Problem with IM and other network connectivity

Hi all,

Been a Zen ADSL customer for over 6 years. Regraded from a 1Mb service to Zen Active 8000 in July last year, although this hasn't made any difference to the problem I have experienced with (or been revealed by) instant messaging clients and connection to a work email exchange server.

I use Google Talk for work and Yahoo, MSN and Facebook messenging for private use. The severity of the problem varies during the day, mostly being worse in the morning but does happen on and off all day.

When I am working from home my work colleagues report that my Google talk account appears to go off line and then back online repeatedly when the problem is at its worse. No issues with messaging other users.

My Yahoo, Facebook and MSN messaging will just stop sending and receiving IM's at random times in the middle of a conversation even though the other user is being shown as online. Sometimes I can have a conversation with no issues, but the majority of the time it either stops or I get a whole load of the other users replies sent in one go. Facebook messenging gives me a bit more of a clue as it will take ages sitting there saying it is waiting to send the IM that I have just written. Sometimes it goes through and other times fails.

The other issue is with Outlook. I use Outlook connecting to a company exchange server supplied by a 3rd party. For most of the day Outlook reports connectivity issue with the exchange server shown by sync issues and a red exclamation mark shown on the Outlook icon in the task bar. Sending emails is a struggle as I have to cancel the Outlook connection with exchange and then restart which usually allows for the email to be pushed through. It does seem that the connection being like this is worse in the morning.

When I use my laptop outside of home, either at my office or at one of our various sites then I have no troubles. Many of my colleagues work from home using various ADSL or cable suppliers and have no trouble with Outlook or Google Talk.

I have a few PCs at home and the IM issue is the same with all of them. They are all XP apart from my PC which is Vista. Work laptop is XP.

I also have 2 ADSL ethernet routers (one kept as a spare) and the problem is the same with either one I use. My work laptop and home PC is connected via ethernet. I have tried changing MTU values on one router as that is the only thing I found that could have an influence, but again no difference.

I also turned the firewall off on my first router to test but again no resolve.

The bizarre thing is when I changed my routers over the problem seemed to cease for a day but then was back to normal. I have only done this once so may test again. I have been using my spare router for the past month.

My ADSL connection is pretty much rock solid and my connection speed varies (according to my Zen customer portal) between 3000 kbps and 2500kbps

Working from home since last May has shown this to be an issue since that time. I remember using Yahoo IM shortly after getting Zen in 2002 and there didn't appear to be a problem. So at some point between then something has changed.

Anyone have any further ideas? I'm pretty much at a loss now, and the only thing I can think of is to move from Zen and try a different supplier to see if there is a resolve, but if the issue is with BT, or my DSLAM then this may not resolve it.

Cheers for taking the time to read my post.

Trevor

Sorry, no definite answer, just a suggestion that it may be some sort of firewall issue. googling IM, yahoo apparently uses port 5050, google may be 5222. You may need to open these up on your router firewall. Perhaps you've set router firewall to high or similar? I don't use IM, so can't help further. I guess it's be TCP, but you could open the UDP ports as well.

Probably worth giving us a call to check radius logs and maybe a quick line test to make sure it is as stable as you think. Quite often sync can drop and re-establish quick enough to keep a PPP session, which could cause the problems you describe.