BT Drops out every 2/3 minutes

I've just recently moved, having had broadband for 8 months with no
problems at the old house. I am still at the same exchange, but I
think a bit further out (we are the last house down a long road).

Now, I've had the line at the new house activated for a week. I am
getting continual dropouts, getting progressively worse after first
booting up. It improves slightly if I reboot. It might stay on for as
long as 45 mins when I first login, but then drops out every minute or
two after a while and takes 5 minutes to get back on.

I have a voyager 100 modem, from bt, which was fine at the old house.
I am plugged into the master socket, and have made sure that nothing
else is plugged into the line.

BT have suggested that it is a power supply problem to the modem and
have got me to turn off power management features (they werent
actually on). They have now suggested I buy a router. But my thoughts
were that it is more likely a line problem as the modem+PC were fine 2
weeks ago.

Any suggestions? Do I have any chance in convincing BT to come around
to check?

Thanks

Daniel

Lord Biggington wrote:
> I've just recently moved, having had broadband for 8 months with no
> problems at the old house. I am still at the same exchange, but I
> think a bit further out (we are the last house down a long road).
>
> Now, I've had the line at the new house activated for a week. I am
> getting continual dropouts, getting progressively worse after first
> booting up. It improves slightly if I reboot. It might stay on for as
> long as 45 mins when I first login, but then drops out every minute or
> two after a while and takes 5 minutes to get back on.
>
> I have a voyager 100 modem, from bt, which was fine at the old house.
> I am plugged into the master socket, and have made sure that nothing
> else is plugged into the line.
>
> BT have suggested that it is a power supply problem to the modem and
> have got me to turn off power management features (they werent
> actually on). They have now suggested I buy a router. But my thoughts
> were that it is more likely a line problem as the modem+PC were fine 2
> weeks ago.
>
> Any suggestions? Do I have any chance in convincing BT to come around
> to check?

Yes, but complain to your ISP not BT (BT Yahoo/Broadband etc etc are not
BT). If you report an ADSL problem to BT you will most probably get a non
ADSL trained engineer who will just DC test your line & if that's ok then
you will be charged for the priviledge.

But beware I had a similar problem, so I changed my router & it got worse,
so I got another one it got slightly better & eventually the fourth one (a
3com Office connect) stayed operational for me to find that all of them were
suffering from buffer over runs, causing them to fall over & reboot (or not
reboot depending on the make). I have done some further research &
apparently it has been known with some of them, but not all (even with the
latest firmware updates). If it is your kit you could be liable for
charges.

It easy for me as I can go out to the van & borrow a router for an hour or 2
(which is why I knew it was a hardware problem in the first place) slightly
more difficult for you, unless you can beg or borrow something from a friend
for the night...

"Lord Biggington" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) m...
> I've just recently moved, having had broadband for 8 months with no
> problems at the old house. I am still at the same exchange, but I
> think a bit further out (we are the last house down a long road).
>
> Now, I've had the line at the new house activated for a week. I am
> getting continual dropouts, getting progressively worse after first
> booting up. It improves slightly if I reboot. It might stay on for as
> long as 45 mins when I first login, but then drops out every minute or
> two after a while and takes 5 minutes to get back on.
>
> I have a voyager 100 modem, from bt, which was fine at the old house.
> I am plugged into the master socket, and have made sure that nothing
> else is plugged into the line.
>
> BT have suggested that it is a power supply problem to the modem and
> have got me to turn off power management features (they werent
> actually on). They have now suggested I buy a router. But my thoughts
> were that it is more likely a line problem as the modem+PC were fine 2
> weeks ago.
>
> Any suggestions? Do I have any chance in convincing BT to come around
> to check?
>
> Thanks
>
> Daniel

The important thing your ISP will need to know is whether you lose sync when
the connection drops (usually indicated by the link/DSL light on the modem
starting to flash). If the answer is yes then make sure you've tried
unplugging everything from your line including any extension wiring and see
if it gets any better.

It's definitely worth trying another modem if you can borrow one (not
reasonable to expect you to buy a new one just in case). If your line has
high loss then some makes of modems will be more stable then others. I'm
not too familiar with the Voyager 100 but try and find out if it will give
you the line loss figure. If it's above 60dB then this could be a
contributing factor.