Frequent Disconnects - BT Broadband

For the last few months we've been getting regular disconnects on broadband which happens with no pattern at all (in terms of wired/wireless; time of day; number of users). Up to 5 or 6 times a day, the router will lose its connection (status in admin portal goes yellow to show its disconnected) for approximately 1 minute before it comes straight back up.

Openreach were out and diagnosed a faulty SmartHub which has been replaced. Its not fixed the issue.

Openreach came out again to test the line and saw a history of errors which didn't point to anything in particular, but moved us to a different fibre pair in the cabinet. The engineer was saying that if the issue continues, it must be something in the house.

Issue has persisted.

I bought a new TP-Link router to see if that improved the issue. It seems to have improved my speed and latency, but not the dropouts. The only thing I can see on the TP-Link which stands-out is a high number of packet errors for upload.

I've tried disconnecting everything from the new router apart from a couple of devices, but that's not made any difference either.

Given Openreach have said there's nothing else that can be done, but I've now switched-out the router as well, any idea where to go next?

Thanks.

Any audible noise on the landline ? Does drawing dial tone cause the sync to be lost ?

Have plugged a handset in and there's no audible noise. We don't normally have a phone connected at all.

Audible noise would be symptomatic of a certain kind of fault.

You mention that you see high upstream FEC errors, often associated with a faulty DSLAM port … but then you said you’ve had a lift and shift already didn’t you

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Audible noise would be symptomatic of a certain kind of fault.

You mention that you see high upstream FEC errors, often associated with a faulty DSLAM port … but then you said you’ve had a lift and shift already didn’t you

Yes, they've moved me to a different fibre pair in the cabinet.

Well I’m outta guesses for now.

Wouldn't be the first time someone's line has been shifted from 1 naff port to another, particularly if they are on the same card. ECI especially

Same here up to 2 to 3 times a day , I thought I'd buy a new Netgear modem thinking my Billion A900AX2400 was getting on a bit , Im on FTTC then to 100 year copper line

Anyway same line drops with this Netgear that is no where near the performance of my old Billion
I'm hoping to get it sorted soon it's been reported to my isp

Yep, agreed.

I had an identical experience.

My Smart Hub is in the next room to the master socket, so I drilled through the wall between the rooms and ran a short length of Cat5e cable to a dedicated data socket. That made no difference, so I also arranged for a self-employed telecoms engineer to update the master socket to the very latest filtered version.

Frequent dropouts continued but fortunately, the visit by an Openreach engineer coincided with a particularly bad morning, when my connection was dropping every few minutes. He used the test socket and could not understand why his equipment was reporting tens of thousands of upstream FEC errors. However, he agreed that there was a major problem and returned the following day with another engineer, who he said was their specialist trouble-shooter.

They checked every joint between the cabinet and my home and I believe they also changed the connection in the cabinet. The original fault occurred during a heatwave, so we wondered whether the ambient temperatures had anything to do with the problem. However, they didn't think there was a problem with the DSLAM, because apparently, I was the only subscriber with that problem. Sods law intervened because the ambient temperatures had dropped and on that day, the connection remained stable, so they couldn't replicate the fault.

However, BT also monitored performance from their end over an extended period. The situation did improve, to the extent that my connection became stable, with no dropouts for one or two days at a time.

My Smart Hub previously showed the downstream sync speed was 60.00 Mbps and the upstream sync speed was 20.00 Mbps, Those are probably the maximum speeds possible in this location, given the distance from the cabinet and the condition of the overhead copper wiring. However, BT seem to have changed the profile subsequently, so now, the Smart Hub shows the upstream sync speed has been reset to 17.00 Mbps.

The reduction in the upstream sync speed seems to have done the trick, because the connection has remained stable for the past 11 days. My latest speed test (over WiFi) shows acceptable speeds of 55.94 Mbps (Down HTTPx6) and 15.90 Mbps (Upstream) - https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/16369711501...