Back again.

I selected the temporary extension lead quite carefully. It certainly wasn't the non-twisted type. Whilst not ideal, it clearly served its purpose. The vast majority of households where extensions are in use probably do not use even anything as good as my temporary one. I do know about cabling, you know, as I worked as a professional engineer/scientist for over 30 years and structured cabling systems was one of my many specialisms. I wrote specs for it and supervised people installing it. I've plenty of practical experience.

Well, aside from completely replacing the router, I'm certain we've covered just about every single part of my kit that could be responsible for these problems. I've no replacement router to hand and I'm certainly not going to buy a new one just in the hope that that's the problem. I'm a pensioner now and can't afford to waste money. Any replacement router, in any event, is unlikely to give me the re-sync'ing control that I have with this one.

Bear in mind that I've already returned the router to its factory defaults and reconfigured everything. As far as I can see, the router is behaving itself and whenever the Internet access fails the ADSL signal is found to be still up and running. The occurrence of the stolen BT cables happened, as far as we can tell, at pretty much the same time as my phoneline went crazy and the Internet access problems began. It's just far too coincidental to not be connected in some way with my problems. As a result of the BT cables incident, I'd put money on there being an obscure fault with some of the ADSL kit at the exchange.

Local cabling and everything OP's side of NTE5 is another red herring. OP has never reported trouble with his sync.

@OP: You have never posted router stats, particularly when Net lost.

As XRaySpeX says I didn't think you had a sync issue, but just kept dropping your PPP (login) session?

Perhaps you should try running RouterStats in case you are getting confused with what is going on?

In reply to a post by b4dger:

As XRaySpeX says I didn't think you had a sync issue, but just kept dropping your PPP (login) session?

I don't think so either but there's already one possible Openreach charge on the cards and I was looking to save another.

In reply to a post by b4dger:

Perhaps you should try running RouterStats in case you are getting confused with what is going on?

I had already suggested that but the OP seems to have ignored it.

Even from the first post the problem sounds like it's the router.

Thirding the suggestion to run routerstats, and/or get a different router.

OP told a number of times to try another router, but like Routerstats has so far ignored.

I wasn't ignoring trying a different router, it's been a matter of just getting hold of one. Would you seriously buy a new one, just in the hope that that was the explanation?!

As for the PPP dropping, no it most certainly hasn't been dropping, if the PPP indicator on the Netgear router is to be believed. I have proof, anyway, from several angles that my router stays up and running during these losses of access. And were it not for the little nudge I subsequently give to the non-access condition, I'd stay locked out for ever.

As it happens, today I've managed to secure the loan of a router. It's quite an old and noticeably slow-in-responding one, though, made by Billion. It's not compatible with DMT, so I can't tweak the SNR, speed, etc with that utility. I was told that it's not guaranteed to be fully working still but I thought I'd give it a go nevertheless. I've managed to get it working but it might be days or even weeks before I can draw any conclusion, as it's running at a stupid top speed of 6.7M bps which I know that my line cannot support. So, the connection is now going to drop out continually, especially in the evenings. I normally run with an SNR of about 15dB, giving me a sync speed of around 4M bps (because my line is long and noisy), but this router has negotiated a default SNR of 4.5dB.

I've tried telnetting into the Billion from the PC via a Command Prompt and am fairly convinced that, in principle, its CLI menu of commands will enable the use of:

set wan adsl targetnoise <value>

where value, in decimal, is 512 x required SNR. The value needs to be converted to hex before inserting. I tried using hex 1800 but the Billion just never responded to the command. So, I guess it's simply a command that, in practise, is not usable with that model (5100).

The mayhem from the theft of the cable has continued. I was talking to a neighbour of mine earlier today and he said that, even after all this time, some residents around here with landline phones (like me) have been without the service for 4 or 5 days. It's had serious repercussions for those people needing to book GP appointments and the like.

Edited by deleted (Mon 30-Apr-12 17:56:39)

Here in may be the problem, you tweaked the old DG834 such that it was not following all the suggestions it would receive from the DSLAM.

Without you sniffing every command over the ADSL link, you don't know if the other modem was ignoring PPP drop requests. So that the modem sat there thinking it still had a good PPP session, when it had actually gone stale.

Once you start tweaking, you go outside the realm of what the original hardware manufacturer would have tested under.

If a line is only stable with a 15dB target, the logical thing is to get your provider to raise the margin for you.

In reply to a post by meditator:

I wasn't ignoring trying a different router, it's been a matter of just getting hold of one. Would you seriously buy a new one, just in the hope that that was the explanation?!

Yes, just get one off ebay and sell it on ebay when you've finished.

In reply to a post by meditator:

As for the PPP dropping, no it most certainly hasn't been dropping, if the PPP indicator on the Netgear router is to be believed.

What PPP light on Netgear? Netgear DG834 series only have one light for the WAN connection, doubling up on ADSL and Internet.

Are you saying that this is always solid green and that the only inkling you have of losing the Net is being unable to browse?

What does the router log say when you lose the Net?

Having to run with a NM of 15 dB seems rather high. You could well have a wiring issue that needs sorting out 1st.. Tweaking the router while trying to investigate this problem is going to be counterproductive.

What are your router stats?

As I said earlier, you do have and have had a phone service at all times and you personally are not part of the mayhem. So stop bombarding us with red herrings and concentrate on your own problem, for which you have not yet given us all the relevant info.