Re: Frequent disconnects

"Slugsie" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:big2p2$96c5m$(E-Mail Removed)...
> I have been connected to Pipex ADSL for over a year now, with very few
> problems. However, in the last couple of weeks, I've noticed that my
> connection is extremely unstable in the morning/early afternoon. It's not
> uncommon for the connection to drop out 5 or 6 times. My router (a
Connexant
> CA64e) usually re-establishes the connection within a minute or so. During
> the evening/night the connection seems perfect.
>
> I've spoken to Pipex Support (got through in 5 minutes after being told
> there would be a 10 minute wait), and the droid insisted that I had to
plug
> my router through a filter, despite the fact that the cable terminates in
an
> RJ-11 plug and therefore physically wouldn't fit. I couldn't get it
through
> to him that a filter is only necessary for telephone equipment.
>
> I suspect that there is a problem at my exchange, but how do I prove this,
> and get the appropriate people to swing into action?

I had a long saga on my ADSL connection. My router (Solwise SAR 110) would
disconnect/reconnect repeatedly for minutes or hours on end. My ISP
(Plusnet) asked me to perform a number of tests to eliminate everything
before they called BT. If BT come and the fault is with internal wiring or
equipment then they charge so it was a reasonable series of tests even
though it was very frustrating.

I noticed my router failing during the evening (I was working during the
day). the failure would last from a few minutes up to 2 hours of continuous
connect reconnect cycles. This did not happen every night.

I then found that the SAR110 kept a 24 hour history which could be viewed.
that is when it became really interesting/depressing. I was getting 100%
disconnection from 0015 to 0515 EVERY night. This period sometimes lasted
longer. There is a thread about this a few months ago.

BT were called, said they had found and fixed a fault but there was no
change. The router was swapped (that cost me return postage!) but still the
fault persisted. I did notice that the reported line loss was varying wildly
from 38 to over 50 dB sometimes during a 5 minute period. this indicates (to
me) a major problem with the cable.

BT were eventually called a second time and this time I had 4 weeks of
evidence plotted on a graph showing when the line failures occurred. [I was
able to write macro into a telnet package (TeratermPro) which copied out
all the 24 hour history into a text file. From that I was able to plot this
onto a graph using Excel]. The engineer escalated this to a Special Fault
Monitoring status. Magically the fault disappeared and has not reappeared
since. The engineer also changed the master socket to an NTE4 from the older
style but I can't see what difference that should have made.

My line attenuation changed to 53.5 dB but was steady (at least until the
recent very hot spell when it went to 58 dB for a few days but has now
returned to 55 dB) but the error rate reported has dropped from about 30,000
major errors per day (causing disconnection) to about 50 per day (which is
1-2 ever 15 minute period.

It took persistence and some effort on my part to get the problem fixed. I
have tried strenuously to try to find what was changed in the exchange. I
have failed. Good luck!

--
John Steele (remove nospam to reply)