Why does my Broadband keep dying?
 

Over the last months or so, my home Broadband connection has become increasingly unreliable.

During the day, its fine, no problems and very robust. About 3 months ago, it started to fall over with monotonous regularity after about 10:30pm and any attempt to reconnect only lasted a few minutes. Now it starts disconnecting at about 8:30, which severely curtails any evening surfing.

I have a laptop connecting to a modem and my ISP is Orange/Wanadoo on a BT landline.

When it reconnects, I get a message to say I'm verified on the host computer, I'll then click on Internet Explorer but quite often, I can't even get my home page loaded before the connection dies on me.

I'm sure that if I complain to BT, they will blame Orange and vice versa, but I need to bring it to someone's attention - Ofcom maybe?

My mate who lives about 5mins from me, on Orange too, suffers from the same problem which makes me think its the BT exchange. Is it just volume of traffic? I don't think there is a fault with the line as its OK during the day

Had a major connection problem but eventually it was discovered that my neighbour had a massive satellite dish and the set-top box was interfering with everyone around, (ADSL), as soon as he turned it off we all got a good connection back. It is possible that someone in your area has electronic equipment that comes on an certain times and destroys your DSL signal with 'noise', worth investigating? (It helps if your ISP also owns the infrastructure, i.e. BT in the UK, Telstra in Australia etc. otherwise the companies that buy their connection from the major supplier are fairly helpless and the owner of the infrastructure will tell you that their responsibility ends at your front gate!).

You cannot complain directly to BT about broadband problems - it has to be done by your ISP. So, raise the issue with them (you might have to be persistent!). They should do all the line/equipment checks required and then raise a ticket with BT if that's where the problem lies. The fact that you know another Orange user who suffers the same as you would seem to indicate the problem is with Orange and not with the BT exchange.

Hi Koli, long time no see!

Follow Oldbeefer's advice, and be persistent (very persistent). Did he mention persistence?

Try to keep an accurate log, including screenshots of errors, ping results and such like - if your mate can do the same then it is more evidence / ammunition (delete as appropriate!).

You can make a batch file with something like:

to help make recording date and time with results - and of course you can pipe it to a file.

SD

Parabellum,

Have you ever been a BT Internet customer ?

:ugh:

Nuf' Said !

Please do tell if your experience has been otherwise !

Yes I have but not for Internet and yes I had plenty of trouble with them over 'phones as well!:ok:

My point was that BT own the infrastructure which other companies rent. If you choose an alternative supplier to BT then BT will tell you their responsibility ends at your front gate and it is up to your ISP to sort anything else out. Where it helps is if BT is your ISP they have the total responsibility and can't palm it off onto someone else. To get things done I have always found that it pays to find the name and business address of the CEO and then write them a letter sent via registered post/recorded delivery. By starting at the top and working down you may find someone that knows what they are talking about, start at the bottom and they will cover for their own lack of knowledge and inability to solve problems. Worked for me, (eventually), in UK and first time in Singapore and here in Oz.

Indeed, but in the UK, you would be better off avoiding BT altogether and going with a reputable LLU operator such as Easynet.

If you have to go with a BT based ADSL operator, I've had very good customer service experience with Zen .... Zen Internet

After a lot of complaining to BT, I insisted that an engineer visited my house. He checked the line and fitted a radio filter to the main socket. That might help with Kolibear's situation?

Did he charge you for doing that ?

Normally "have you got filters fitted ?" is at the top of any ISP call centre monkey's script !

I think the "Radio filter" mentioned is NOT the standard ADSL Microfilter you may be thinking about. I worked for BT for 23 years and we often had to fit filters to stop local AM broadcast transmitter interference being picked up by newer electronic phones and microphones. It was never a problem with old dial types and carbon granule microphones. Broadband was not common at that time, and I'm left wondering how one of these would affect ADSL signals....

The Flying Pram,

Well, I never ....

BT Shop - BT Plug in RFI Filter (1000215)

(don't know why you need a BT engineer to plug one of these in for you though !! :p)

Howver, I too am left wondering how this would help.

I can't remember where I read it, but somewhere someone made a great comment that went something like this .....

"ADSL is delivered over copper, which on average consists of runs in hundreds of metres, lots of weird and wonderful stuff goes on along that cable route, and yet people still persist in worrying themselves sick and wasting money cabling up the last few metres in their property".

And I kinda agree. If there's going to be a problem at cable level, it's unlikely to be something in your property as long as you follow basic precautions ! :cool:

Might I also suggest you spend a bit of time at ADSLguide.

It's a great little forum for UK based ADSL users, they've split the forum into boards for all the different providers.
The Orange one seems particularly active ... :}

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If you want to write a Mr Angry letter to someone, you could try reporting Orange to the ISPA ISPA - Complaints which might get you slightly more speedy leverage than Ofcom.