Internet drops for few seconds -Weird problem!

Hi, I'm interested if anyone could shed any light on this issue that's tearing my hair out! Have I missed anything?

We have fibre internet 4.5Mbps 35Mbps which is average for our village & good when it works
The Internet goes off between 5 & 130 times per day (over 100 times most days)
The router lights always stay the same (Green) but ALL devices lose internet and stop working. say "No internet" "No signal" etc.

So what we've done;

Swiched off Wifi on Router
Connected LAN cable to ONE PC only - still does it
Replaced Router
Replaced Router again now on 3rd Router - Still the same
Connected LAN cable to ONLY a brand new Laptop (Wifi off) - still the same
Had all extension sockets in the house disconnected
Had Brand new Master socket (Openreach 5C (Mk4)
Fitted brand new cable from Router to Master Socket
Fitted brand new LAN cable to one PC still the same
Unplugged home telephne - still the same
Switched OFF everything in house via distribution board (Heating,Lighting,all sockets apart from Router and 1 PC - still the same
Had 2 x Openreach engineer calls (worked remotely both times, said fixed, but isnt)
Had 1 x Qube engineer visit (said fixed but wasn't)
My Provider logs into my router and it always says "connected" I can see the same my end so they cant ever see the problem.

I have downloaded an extension to Google Chrome called an Internet Connection Monitor it logs every dropout and is consistent with when the devices lose internet it records it correctly. There is no pattern, no particular time and goes off all through the night when nobody using it.

Any ideas gratefully received!
Location King's Lynn, Norfolk, England

Edited by rose123p (Wed 01-Feb-23 11:38:09)

How long (roughly) do these losses last for ?

It says in the title "few seconds".

Power brownouts?
I used to have a problem with this and I bought a small UPS to get around the issue. It seemed the router was very susceptible to a small drop is voltage. No other items in the house were affected.
The UPS sent an email when this occurred and it only lasted a few seconds or less.
More recently it has stopped so I think the recent work on our small sub station has fixed the issue.

Fair point.

If it is just for a ‘few seconds’ then the router isn’t losing sync. It cannot drop sync, re-sync, then authenticate in just a few seconds.

Not sure if the Chrome extension can support this, but you need to monitor your connectivity to the internal IP address of the Sky router, and then something on the internet.

The other thing that might be worth trying is disabling IPv6 on one of your PCs and seeing if that acts differently to other devices.

thanks to all of you that took the time to reply ffolks!

So a major update:

Friday a Broadband engineer was working nearby up a pole, my wife asked him if he was looking at our issue, he said no but this amazing guy took the time to ask about our issue, he very kindly offered to pop over and do a few checks (this is something weve asked our provider for since August 22)! Within 5 mins he found the FEC rate was ridiculously high (110,000 in 3 mins)

He's then gone to a connector 100m away and plugged in there - down to 40 FEC's in the same time period. I then remembered we had an outage some time ago where workmen had put a digger through the cables, BB went off for 5 days and has been temperamental ever since. This was between our house and his test point. So we think there is a cable issue uderground.

I've since found in "diagnostics" in the router a secrtion where it shows you the FEC's, yesterday was over 35 million! (35533378) downstream and just 205 upsstream.

I'm just waiting for my provider to come back to me tomorrow to tell me again theres nothing wrong and I'll then explain this to them.

Thanks again and I'll post up what the fix definitely was when its sorted

FECs aren't the issue, it's CRCs. FECs are errors which never occurred

Can you view CRC errors (might be able to find loss of link / number of drops which is useful else failing that is there a broadband uptime or a WAN uptime) which isp? Which router?

I disagree.

When FEC’s are high enough, the usage can appear slow. The router will eventually drop sync looking for a better signal.

Well, that's what I was told numerous times, but I remember having millions of FECs a minute on our old VDSL connection and the line would stay in sync for hours if not days

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

When FEC’s are high enough, the usage can appear slow. The router will eventually drop sync looking for a better signal.

Yes, error correction of that volume will hit throughput and in cheap routers possibly even CPU load of the router.

29 million FEC's yesterday
just 107 CRC's

In reply to a post by rose123p:

29 million FEC's yesterday
just 107 CRC's

Can you isolate the power, so it is ONLY the router plugged in and switched on ? Literally nothing else. Is the heavy error count still there and incrementing ?

That proves the error correction is working well, if you didn't have it then your connection would be dropping out constantly or not even working at all. Of course, I'm not undermining the fact that there is a problem, but the error correction is helping quite a bit!

Edited by Grimers (Wed 08-Feb-23 20:10:48)

In reply to a post by rose123p:

29 million FEC's yesterday
just 107 CRC's

At mentioned FEC'sc are errors that never happened. They are corrected before they become errors.
They can sometimes indicate noise on the line but they aren't an issue on their own.

My line received 100,000+ FEC per minute, every minute, all day everyday.
I received not a single CRC/ES. The line was perfect.
When using Homeplugs (powerline adapters) FEC's would increase to 1,000,000+ per minute, every minute.

DSL is designed to have interference and error correction.
Your line isn't losing sync either. Forget about FEC's. They aren't the issue.

The issue is when the modem no longer corrects the errors and they change from FEC to CRC. Too many CRC's can cause significant packet loss or a drop in sync.

Set up a BQM. Monitor your line for packet loss. Look for other indicators in your modem stats, particularly a very low SNRM or CRC/ES.

Edited by j0hn83 (Thu 09-Feb-23 12:03:03)

FEC's were around 29-35 million per day. Oddly dropped to around 90 thousand last few days. Openreach engineer been out today and FEC's were low but hes found a earthing problem, gone up the pole and found some damp and corroded terminals. Fixed those. Hopefully fingers crossed we're all fixed now!

I highly doubt FEC on its own could cover an earthing problem, but it's good to know that's been fixed!

An earth fault is a contact fault, same as a battery fault, almost certainly accompanied by an HR at the fault location. Yes, these can cause errors.

I didn't say they couldn't, I'm just saying that FEC on its own wouldn't cover it on its own, as in be able to keep the connection in sync/stable.