Poor line, who do i contact?

cooper_man

I have BT broadband currently and I am having problems with it at night. All through the day it is fine but after about 9PM every night the connection continuosly drops and reconnects.

I had this problem for about 6 months with UTV Clicksilver which is why i made the switch to BT, however, i have had all my hardware replaced and I have worked on everything but to no avail.

BT keep saying they are getting eircom to do speed checks and the line is fine but this is clearly during the day.....

what do i do now, still have no internet at night....d i contact eircom?

lucernarian

There's been a few problems of this type buried before, buried in various threads, so a search would cover the ins-and-outs. It's hard to be certain but the switching on of streetlights can be a cause of it. If you notice the time over the next couple of months varying with the light-up times, then the street lights are a likely cause.

Not sure where you can get the daily light-up times beyond the national broadsheet papers...

If you want to push it further, you can insist that the problem is still there no matter how hard you tried and that testing during the day has not helped. Lodge a complaint with them or suchlike and tell them to get a proper diagnosis for it so you can do something about it.

sesswhat

To_be_confirmed wrote:

Not sure where you can get the daily light-up times beyond the national broadsheet papers...

Street lights come on when it gets dark. Would it be too obvious to look out the window?

cooper_man

For some reason i thought i would sit down again and have a look at this problem. I have been trying consistantly to try get a hold of BT for the last 3 days to no avail. Once it hits 7pm you cant get them.

Port- Status - TxPkts - RxPkts- Collisions- Tx B/s- Rx B/s- Up Time

WAN -PPPoA-77-50-0-107-344-00:01:07
LAN -10M/100M-1848-1616-0-5037-439-00:06:18
WLAN -11M/54M-268-0-0-190-0-00:06:10

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 0 kbps 0 kbps
Line Attenuation 46 db 15 db
Noise Margin 2147483640 db 14 db

I dont know what the above means but i thought i would list it anyway! lol It is my 'connection status'.

I have had UTV and BT get eircom to do numerous tests on the line to no avail. What is the solution????? Why does this happen every evening? Should i just accept i have a poor line and do without broadband.

I WILL PERSONAL PAYPAL 100EURO TO WHOMEVER SOLVES MY PROBLEM OR GIVES THE VALID INFORMATION WHICH SOLVES MY PROBLEM

Sponge Bob

looks like a 1 mbit maybe a 2 mbit line at best. Have you tested and got stats with all else disconnected even filter ...just the modem

especially sky boxes

cooper_man

Its a 3MB line apparently, when i do a speed test online (during the day) i get 2mbps which is not an issue, the problem i have is the line consistantly dropping.

That test was done from the main port with everything else disconnected. How come it is only at night my connection drops. It will be up for about 1min, then down again for a minute then up etc etc etc

HUNDRED EURO OFFER STILL STANDS!

Sponge Bob

45 odd db downstream is not a 3mb line its actually a marginal 2mb line did you test with all devices out, even filters??

dub45

cooper_man wrote:

Its a 3MB line apparently, when i do a speed test online (during the day) i get 2mbps which is not an issue, the problem i have is the line consistantly dropping.

That test was done from the main port with everything else disconnected. How come it is only at night my connection drops. It will be up for about 1min, then down again for a minute then up etc etc etc

HUNDRED EURO OFFER STILL STANDS!

What SB means is that your line is not capable of 3Mb. A line constantly dropping is a symptom of not being good enough for the speed you are currently on. Each step up in speed puts severe pressure on a line and this is why a speed upgrade often worsens performance. There have been many recent threads on this subject but for the umpteenth time these links make useful reading:

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/linestats.htm

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/linestats.htm

I notice in one of your other posts on this problem that you have sky - did you have this problem before you got Sky? Do you leave your sky box plugged in all the time?

cooper_man

Thanks DUB, to be honest, I had sky for years, never on the phone line. Then the problems arose. Then i got a second box and they insisted i needed it to be connected to the phone line. That was fine but the problems were occuring well before this and I have since disconnected them anyway.

Below is a series of emails today to BT with responses. Start at the bottom.

Response (Residential Technical Support) 03/07/2007 01.34 PM
Dear Michael,

I have come across a couple of instances in the past where it has been a neon sign for a Chinese and also street lights interfering with the broadband but it has been rare cases where the phone line and the electric cables where laid together or crossed paths, it's a hard one to resolve unless i know exactly what's causing these drops outs, if it's happening on 2 routers tried on there own with nothing else plugged in then and its nothing to do with lighting, heating etc then it would need a fault logging in my opinion.

If you have any other technical queries, you can also contact ABT Ireland Technical Support on 1890 923 111.


Customer (Michael Bridgeman) 03/07/2007 01.24 PM
I actually had a discussion recently with somebody about this, nothin g in the house comes on, however, i am unsure if perhaps the streetlights come on.

What could be the resolution?

Response (Residential Technical Support) 03/07/2007 01.16 PM
Dear Michael,

I know this might be a strange question but does anything come on at this time for example the central heating, water, street lights etc?



Customer (Michael Bridgeman) 03/07/2007 12.27 PM
Yes the DSL light goes off, and then flashes as it reconnected then comes back on. It is constantly on during the hours of 5am to about 9pm, it is after that it drops. If the light is off and I get a connection status from the router's admin it says 'no dsl connection detected'.

The power light, wlan light and port lights (for hardwired Pc) stay on constantly. Often it is a case where the light on the router is on, constantly but once i do a connection status or start to browse (ie use the connection) it starts dropping.

Response (Residential Technical Support) 03/07/2007 12.21 PM
Dear Michael,

Do you notice on the routers if any of the lights go out like the power or the dsl etc?



Customer (Michael Bridgeman) 03/07/2007 12.19 PM
Thanks for the hasty response.

Nothing changed in the house when the line began having problems. I do have sky and I do have 3 phones in the house however, i have tried as you suggest disconnect everything and connect it to the main socket in the home. I did this twice (once for 48 hours with no phone) and the problems are consistant. Again failing at night.

I have tried 2 routers, a netgear Dg834G wireless and a D Link wired router....

Response (Residential Technical Support) 03/07/2007 12.11 PM
Dear Michael,

In order to troubleshoot your connection we will need to ascertain a few details.

1. Did anything change in the physical setup in your house at the same time your broadband connection became intermittent?
For example did you get a new cordless telephone, wireless modem, additional telephone socket etc?

2. Between your modem and your phone socket, are you using a long/extension phone cable?
3. Are you using the primary phone point in the house (ie the one usually closest to the front door)?
4. Are you using any wireless or third party equipment (such as a Belkin, Lynksys or Netopia modem)?
5. How many phones/faxes/other devices do you have connected to the phone line?
6. Does every phone socket that is in use in your premises have a micro filter attached?
7. Do you have a digi-box (eg NTL/Sky Digital) that is connected to a phone socket?
8. Do you have a monitored house alarm or internal phone system (PBX) in the premises?
9. Are there specific times of the day that you cannot log on to the service, on a consistent basis?
10. Do you hear any noise or crackling when making or receiving phone calls?
11. What is the make and model of the modem you are currently using?
To find out what model of modem you have, turn it upside-down. The model number will be found on the sticker.

During a period when you are unable to connect to the Internet please remove all telephony equipment from all sockets for a period of 15 minutes. After which plug in the router by itself and test to see if the DSL light still flashes or remains off.

If the DSL light is flashing move your modem to the primary phone socket in the house. It does not need to be connected to a PC for this test.
Again, remove all telephony equipment from all sockets. Use the short supplied grey RJ-11 ADSL line chord to connect the modem directly to your telephone socket without using the supplied micro filter. Extension leads can cause degradation of the broadband signal which is very sensitive. Try using the supplied cable or avoid using any extension cable.



Customer (Michael Bridgeman) 03/07/2007 08.12 AM

I have been in touch with your technical support team twice about this and I tried to call between 7-9 last thursday and friday and could not get through (qeued).

I am having serious problems with my line at th moment and it needs to be resolves asap. As of 8-9pm EVERY NIGHT until approx 4-5am my line consistantly drops. During the day my connection is fantastic I have no complaints but it is down for them times EVERY NIGHT. My connection status on my router goes online for 30seconds-2minutes then it drops for approx 15seconds, then it takes 10seconds to reconnect. This happens consistantly. As a result I cannot browse the internet, use p2p, chat etc etc.

I know you have tested my line but I am sure it is a problem on my line. UTV test it also when i was with them 3/4 times but it is ONLY AT NIGHT the problems occur. I only switched to BT 6weeks ago because i was having this problem with UTV Clicksilver also. It is obvious that it is a problem on my line but I cannot deal with it anymore. I work until 7PM and only can use it at night so this is no good for me.

I believe it is a problem on the line somewhere because I have tried different hardware, disconnected everything, connected direct through main port with different filters and the problem still occurs. Can you please advise the next step asap. Can you contact eircom or will i cancel my broadband all together and move to cable broadband?

I would appreciate any help you can advise on this because it is breaking my heart at this stage!!

I did a connection status last night: this is it:

Port- Status - TxPkts - RxPkts- Collisions- Tx B/s- Rx B/s- Up Time

WAN -PPPoA-77-50-0-107-344-00:01:07
LAN -10M/100M-1848-1616-0-5037-439-00:06:18
WLAN -11M/54M-268-0-0-190-0-00:06:10

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 0 kbps 0 kbps
Line Attenuation 46 db 15 db
Noise Margin 2147483640 db 14 db

Kind Regards,

Michael Bridgeman

Auto-response 03/07/2007 08.12 AM
Dear

This is an automated response and there is no need to reply to this email.

Thank you for your recent correspondence, we endeavour to respond to your email query within 24 hours Monday to Friday during normal working times.

To help us track your email query we have assigned you this unique email reference number 070703-000020.

For answers to any further questions please visit our new and improved helpsite at
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lucernarian

sesswhat wrote:

Street lights come on when it gets dark. Would it be too obvious to look out the window?

Ha.

What if you live in the countryside like I do??

Spongebob, there are working lines out there with 2 Mbps at 61 dB. How often do I have to show that attenuation is not the sole factor but SNR is equally important?? It took eircom a number of years to realise this. Now the limit for consideration is 78-80 dB.

I daresay that the high attenuation lines are not once-offs either. Eircom seemed happy enough to extend the limit by 24 dB beyond supposedly maximum possible conditions. You cannot say it's unsuitable unless you see that the SNR is less than 10 dB. (Signal margin is different)

Sponge Bob

We been thru this a lot and we BADLY need a sticky on line stats and what they mean in the wild , in MY opinion 46db with margin around 10 is NOT a 3mbit line and the eircom radsl does not fall back cleanly if your package is 1mbit greater than that which is sustainable.

TBC, you may live in the country but most peoples exchanges are in Villages and thats where the street lights would be .

cooper_man

Lads any ideas on what i should do so? lol

Drapper

cooper_man wrote:

Lads any ideas on what i should do so? lol

Get an engineer out.

Check the signal from the manhole outside the house to the first telehone point. Sounds like cable issue and poor signal. They should be able to run a series of test from the manhole to the switch and also from the first phone point to the switch to see if the signal drop from there.

If so new cable to be laid. If its from the manhole to the switch you should not have ben sold DSL, hows your neighbours signal? know them? ask them! sould like at peak times your net goes!

PS :- maybe you should blank your address, there are freaks on the interweb and your ip and house address is on this page!

Little-Devil

cooper_man wrote:

Lads any ideas on what i should do so? lol

You where with UTV and switched to BT and are still having the same problems. Did Utv log faults when you where a customer with them? What did they say? I honestly can't imagine lights, heating would effect your BB connection. I do know sky can cause serious problems, but to me if 2 ISP can't find a fault and you have tried mutiple modem/routers, then to me that would suggest the fault is possibly inside your house. The only other suggestion is that maybe contention is effecting your line, it is quite possble that there are a lot of BB user's downloading late at night and knocking it off in the morning, just a thought?

You should have gone with Eircom, i know there slow on logging BB faults and issue's, but i would imagine they would have fixed your fault.

Cabaal

This is a warning, nobody is to post agents names/e-mails or telephone numbers on this board, if you do it will lead to a ban!

If your posting details ensure you have REMOVED these details,

cooper_man, I've removed the BT agent details from your post

lucernarian

My original question was "When can I find out the light-up times for each day". Where I live, checking the street lights isn't an option. Do you SB, or anyone else have an answer for the question? Google has proved useless:(

Those stats are completely messed up. Did anyone notice the bizarre signal margin stats for his downstream?? Also the attenuation on the downstream is disproportionate to the upstream. Normally attenuation would be like 30/14 or ratios like that. A signal margin of 2147483640 is a fecked-up reading.

Could you please check the connection status again and post it here? It must be while the DSL stays connected. That should give a more realistic and accurate picture. Thanks.

I still think that the huge difference between night and day for your connection is related to street lights or something which works only overnight. Especially if the problem lasts the night. But I need the proper connection stats to have an idea.

John1000

cooper_man wrote:

For some reason i thought i would sit down again and have a look at this problem. I have been trying consistantly to try get a hold of BT for the last 3 days to no avail. Once it hits 7pm you cant get them.

Port- Status - TxPkts - RxPkts- Collisions- Tx B/s- Rx B/s- Up Time

WAN -PPPoA-77-50-0-107-344-00:01:07
LAN -10M/100M-1848-1616-0-5037-439-00:06:18
WLAN -11M/54M-268-0-0-190-0-00:06:10

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 0 kbps 0 kbps
Line Attenuation 46 db 15 db
Noise Margin 2147483640 db 14 db

I dont know what the above means but i thought i would list it anyway! lol It is my 'connection status'.

I have had UTV and BT get eircom to do numerous tests on the line to no avail. What is the solution????? Why does this happen every evening? Should i just accept i have a poor line and do without broadband.

I WILL PERSONAL PAYPAL 100EURO TO WHOMEVER SOLVES MY PROBLEM OR GIVES THE VALID INFORMATION WHICH SOLVES MY PROBLEM

Just out of curioity, how far from the exchange are you?
a Noise Margin 2147483640 db is either around -8db or meaningless.

Sponge Bob

To_be_confirmed wrote:

My original question was "When can I find out the light-up times for each day". Where I live, checking the street lights isn't an option. Do you SB, or anyone else have an answer for the question? Google has proved useless:(

depends on

1. sensitivity of photo electric cells
2. cloud cover

so around 10.30 is the answer at present .

I still think that the huge difference between night and day for your connection is related to street lights or something which works only overnight. Especially if the problem lasts the night. But I need the proper connection stats to have an idea.

A long series of them , tabulated , every hour from 7pm to 12pm , 4 nights including a sat or sun night .

dub45

John1000 wrote:

Just out of curioity, how far from the exchange are you?
a Noise Margin 2147483640 db is either around -8db or meaningless.

From other posts on here before and stuff I have read this simply seems to be a common figure that modems throw out when they cannot cope with the actual reading.

lucernarian

From eircom's formula, 46 dB is nearly 4 km but I think the attenuation is a little on the high side, when upstream is only 14 dB. If there's a fault, the line may have higher attenuation than normal.

SB, I presume you mean some sort of chippie/pub/nightclub open from 7-12?

I thought I would mention it in the other post but I was too lazy to. Anyway, I know that the street lights come on at some time close to the "light-up times" I'm talking about. But I'm referring to the time given in the back of the Irish Indo (or Times mabye?) for the light-up time. Sunrise and Sunset times are also given. I dont want to buy O'Reilly's paper just for the two times.


Before we can have a proper idea, we need a comparison between when the line is working and when it's not. So it would be pretty helpful if Cooper_Man would give us stats when the line is working.

Liam Byrne

Little-Devil wrote:

You should have gone with Eircom, i know there slow on logging BB faults and issue's, but i would imagine they would have fixed your fault.

:mad: That's bull**** and crap advice! Eircom are charging more than enough for line rental, so they should damn well ensure that ALL line-rental subscribers are treated equally.

The current discrimination against resellers and unbundled lines is a tactic that persists in the precise hope that people will advise what you advised above, which is what eircom are relying on.

Advising someone that they should go with eircom because of this is giving in to that bullying......maybe the price and contention ratios were considerations ? Would you still recommend eircom then ?

Instead of giving in to these tactics, we should we reporting all of these issues to ComReg and TDs and the media in an effort to get the problem resolved properly.

The sooner eircom is broken in two the better......then eircom telephone/broadband supply will be an equal customer for line rental to Smart/UTV/BT/whoever.

Of course, that requires ComReg and useful Government action, which ain't gonna happen...... :mad:

Little-Devil

Liam Byrne wrote:

:mad: That's bull**** and crap advice! Eircom are charging more than enough for line rental, so they should damn well ensure that ALL line-rental subscribers are treated equally.

I've been with eircom for a few years now and never had to contact there helpdesk, speeds are always spot on and great, no complaints. I would recommend them on that Basis.

Just like your Sig, your with Smart and no problems. It doesnt matter who you go with, everyone to there own. The end of the day if you wanna be cheap and pay for crap, then thats your's and everyone else's choice. Eircom may be expensive, but like i said i never had a problem.

Cabaal wrote:

This is a warning, nobody is to post agents names/e-mails or telephone numbers on this board, if you do it will lead to a ban!

If your posting details ensure you have REMOVED these details,

cooper_man, I've removed the BT agent details from your post

Cabaal, i believe the OP should have been banned for this if it was true, what's the point in having rules if there no inforced? They seemed to be inforced in most if not all of the other threads. Just my opinion.

Liam Byrne

Little-Devil wrote:

The end of the day if you wanna be cheap and pay for crap, then thats your's and everyone else's choice

That never even entered the equation.....cheaper than eircom (for broadband) doesn't mean crap, as I have found out, saving €30-odd quid every month for the past 2 years, and getting faster, uncontended speeds into the bargain.....where does the word "crap" apply in that scenario ?

My point, however, was completely different.

Firstly, UTV and BT are eircom resellers, so the packages that the OP refers to are eircom's.

Secondly, if there is an issue with a line (like in the OP's post, or if I had a problem with my line), the fact is that we are still paying line rental to eircom, and they should be forced to sort it out.

You appeared to suggest that the line rental arm of eircom give preferential treatment to sorting out lines for eircom phone/broadband customers, implying that the OP should have stayed with eircom as they would then have had no problems.

If this is not what you were implying, then please accept my apologies, however if you were not suggesting that there was a perceived advantage to the OP to staying with eircom then your post and advice were irrelevant, as staying with eircom would not have avoided or minimised the problem, or gotten it solved quicker or easier.

If eircom are indeed slower to sort out line problems when the subscriber is not also an eircom phone/broadband customer, then it is completely unacceptable, since €24 quid or so of our service charge is going directly to them.

If the line doesn't work, the only reference to "paying for crap" would refer to that line, which still costs you an extortionate €24.

Eircom may be expensive, but like i said i never had a problem.

I can respect that (unless you view, as I do, paying over the odds, slower speeds and contention as problems) but as I said above it wasn't really my point.....regardless of who your phone and broadband is with, you're being charged more than enough for the line rental - TO EIRCOM - and all line rental customers (i.e. EVERYONE) should be treated equally.

Sponge Bob

I am not with eircom , I save money and I have not contacted eircom support either or any other BB support for that matter .

Any faults I had were network decrepitude issues.

Fortunately I know the local engineer and he knows I own a chainsaw. Maybe I am just lucky !

MickyJoe

What are the line stats like when your DSL is working ?

What area of the country do you live in ?