REIN tracking/prevention

I've currently got what appears to be a REIN problem. My connection is stable with excellent speeds during the day.

After about 17:00hrs the disconnections start, 12 last night starting 20:00hrs onwards until 08:00hrs.

I had switched everying off that I could think of - TV, Skybox, 3 IP cameras, 2 analog wireless cameras, NAS, USB printer to no avail.

I want to eliminate the possibility of interference coming from a certain direction and I thought about covering a large sheet of cardboard with kitchen foil and placing it at the side of my router. Is this likely to work or would it be a waste of time? I know that aluminium foil makes good safety hats (joke).

I had an Openreach engineer here yesterday and he re-made the screw down joints on an external box with jelly crimps. Checked my line, reset DLM and said my SNR had been locked to prevent it falling if DLM tries to reduce it. It hasn't worked.

p.s. I posted a question yesterday about getting a TP-Link AC2800 as a replacement for my PlusNet Home Hub. Wondering if the Home Hub is more susceptible to whatever is causing the problem.

Edited by longedge (Fri 19-Jun-20 09:42:34)

My understanding of REIN is very limited but I thought it can interfere with your incoming copper feed anywhere along it length so shielding just the router wouldn't necessary prevent REIN from happening

Foil is waste of time.

Identify if you have a REIN problem (which is radio frequency interference) first. Get yourself a portable medium wave AM radio. Tune it to talksport or whatever and adjust volume to comfortable level. Retune to around 600KHz, you want an 'empty' channel. Listen for stuff that isn't obviously noise. If you hear angry buzzing then you may have a rein problem. If you can trace all the mains cables in your house by holding radio close to them and buzzing gets louder then you have a rein problem.

Prove it isn't something in your house - switch stuff off, unplug it preferably. The quick'n'dirty whole smash of turning off your main house breaker is a sure fire way to check (beware some UPS devices can produce slightly horrible noises/waveforms themselves)

If not in your house then you can have then fun of following phone lines with your radio. If located, pray your neighbour isn't an a***hole and will assist locating which bit of their kit is spewing RF cack.... unlike my near neighbour.

Have you got smart meters?

Hmm.. Won't bother trying to shield the router then. Tracking this 'properly' is beyond me as I have very limited mobility. I think I'm going to have to put up with it - for now at least

p.s. No smart meters, I've resisted that succesfully so far.

Edited by longedge (Fri 19-Jun-20 10:28:46)

I have a similar problem to you. It happens in evening, but luckily doesn't cause drop outs but noise margin drops really low.

I used to have awful problems with REIN on my old ADSL2+ connection. Most evenings I would have errors in the 10's of thousands, my SNR would fluctuate wildly even dropping to -1. I would get multiple dropouts in short spaces of time and struggled to get a re connection.
I have an electricity power station 3 metres from where my phone line enters the property, PIR security lights on surrounding properties, a electricity sub station which serves a small estate 50 metres from the cabinet which serves me, a police station 100 metres from the cabinet and a fire station 250 metres from the cabinet. I mention the police and fire station as I thought their radio transmissions might of been interfering.
I never did get to the source of the problem. My FTTC connection has been a lot more stable. I still do get errors but no dropouts. My SNR is stuck at 11 for the past few years.
There is a rival website that has an information page regarding REIN. I'm not sure if I am allowed to post a link even if it is just for educational purposes.

My probs are nowhere near as bad as that but annoying nonetheless. If you're thinking about the page on Kitz, then yes I've read it but unfortunately I'm just not physically up to most of what's required to troubleshoot it.

In reply to a post by longedge:

My probs are nowhere near as bad as that but annoying nonetheless. If you're thinking about the page on Kitz, then yes I've read it but unfortunately I'm just not physically up to most of what's required to troubleshoot it.

Yes that's the page I was referring to.
Sorry I could not help you more. It seems there is something between the cabinet and your router that is causing the problem. It's identifying what it is that's the hard and sometimes impossible task.

Report a broadband issue, hopefully the Openreach bod will understand, and can get a REIN case raised ... then you can get visit from your local REIN engineer who can hopefully trace the issue for you.