Router issues
 

Just to bring to the attention if you have router issues.
we moved into our current dwelling in 1990 and soon after left BT and went to Cable tel which became NTL and now Virgin Media. ( other suppliers are available )
generally service has been fine however about a week ago the Wi Fi would drop off for 5 min at a time TV was fine but no on demand services etc.
Eventually we has a engineer and he got a things good.
The issue is that the connections on the VM box on the roadside that serves the 10 houses is not regularly checked and are only fixed as customers complain. The connections in the main box do degenerate over time....
So if you get intermittent drop off of wifi and on demand don't just accept it's the weather it may simply be corroded connections in a box you have no access to.

Thi can happen with all ADSL suppliers - the wires between the green box and your house are the same old BT Openreach copper (or aluminium) ones that can be 40 years old or more. All they've done to give you "fibre" broadband is stick another newer green box next to the first one, this has all the various suppliers aggregation boxes in it and is linked by fibre back to the main exchange (so "fibre to the cabinet"). The bit between there and your house is the same old stuff it's always been and can have issues. Crackling on the phone line can be a sign of this.
The exception is if you have FTTP (fibre to the premises, all the way to the door) or Virgin cable.

About 100 yards or so from our house is a BT labelled drain cover in the pavement.. It is never lifted.
The BT/Openreach/whatever they are called today engineer from about 3 years ago opened it.
Filled with water, crud from main drain leakage, and lots of old, rusty BT/GPO stuff.
After he repaired our line, he said it would not be opened again for 10 or so years.

So the Gas people have just put a large digger head through it.
Internet is still working..................

Recently had problems with our TalkTalk router dropping the line then sometimes managing to reconnect for a while. Contacted TT one afternoon, they carried out a check on the line from their end, said there was a fault and when would I like an OpenReach engineer to be sent round to identify & fix? ASAP quoth I and next morning there he was. Carried out internal and external tests, identified a fault some 135m away, toddled off to have a dig, came back later and said "all done, should be fine now" It was and still is. Lots of people denigrate TT but (at least in this instance) their service and support could not be faulted.