday to Tuesday (today). Did not change anything.

You don't say if you are connecting via wifi or not? If you are using wifi, do you still get the packet loss using a wired connection? Packet loss can be common with wifi interference, so need to rule that out before blaming the broadband connection.

In reply to a post by Futaura:

You don't say if you are connecting via wifi or not? If you are using wifi, do you still get the packet loss using a wired connection? Packet loss can be common with wifi interference, so need to rule that out before blaming the broadband connection.

Yes, I use a wired connection.

In reply to a post by robby74:

They reset something at the phone exchange (?) and told me to use the master socket (they call it test socket) for 24h and call back if the problem persists.

Did you unscrew the faceplate of the master socket to access the test socket?

http://helpforum.sky.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-i...

Edited by Oliver341 (Tue 24-Jul-12 12:10:05)

Firstly, something critical... You mentioned the master socket - this is not actually the same as a test socket. If you have a newer type NTE5 master socket, the test socket can be found after carefully removing the faceplate which forms the lower half of the socket. If you do have a test socket, and the problems persists while connected to that, then this would either indicate a router, line, exchange or external network fault. If you don't have a test socket, internal wiring could still be causing the problem as TT CS say. How many extension sockets do you have? If you only have one socket in total, with no extension wiring, then that's essentially the same as a test socket anyway.

In reply to a post by Oliver341:

Did you unscrew the faceplate of the master socket to access the test socket?

Yes, I did unscrew the faceplate and used the test socket. I seem to have used the wrong terminology for the test socket, sorry.

In reply to a post by robby74:

Yes, I did unscrew the faceplate and used the test socket. I seem to have used the wrong terminology for the test socket, sorry.

Well, in that case it's nothing to do with your wiring (assuming you've tried a different microfilter, ethernet cable and modem cable).

Edited by Oliver341 (Tue 24-Jul-12 12:18:36)

In reply to a post by Futaura:

You mentioned the master socket - this is not actually the same as a test socket.

Yes, I used the wrong term there. When I wrote master socket, I meant the test socket which is only revealed once you remove the faceplate.

The problem persists of I use that test socket.