Broadband dropping out

Does it happen when you are attempting to make a call as well, and is there any noise on your phone line?

My internet problems primarily turned out to be related to a number of problems with my BT line (although Orange hardly covered themselves with glory), and I am now touch wood getting a better internet service and a clear phone line (after  8-9 visits by a variety of BT guys).

Hi Al , you are right I do get some background noise, the line tests OK, it has always made some noise.

I did get my mate to check out the exchange stuff and he also suggested I look at the filters, which I have changed.

Result it's a lot better, still get some/a few Radio Paradise drop outs and have had a couple of HH resets in the passed 3 days but a lot better.

I can now get Infinity they are offering 20/5 Gb not sure why it's not 40/10. I have ordered it so I'll wait until the 1st November and see what that brings.

Hi Howard: I'm glad that you have achieved some improvements. However, you should not have a crackly line.

Having had many and varied dealings with BT and Orange over the last 5 months (culminating in BT charging me £130 for an engineer visit that never happened*) I have become relatively "expert" in home phone lines. A BT line test will not necessarily indicate a fault on the line (to them).

I would suggest plugging in a corded phone to your master BT socket (ie that nearest the BT line's point of entry to your property), then conducting a "quiet line" test.

Like you, I had a crackly line/crap internet speeds for years, but put it down to using a DECT/cordless phone etc. It was only when Orange went over to ADSL2, which puts a greater strain on the infrastructure, so to speak, that I was forced to pursue the matter. As a result of the 8 or 9 visits by BT I now have a router stat speed of c8mbps AND a quiet line. Work carried out included changing the pairings at the pole, junction box and local exchange, a new drop cable, new junction point inside the house etc.

*Trying to get this sorted out took me 2 phone calls totalling in excess of 1 hour. Finally, I managed to get through to a BT guy in Cardiff, who said that he would arrange for the charge to be cancelled.

I am waiting to check my bank statement to see if this will be the case.

"Advice" received from one lady in a UK call centre was that an engineer call out charge could be applied even if the engineer did not need to enter my property!!

Sadly, I have found that most of the telecommunication company call centre operatives (BT, O2, Orange in my experience) either here in the UK, or India, are buffoons, and you really have to work at it some times to get through the corporate morass to someone who is actually sensible.

Hope it goes well. Regards, Al.

Al,

I am an ex BT engineer and I know that noise is one of the worst things to find, as it can be caused by one of many connections. Having the line tested can eliminate a low A to B condition that can cause noise (amongst other things), this condition can be caused by old external wiring or cable which allows water in, more common at the end of the ie  pole to house as these cables are not pressurised.

A couple of times I have tried to get the bottom of the admitted infrequent "noisy" occasions.

Since changing the filters the HH is more stable, although Radio Paradise is still dropping, this may be RP and not BT BB. 

We'll see what Infinity can bring to the party, although I'm not taking any crap from them if it don't deliver, at least what they (BT) have said I should get.

BT have blotted their copy book already by changing the appointment I made when ordering the package.

I have no comment about BT's "helpdesk", suffice it say I'll do almost anything to avoid speaking to the sub-continent.

Further to the advice of trying the master socket, it may be worth mentioning that if you have the newer style master socket (as do nearly everyone nowadays) the faceplate will be visibly "split" in two, horizontally across the face plate.

The face plate is actually a "piggy-back" connector to the "real" socket inside.

If one removes the two screws and then the faceplate, the "real" socket will be visible.

This is the "Test Socket" that an engineer would plug the line in to, directly.

The idea is that this removes all of your "internal" extension wiring from the equation, as this is connected through a "spur" in front of the test socket.

Don't worry, you won't be disconnecting wires or getting into a mess of wiring - it is designed for this purpose of instant removal, simple "plug in" and "unplug" operation, enabling access to the test socket.

You can now check your line without your internal wiring in the loop, which can determine whether the noise, etc, is actually caused inside your house by your own extension wirings, or out on the BT line coming to the master socket.

As a quick aside, this removable front "faceplate" which just unplugs and plugs back in, can be changed for one which also incorporates an ADSL filter, internally, which then has 2 sockets on the front - one for the phone line and one for the modem/router, like the external filters have.

It used to be called an NTE2000 socket, iirc. They are widely available from likely outlets online and such highstreet outlets as Maplins type stores.

The benefit of this is that one no longer needs to have a filter dangling from every used phone socket in the house!

Many people don't realise that a filter must be placed on *every* used BT socket in the house, whether a phone is connected, or even devices such as Sky boxes (for their dial-up modems)

Missing additional filters is often the cause of noise and Internet drop-outs.

Hope this may be of help to someone

Good points there Reality.

I had actually changed my master to the later split version, but wasn't too sure about the one with built in filter, so stuck to the normal version.

It would appear that in an Infinity installation a new modem is installed as well as the new HH3.

I had similar issue a while back - my problem turned out to be on line noise

My BT Hub-2 was up & down like a hookers pants especially durng busy use periods,  but also during quiet middle of day times

After some excellent support for the BT call centre in India (honest) it got to the point that chatting on the phone was going nowhere so I insisted on a service call.

Man with van turned up, looked around & tested the wiring into & around the house

He quickly concluded we had too many odd & sods wires that weren't connected to anything left over from previous BT installs such as fax & 2nd business line & extensions.

As we are now only wireless we OK'd him to rip out everything & start again

30 minutes later we had a single wire into a new SDSL v-1.0 filter socket

He also got the exchange to reconfig my connection speed ( don't understand what that did )

Since then it all works perfectly

Additionally my son had Infinity installed & he had problems whereas his previous BT BB was OK

That too turned out to be connected wires going nowhere. 

He told the BT man about my issues & he applied the same fix & got the same results  

Thanks Mike, my line was a bit noisy last night, the first rain for a while, counter intuitively though the BB didn't drop out.

This is where removing the master socket faceplate and hooking directly into the test socket can help - it instantly removes all of your "internal" house wiring.

Problem gone = internal wiring issue (your side), not external (BT's side)

Reconfiguring the connection speed could have a few implications.

Your line may have been on a circuit with too high a contention ratio (too many people sharing that one)

If you have a lower quality line, you'd notice it as an issue all the more.

You may have had a capped rate that had been left too low from earlier lower speed connection deals.

The line may not have adjusted itself successfully in the first place.

DSL modems/lines go through an "adaptive rate" learning phase, whereby the data will be sent to your end increasingly faster, until your modem is losing or dropping packets, etc. The "speed" is then throttled back until things smooth out, THis is repeated until a happy average is found and set.

Although a faster speed is a nice idea, if you're losing/dropping/receiving malformed packets. those packets must all be sent again and again, until a successful receipt is negotiated.

This send/resend/resend/resend process will just slow the connection speed down, because of the wasted bandwidth.

Imagine having a telephone conversation where one has to repeat every third word ten times, and every seventh, eighth and ninth words twenty times! A simple sentence would take possibly three or four times as long, for example. A very basic example, but you get the idea.

In a case such as this, slowing the rate of data transmission to something more able to be successfully handled would actually speed the apparent data throughput up, if this makes sense.

This is what is usually achieved through the initial training period, upon activation of the DSL line.

If this period is unsuccessful, it can cause problems later on.

A few modems use an MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) rate that is at odds with the value being used by your ISP. Sometimes correcting this can reap benefits.

If your rate is lower than theirs, it can cause packet fragmentation. These packets must be reassembled by the modem/router. With some domestic devices, the overhead can exceed their processing ability and cause issues.

Just some ramblings that may or may not be of any interest, or use!

Originally Posted by Reality:

it instantly removes all of your "internal" house wiring.

Problem gone = internal wiring issue (your side), not external (BT's side)

Not so; all the wiring was removed from the outside walls of the house

The 2 line incoming branched to a single outlet in the hall used for the home phone & broadband & a bedroom extension. The 2nd line went to 2x business phone outlets in a separate room.

It was BT's install.  The wiring was all attached (hanging) to the external house walls.

The engineer actually apologised for the standards of the install, it looked bad & he said the wiring connections were even worse.

Re the speed reset:  Thanks for taking the time with your "ramblings", 

If it is of use to you & IF (IF) I understood the engineer correctly, BT reduced the IP profile from 6500 to 6000 to give a more stable & consistently acceptable line speed. 

My notes at the time show: 

I am close to the local exchange,  I guess 400m cable length via the various underground & poles & road corners. BT claim to be able to get 8000kbps

Using http://speedtester.bt.com/ between 14:00 & 15:00 (quiet time of day) with the BT engineer.

Before the wiring & line speed changes we got variations in downloads between 1711kbps & 5030kbps

After the wiring changes we got 2900kbps to 5911kbps

After the (overnight) line speed changes & more than 50 tests over many weeks the lowest I found was 3017kbps & the highest 5928kbps.

The import thing however is no drop outs or stalled connections in 4 months, compared to previously when I avoided using www during evenings to protect my blood pressure & nervous system.