Intermittent/slow internet and now no dial tone...

Hi, I'm a new user today and hope you don't mind me posting an issue that perhaps you could help with...?

We're getting seriously slow/intermittent internet with Orange. Our download rate has never been great with Orange over the year we've been with them - always fluctuating from around 4mbps to 8mbps (supposed to be up to 20mbps + unlimited) - but it's been bareable and always sorted itself out after a few minutes if it ever disconnected itself. But we got an ee brightbox about 6 weeks ago and about 3 weeks ago the internet disconnected completely in the middle of the day and wouldn't reconnect - for no apparent reason. We had a long extension cable from the main socket with one filter and one phone attached to the router, and a LAN cable running from the router to a playstation. I spoke to someone on the phone straight away and we were told to connect the router to the main/test socket in the room next door. The internet reconnected after a few minutes and the signal started to be a tiny bit more constant over the next few days, so we've kept it connected there since (so am guessing our extension cable was a bit fragile?), but it didn't take long for it to start getting even more rubbish than before - although not disconnecting completely now, it's slower than it ever has been and hardly even loads a simple page in under 10 seconds - no chance of videos or downloads. Speedtest says it's 0.50 mbps! On top of that, we suddenly have no dial tone on our phone...

We phoned orange again and they said to connect a phone directly into the test socket on its own (no router connected) and see if there was a dial tone - which there wasn't. It's a new phone, but I had been able to use it with the old extension-filter-router-playstation set-up before, so it can't be the phone.

They suggested sending out an engineer but said they'd charge us £115 if it's an internal problem - from reading forums etc I'm guessing it's not, but I wanted to see if it's at all possible before saying yes to an engineer...?

And also, if there's any way of improving the speed of our internet while we wait for the engineer?

I've just done a speedtest and it's 0.50mbps download and 0.72mbps upload...

Stats are:

Line Status --- SHOWTIME
Link Type --- Interleaved Path
Operation Mode Automatic G992.5(ADSL2+)
Upstream 888 (Kbps.)
Downstream 575 (Kbps.)
Noise Margin Upstream: 15.2 dB Downstream: 34.8 dB
Line Attenuation Upstream: 19.9 dB Downstream: 37.5 dB

Near end/ Far end
Output Power 12.8 dBm 0.0 dBm
Fast Path FEC Correction NA NA
Interleaved Path FEC Correction 0 0
Fast Path CRC Error NA NA
Interleaved Path CRC Error 0 0
Loss of Signal Defect 1 0
Fast Path HEC Error STR NA NA
Interleaved Path HEC Error 0 0
Error Seconds 11 0

Statistics
Received Cells 2306630
Transmitted Cells 163167


Hope that makes sense - I'm a bit new to all this... Sorry it's a bit long but wanted to give a clear background.

Thanks in advance!

Also - should probably mention that Orange said he did a test on the line when we told them of no dial tone and they said there were 'no problems with the line'... Tried ringing our phone from a mobile and could hear ringing on the mobile end but nothing at all happened on the phone end.

Edited by deleted (Mon 18-Mar-13 13:09:28)

If no dial tone from the test socket and very limited BB speed that suggests very poor conductivity on one of the copper wires, that form part of the pair, between the test socket and the exchange.

Possibly best to report a voice fault and if that is repaired then your BB should be OK.

Best of luck

Without knowing what your ADSL stats were before you changed anything difficult to say much.

ADSL can work if one of the wires is broken, but I would expect much worse ADSL stats in that case, but if you had a very very short line in the first place the stats may still the issue.

The downstream noise margin is very high, suggested Orange has done what it loves to do and stabilise the line by capping your connection speed and a very low level in your case. Orange need to remove that to get a real for the lines level of capability.

There is a possibility that you have some funky internal wiring that is causing the problem, but without a fair bit of checking by yourself its take the gamble on the engineer.

So
1. Double check the phone by putting wiring back the way it was, but with only a telephone connected, if that works then disconnect wiring bit by bit to find out when the phone stops.
2. On the getting better speeds, needs orange to do a few things, mainly remove the banding that looks like it has been applied.

Thank you both for your help

Bit of a development! When we went to try point 1. above we searched through some spare cables before moving the phone about a bit and found a different cable from the phone to to the test socket to try and now the phone is working fine! So that was a bit of luck before calling out the engineer. So the lack of dial tone was purely our fault...

So this just leaves us with the broadband intermittent connection/cutting off issues - do you suggest just phoning and asking Orange to 'remove the banding that's been put on our connection speed'? Or is there some sort of terminology we should be using/ a specific level we should ask them to change it to? Unfortunately am not very knowledgeable when it comes to this.

Thanks again.

if after a reboot of the router it still looks like this :-

Noise Margin Upstream: 15.2 dB Downstream: 34.8 dB
Line Attenuation Upstream: 19.9 dB Downstream: 37.5 dB

then ring them and point out the slow speed and very high noise margin indicative of a capped connection. May take a bit of perseverance.

Referring back to the speed you were sold might help, or any record of previous speeds / checker indications.

Thank you, that's really helpful - I'll give them a ring today (sent them an email too, in case that gets more sense, as they're not usually very helpful over the phone!)

Thanks very much

Get the voice fault fixed first - ADSL speed is likely to be a side effect of this. Your sync speed is horrific for your attenuation.

Post deleted by MrSaffron

Deleted so I could have spam on toast for breakfast