Vodafone Broadband connection dropping

BrianHal

Looks like I tempted fate alright. Connection drops are back with a vengence. I tried the three ADSL settings together and then tried ADSL2+ on its own. Also I tried the G.dmt setting and for every case the router wouldn't get passed Handshaking status. Saying that, when I checked them all back on it wouldn't pass Handshaking either.
I rebooted the router after each change to make sure the settings were being applied.

I'm resorting to doing updates from my phone now since the connections are dropping so frequently.

Time to change provider????

lucernarian

For your issue Brian, have you opened a thread in the talk to: Vodafone forum? Add a link to this thread if necessary. They'll probably want you to do basic troubleshooting steps but it looks like you've done them already.

Vodafone will need to do some serious troubleshooting on this and indeed they should send out some sort of staff to look at this with proper monitoring equipment.

You could also tune a medium wave radio to 612 KHz and muck around with it to see if there is loud noise or interference on the frequency(it's supposed to be blank) when the radio is in the house or outside it etc. In other words, you can use an MW radio to track down sources of DSL interference.

I'm still thinking that there is either some serious interference in the area which Vodafone/eircom wholesale/ComReg/you and your AM radio will have to investigate, or the exchange equipment is faulty.

BrianHal

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

For your issue Brian, have you opened a thread in the talk to: Vodafone forum? Add a link to this thread if necessary. They'll probably want you to do basic troubleshooting steps but it looks like you've done them already.

Vodafone will need to do some serious troubleshooting on this and indeed they should send out some sort of staff to look at this with proper monitoring equipment.

You could also tune a medium wave radio to 612 KHz and muck around with it to see if there is loud noise or interference on the frequency(it's supposed to be blank) when the radio is in the house or outside it etc. In other words, you can use an MW radio to track down sources of DSL interference.

I'm still thinking that there is either some serious interference in the area which Vodafone/eircom wholesale/ComReg/you and your AM radio will have to investigate, or the exchange equipment is faulty.

Opened a thread in the Vodafone forum... http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=72835136#post72835136

BrianHal

It's been a while but just wanted to give an update on my situation. Around last November I noticed that my hugely unreliable Vodafone broadband was not dropping the connection any more. It may have been the case for a bit longer but only took notice of it then. Since then, I'm back to no drops, full speed connection and I did nothing on my end to change the setup.

Whatever Vodafone/eircom have sorted between themselves seems to have worked. I'm slow to contact either as I'm reasonably sure I'll get a nonsence, blame-the-other-party sort of answer. Call me cynical but can you blame me?

lucernarian

BrianHal wrote: »

It's been a while but just wanted to give an update on my situation. Around last November I noticed that my hugely unreliable Vodafone broadband was not dropping the connection any more. It may have been the case for a bit longer but only took notice of it then. Since then, I'm back to no drops, full speed connection and I did nothing on my end to change the setup.

Whatever Vodafone/eircom have sorted between themselves seems to have worked. I'm slow to contact either as I'm reasonably sure I'll get a nonsence, blame-the-other-party sort of answer. Call me cynical but can you blame me?

Care to post the stats of your line currently?? (i.e. line speed, attenuation, signal margins)

donutheadhomer

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

For your issue Brian, have you opened a thread in the talk to: Vodafone forum? Add a link to this thread if necessary. They'll probably want you to do basic troubleshooting steps but it looks like you've done them already.

Vodafone will need to do some serious troubleshooting on this and indeed they should send out some sort of staff to look at this with proper monitoring equipment.

You could also tune a medium wave radio to 612 KHz and muck around with it to see if there is loud noise or interference on the frequency(it's supposed to be blank) when the radio is in the house or outside it etc. In other words, you can use an MW radio to track down sources of DSL interference.

I'm still thinking that there is either some serious interference in the area which Vodafone/eircom wholesale/ComReg/you and your AM radio will have to investigate, or the exchange equipment is faulty.

why 612?

cinnamono

Our broadband is a disaster with Vodafone, it really is. We're in Ashtown and I realise that technically Eircom control the actual lines here.

In peak times I understand there can be congestion and slower speeds, but we have 7mb broadband and in the evenings and at weekends it won't even download above 100k, we can't even stream on Sky Go without it constantly disconnecting, and in fact of late the broadband itself keeps stalling and disconnecting.

Awful service, surely I can request the contract be ended so I can switch services at this stage?

lucernarian

EurasianBadger wrote: »

why 612?

I'm pretty sure that's a blank frequency so you should hear only a small amount of continuous noise or hissing (if any)

BrianHal

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

Care to post the stats of your line currently?? (i.e. line speed, attenuation, signal margins)

Is this what you were looking for?
Mode: G.DMT
Line Coding: Trellis On
Status: Connected
Link Power State: L0

Downstream Upstream
SNR Margin (dB): 7.4 23.0
Attenuation (dB): 25.0 14.0
Power (dBm): 19.7 11.9
Attainable Rate (Kbps): 8800 1136
Rate (Kbps): 8128 512
K (number of bytes in DMT frame): 255 17
R (number of check bytes in RS code word): 0 0
S (RS code word size in DMT frame): 1 1
D (interleaver depth): 1 1
Delay (msec): 0 0

Super Frames: 270368030 252645106
Super Frame Errors: 374 0
RS Words: 0 0
RS Correctable Errors: 0 0
RS Uncorrectable Errors: 0 N/A

HEC Errors: 159 0
OCD Errors: 0 0
LCD Errors: 0 0
Total Cells: 2210024600 0
Data Cells: 1027658494 0
Bit Errors: 0 0

Total ES: 365 0
Total SES: 0 0
Total UAS: 25 0

BrianHal

Just following up on this... I switched to Sky Broadband last January and haven't had a problem since. My conclusion is that it is Vodafone's problem and not eircom; no matter how much they try to blame line strength, or whatever other excuse they come up with to get their tech support guy off the phone.

Kencollins

The Vodafone HG556A is an absolute pile of crap too. The switching that goes on inside it is worrying too, I cant see why it needs to click on DSL connection either.

If anyone is having issues with this modem, I would recommend trying to find an eircom router and put the vodafone settings into it. I have done this for a few people, and they could not believe the difference in reliability and performance!

I think the HG556A is just trying to be too much...router, printer server, 3g modem, dsl model, and everything else!

Calebmcd

In the same situation here too. Past month i've had useless broadband.

Youtube is terrible, Skype disconnects. PS3 and BF3 lags like hell.
I started months ago being told i was capable of 21mb.

Then i was dropped to 17, 15, 12, 9 and then 8. Its still no good.

I have an upload of .9 which is great but other than that and my pings of 120 - 300. 33 on good days.

My stats are 24 att/ 9 snr

They used to be 22/15 @ 21mb with a ping of 30.
On 8mb ADSL it was 12ms.

All I keep getting told now is my line cant get the high speeds. Never should have. But i got then. Had 16mb - 18mb on average. on 21mb sync.

Now its 2 - 6 on a 8+ with awful pings. and jitter.

Line always comes back as fine on there side from 21mb and down. I always thought maybe NTU. But still waiting and paying for something that doesn't work. or worked great now for 3 months now.

Had Zyxel, netopia, vodafone routers and bought a Netgear 3700 which is great. And to prove its not my side. As they always blamed my devices. So all thats left is the NTU.

lucernarian

Smells like a line fault. Keep pursuing the problem, or file a complaint with them. That line should handle 10 Mbps ADSL2 no problem. It's also possible that other things like electromagnetic interference from a bad street light or else crosstalk from other lines in the bundle of wires inside larger cables.