Issues, Workarounds & Localization

Long post, don't read unless you are interested in broadband problems.

Firstly, this is I think a BT Internet problem rather than CCP but I'm posting here in the hope that someone might have had the same issue and can recommend me a course of action as I feel that I've tried everything that is in my competence.

I've been on BT Internet, ADSL for 5.5 years or so. The first five years up to the beginning of this year have been without problem, which is most of the reason I haven't switched to a different provider (yet).

Beginning towards the end of Jan. this year, my broadband would get disconnected for 3 - 5 seconds, the broadband light on the hub would go from green to amber, then come back on. So I would be disconnected for several seconds then I would get the connection back.

This would happen intermittently over a period of several hours, maybe once or twice an hour.

This would continue over a period of several days then the issue would disappear for several weeks and then start re-occurring.

I logged calls with BT at end of Jan, end of Feb, mid-March, End of April, and now this has started re-occurring today after 2 weeks of no interruptions.

I have not changed added or replaced any electrical equipment in my home in the last year or more. I use a cable that I have had for 5+ years to connect my PC to the hub. I don't use the wifi.

I don't have any telephone extension sockets. I don't have anything like baby alarms.

We haven't had anyone digging up the road on the estate that I have noticed but it's possible something like that occurred in Jan. without me noticing.

There doesn't seem to be any obvious pattern, apart from the fact that the issues I've been having usually seem to start on a Thursday or Friday, last several days and then mysteriously disappear for several weeks. But that may be just a coincidence.

I have had a line engineer out in March that checked the copper line, said he found a possibly faulty connection in the junction box on the road and fixed that. He also replaced the socket on the wall.

I had a broadband engineer here 2 weeks ago that did alot of testing, he couldn't find anything but he did give me a new hub and changed the wall socket (again) to the BT one that has separate jacks, one for phone and one for adsl.

I'm pretty much at a loss as to what I should do now. I don't really have any confidence that BT are able to fix this.

I asked my neighbours if they had had any problems and the ones I have spoken to are on cable and say they don't have my issue, so maybe not an interference problem as wouldn't that affect them as well?

My immediate neighbour is on Virgin Cable and he says he gets slowdowns once or twice a month but no actual disconnects and has been told by Virgin that it's because he is at the "end of the line" despite the fact we are 2 miles from the exchange in a major city.

I'm tempted to just switch to Virgin as my neighbour says it's a minor inconvenience and doesn't happen very often.

If anyone has had a similar problem and / or can suggest anything I can or should try I would be very happy.

Thanks

Yohann - will do. I should have thought of that, it's a small thing but one more thing to eliminate.

Edit: I still plan to do this but after logging in to the game on my Jita alt I lost by bb connection twice in 10 mins. I then shutdown my comp and unplugged the cable and still was getting the disconnects on my hub. Which, in my mind, indicates a problem unrelated to to my PC / equipment.

Spoke to BT again who are still monitoring my connection and they confirmed I have again started to get multiple disconnects after a period of more than 2 weeks without problems.

They are sending another broadband engineer on Monday.

I have had quite a bit of experience with broadband faults in my old rented house which took 2 years of researching and battling with ISPs and Openreach engineers to eventually sort out. I learned a lot through the experience I can tell you.

Firstly, I'd recommend that you sign up and post over here:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.php?f=69&order=desc

There are a few regulars in that forum who are experts in the field and will give you good advice on how to go about identifying and dealing with broadband faults.

My issue was slow ADSL speeds and constant connection drops, first with Tiscali and then with Plusnet (I switched in the mistaken belief it might help). I could hear "broadband" noise and crackling on my phone line and so I figured it was a line fault and raised it through BT which was a big mistake. Their remote tests showed there was nothing wrong with the line (rubbish) and the line engineers they sent out could find nothing wrong either. When I invited them to listen to the noise on the line, they declared it must be an internet fault since the line went clear when the router was disconnected and that they dont do internet faults. My pleas for them to physically check my line went unanswered.

Eventually I managed to get my ISP to send a broadband engineer who confirmed there was something causing interference and immediately went outside and climbed the pole to inspect the overhead line into my property. When he opened the connection box he noticed that my cable was only half screwed in. 10 seconds later he reclamped it and no more problems, ever. Two years of headaches could have been avoided for the sake of a quick look at a line.

So,

Never trust line tests, they suck.

Never report anything even remotely to do with the internet through BT, make sure it's through the ISP

Do you get noise on the phone line? Does the internet disconnect when the phone rings? Either of these could indicate a high resistance fault like the one I had (loose connection, worn bit of cable somewhere).

Since it appears quite random, and can go for weeks without happening, it doesn't sound like a line fault. It could be something at the exchange or it could be something like a new streetlight down the road which has started going wrong and is giving off interference right next to the overhead cable. If you have Virgin cable (make sure it is cable) then that would seem to be the easiest option. You'd be on an entirely different infrastruture and so you would be sure of bypassing whatever the current fault is. Any other ADSL provider would like just have the same problem (although BT are particularly bad at sorting stuff out when it goes wrong).

Openreach are now a completely separate entity to BT and are responsible for all issues to do with phoneline infrastructure. If you have an ADSL fault you will always get one of those guys round, regardless of ISP. The pain is that Openreach work for ISPs and are not directly answerable to customers such as you or I.

If the noise on the line is a kind of digital sound then it probably means you've got a loose or worn wire somewhere between your house and the cabinet. The bad news is that these are a pig to track down or even verify.

When noise gets on the line, the filters cannot correctly separate the voice and broadband signals and so you get cross-over. That means you can hear noise when making a phone call and the router drops out because the signals it gets are distorted.

I'm assuming that since you've already had a broadband engineer over, you've already done all the standard tests to eliminate your own wiring like removing the face plate and plugging the router directly into the master socket? If not, that could be worth a try.

Otherwise, just be really nice to the broadband engineer when he turns up (make sure it really is a broadband engineer and not a line engineer) and try to give him all the information you can. Mention the noise on the line as well.