Talk Talk woes (apols in advance for the book)

Past month or so our BB link has been resetting every 5 mins. Connection speeds always around the max of 16Mb before and after the recycle.

Primary router is a Bipac 7800DX and I've also tried my old Netgear DG834GT, which exhibited the same issue. Have done various tests with both routers without phone connected, and using the test socket.

We had a new OR socket installed earlier in the year after they found knacked cabling and it's just the router and one dect phone connected. We're also 200m from nearest cab (actual cable run)

TT forum experts didn't come up with anything so I spent 90 mins this arvo on the phone to their support to log an engineers visit.

During their testing something died as I now have NO internet connectivity. They're adamant there is no line fault between the exchange and my master socket and thus it has to be internal........

I asked what the odds were of two completely different routers suddenly dying in the same fashion to which they had no reply.

They're sending one of their own routers to try and the next available engineers slot is 8th July!

I don't do coincidences so would appreciate some thoughts on what may have happened during this diagnostics call?

P.S Bipac is currently running fine with a Three dongle

I don't do coincidences so would appreciate some thoughts on what may have happened during this diagnostics call?

They (Talk Talk CS) have surely disabled their port in the exchange, which would seem to be the logical explanation.

I presume there is a dialling tone on the line even with no broadband ?

Thanks Zarjaz

Phone line is fine and my exchange is TT LLU enabled.

Call me suspicious but could / would they disable the port because I'm running a non TT router?

I presume they can detect what sort of equipment is at my end and the service miraculously comes back to life when their kit is installed? - I'm an old Pipex customer and have never had their equipment supplied.

Can you point me towards a technical explanation of the whole BB connection process?

Oh and it looks like it'll be a minimum of 20 days to migrate to a n other provider

TIA

Nope, there is no conspiracy going on related to using your own router.

Let their router arrive, if it doesn't help, then get an engineer out. If it solves the issues it points the issue at either your router dying or some misconfiguration at your end.

The next day delivery hasn't materialised and 10 days for an engineer does not fill me with confidence.

Recap
New OR line in Jan
NO changes to in house installation, equipment and router config
Service goes flaky
Same flaky service on different router h/w
TT manage to kill the connection during diagnostics
NO discussion on reconfiguring my router(s) to test for any possible changes they've made to my service

My faith this will be promptly resolved? V low

Just to update and close this thread

TT's router eventually turned up and made no difference

Killed another hour on the phone to their CS before finally being put through to a Fault Manager.

Surprisingly he was actually proactive and dispensed with sending one of their Brightspark Eng and went straight on to book an OR Eng

Unfortunately that took a week (last Thurs) but the Eng quickly diagnosed the fault was with TT's DSLAM.

After various calls with TT's 3rd line they couldn't get the port back into service (apparently I was the only customer on a 48 port card). They eventually sorted this out over the weekend and another OR Eng went back today to lift and shift to another port.

Granted this turned into quite a specific and flukey problem but being forced down their scripted diagnostics with no proactive thought on their part was very annoying. The subsequent 10 day wait was poor as well.

Having to used a metered 3G dongle really highlighted how much we rely on the internet now and how much bandwidth gets used on 'behind the scenes' traffic.

Unfortunately this is what happens when companies cut back on technical support staff.
That they had to rely on an OR engineer to diagnose a problem on a TT MSAN is surely a bit embarrassing. It will also be expensive as TT will have to pay OR for the engineer's visit.