Well, that fits with the stolen cable being between your exchange and the ISP.

But it doesn't fit with being able to regain Net connectivity within secs by resyncing the router reauthenticating to ISP.

Unless there is more than one route from exchange to ISP.

EDIT: Which still looks like a ISP authentication/PPP session issue rather than a missing cable.

Edited by XRaySpeX (Sat 28-Apr-12 22:26:29)

I've now pleaded with my ISP to send an engineer along to the exchange to find out what the devil's going on. I doubt whether I'll now get a response until Monday.

BTW, you've got it slightly wrong. My resync'ing the line didn't bring back access, it took it away. I found that doing that kinda simulated the loss, which was otherwise occurring randomly. But with access impossible I could still see that my line was still sync'd and up and running. To then restore access I went into my router and re-applied my logon details. That then restored access almost immediately, by effecting some sort of reset at the 'Internet' (as seen on my router's frontpanel indicators).

Edited by deleted (Sat 28-Apr-12 21:57:19)

That's what I was referring to ... corrected. Same principle!

Edited by XRaySpeX (Sat 28-Apr-12 22:48:43)

Is this the same company???
"our Support is second to none when it comes to fixing whatever problems you might encounter"

However, having looked around, it seems that any problems are pretty much limited to you. I think the cable theft thing is another red herring and it's time to substitute your router, dump the faceplates and run from the NTE5 test socket whilst using something like RouterStats.

Access to the Internet this morning has been very much on and off. When on, streaming football interviews from the BBC website has resulted in extremely jittery video. It's more-or-less unwatchable. Normally, it's fine. I use the latest Flash, etc.

Anyone know what the 'server' setting in DMT 8.07 is all about? It's under the Miscellaneous menu in DMT. Don't recall what that's about. It appears to consist of just two configurable settings:

DMT server enabled (not enabled at present).
DMT server port (currently showing 7784).

It says 'Server is offline'.

To which server is it referring?

And anyone know much about Ethernet adaptor interface settings (found in the Properties of the adaptor in Device Manager)? The built-in PCIe Ethernet adaptor of my PC is a Realtek chip but Realtek don't publish the definitions of its somewhat cryptic settings. These are what they're set to at present, and am wondering if they all seem okay:

802.1Q/1p VLAN tagging - disabled
Auto disable PCIe - disabled
Auto disable PHY - disabled
Checksum offload - Rx and Tx enabled
Flow control - enabled
Green Ethernet - disabled
Jumbo frame - disabled
Large send offload - enabled
Network address - not present
Shutdown wake-on-LAN - disabled
Speed and duplex - auto negotiation
Wake-on-LAN capabilities - Pattern Match and Magic ...
WOL and Shutdown link speed - 10M bps first

The report of the cable theft and the mayhem it caused has been included in the local newspaper's webpages:

http://www.richmondandtwickenhamtimes.co.uk/news/966...

Edited by deleted (Sun 29-Apr-12 13:20:40)

My, you are one for grasping at straws!

Forget the cable theft. They did not nick your copper phone line between you and exchange and there is no copper beyond exchange.

Yep, I agree that I'm clutching at straws.

If the outage caused by the theft had absolutely nothing to do with the problems I experienced and which, on the ADSL side of things, I continue to experience, then how do you explain away that my phone went completely berserk for a day or more and simply became unusable? In fact, one of my contacts later told me that he tried to phone me on the day all of this began and my number was unobtainable. Nothing concerning my PC could have caused that.

I did, on the second day of it, buy an extra long extension cable and, with it connected into the test socket, connected up my phone and router, thus bypassing the faceplate filter, but it made no difference to it.

And BTW, I've not contended that the actual theft of the cable necessarily directly affected my phoneline. What I suggested was that the theft may nevertheless have had a knock-on effect.

Must go now, as I've other work to get through today.

In reply to a post by meditator:

..... I did, on the second day of it, buy an extra long extension cable.....

What sort of extension cable? CW1308 or better must be used. Cheapo extensions can cause the problems you are experiencing but two failing is unlikely unless they're routed near a noise source.

You need to run tests from the NTE5 hidden test socket via a very short RJ11 cable. The cable supplied with the router should suffice.
If that isn't possible, site the router near the test socket and use a long ethernet cable. Tests must be conducted via fixed cable only - Wireless connections can be a problem in themselves.

The fixed extension is with Cat5e cable (screened at that!). Just two wire connections end-to-end involved, nothing else. It was a year or more ago when I revamped my extension, deciding to do it with the best materials and tools and to the highest standard. I'd challenge anyone to show me a better domestic arrangement. The length terminates in an RJ45 wall socket and a screened RJ11 jump lead then connects from that socket to the router.

I refute your advice about using a very short RJ11 cable for the temporary test. The arrangement would be essentially no different to my Cat5e permanent extension and, like the Cat5e, merely represents an extra 10 metres of a connection to the exchange that totals around 2.5km.

Gotta go, cooker is calling!

In reply to a post by meditator:

..... I refute your advice about using a very short RJ11 cable for the temporary test.....

It's actually very sound advice where the word "extension" is used. I suspect that the majority of extensions are the flat cable with cotton thin parallel conductors bought from the local DIY/Pound Shop.

If we are going to be able to help, we need to discount every possible problem that may be present on your side of the NTE.

Edited by Deadbeat (Sun 29-Apr-12 16:13:35)