Rotaxengine
Casual Member
Hi I am new to this forum but sure someone can help me with my drop out problem!
About 4 years ago we had a problem with broadband outages. Bottom line was the wire was rubbing on the trees on the way to us and Openreach dropped a loop wire between two poles to overcome the problem - fine.
On 27th February this year I reported a problem with dropout again and told them what was said 4 years ago - The engineer said ( 4 years ago) the fault was on their side. They found exposed wires rubbing against a tree on the road up to us. They connected a new wire around the trees to sort the problem by bypassing the damaged cable. That is still there today as far as I can see when we drive up and down and being stretched by over hanging trees.
Since then I have been getting noticeable broadband outages and now seem to be coming to a dead end if solving it with both Openreach and my IPS.
Both have been very helpful but I still have the problem.
Let's get some facts on the table.
I do not have a landline phone connected to the Openreach main socket. I have no extensions to that socket. I have FTTC and I am 1.8Km from the green box.
I have a Nighthawk AC1900 WiFi VDSL/ADSL Modem Router connected to the Openreach socket. My outage last typically 4-5 mins and reconnects. My down load speed is very constant, when connected about 38M and 1.8 upload.
I have down load a bit of software - pinglogger from www.pinglogger.co.uk. I have been monitoring daily the outage by pinning an IP address (Google.co.uk) at 30 sec intervals with 32Bytes. The software show any outages and the time of that outage - naturally when working I can see the dropping via the LEDs on the router.
I have had the standard comments - your router connecting and disconnecting intermittently, can you hear noise on the phone (which I do not have connected).
I have found but cannot prove, that the outages as related to the wind speed and the rain.
I have had an Openreach engineer out to inspect the connection at my end and agreed to pay
As discussed during our call the engineer has been booked for tomorrow (23-03-2021) AM (8am - 1pm).
The type of engineer that has been booked is FTTx SFI (£165 +VAT).
The engineer will attend the site and carry out a PQT (Pair Quality Test), if this test passes the visit will be chargeable. The engineer may still choose to carry out work on the BT network if this test passes, but this would be considered an enhancement to the network, meaning the visit would still be chargeable.
The engineer found not problems and even tested the connect at the same time as "pulling the trees" He kindly called me back to tell me that. The day he can was a fine still day!
I have electronic record of outages in graphical form as well as in Excel since 10th March.
On the 5th May I contact my ISP again
Sorry to be a pain in the backside but could you have a look at the outages over the last 24hours and even just this morning. I was sitting working and out we go. And what - we just had a hailstone downpour.
Their reply was:
I have spoken to the supplier, and we've run even more diagnostics on the line over the course of today.
There are still no identified faults within the network that the diagnostics can detect. Infact it seems like a very clean line based on the results, with very low errors and whilst we can see that the line does frequently drop out (router disconnecting from exchange) it does not appear to be caused externally (again, based on the diagnostics).
What could I say -
I am more than happy for my Nighthawk to be the problem - so what I have done is at 5pm ( you will see the disconnect and reconnect) discounted this and connected the Openreach box with a N300 Netgear router DGN2200. The system is work fine and lets see what happens.
6th May the next day - The 14th Email
Sorry to say that as you will see there have been a lot of outages since I connected up the Openreach modem and router. Most of these have been overnight, one about 11:30 this morning and a drop at 12:10. I am still running with this configuration.
I accept you have arranged testing your end which I appreciate and accept their results.
I feel the setup at this end is straightforward - no phone connected, no extensions, just one cable from the Openreach master socket to the modem/router and the output into an N-way switch box running to some 9 devices.
When the Openreach engineer was here he naturally had his own test equipment to monitor the line and he found no problems as we know. So is it possible for you to find out what test equipment I need to temporarily install into my Openreach master socket, to ping you directly to monitor any outages? This would or should prove where the problem is - inside the house or outside.
Knowing what I need I am sure I can hire that equipment for a few days.
I guess I need a sealed Dedicated Pinging Logging Modem - DPLM. Yes I have been watching Line of Duty
About 4 years ago we had a problem with broadband outages. Bottom line was the wire was rubbing on the trees on the way to us and Openreach dropped a loop wire between two poles to overcome the problem - fine.
On 27th February this year I reported a problem with dropout again and told them what was said 4 years ago - The engineer said ( 4 years ago) the fault was on their side. They found exposed wires rubbing against a tree on the road up to us. They connected a new wire around the trees to sort the problem by bypassing the damaged cable. That is still there today as far as I can see when we drive up and down and being stretched by over hanging trees.
Since then I have been getting noticeable broadband outages and now seem to be coming to a dead end if solving it with both Openreach and my IPS.
Both have been very helpful but I still have the problem.
Let's get some facts on the table.
I do not have a landline phone connected to the Openreach main socket. I have no extensions to that socket. I have FTTC and I am 1.8Km from the green box.
I have a Nighthawk AC1900 WiFi VDSL/ADSL Modem Router connected to the Openreach socket. My outage last typically 4-5 mins and reconnects. My down load speed is very constant, when connected about 38M and 1.8 upload.
I have down load a bit of software - pinglogger from www.pinglogger.co.uk. I have been monitoring daily the outage by pinning an IP address (Google.co.uk) at 30 sec intervals with 32Bytes. The software show any outages and the time of that outage - naturally when working I can see the dropping via the LEDs on the router.
I have had the standard comments - your router connecting and disconnecting intermittently, can you hear noise on the phone (which I do not have connected).
I have found but cannot prove, that the outages as related to the wind speed and the rain.
I have had an Openreach engineer out to inspect the connection at my end and agreed to pay
As discussed during our call the engineer has been booked for tomorrow (23-03-2021) AM (8am - 1pm).
The type of engineer that has been booked is FTTx SFI (£165 +VAT).
The engineer will attend the site and carry out a PQT (Pair Quality Test), if this test passes the visit will be chargeable. The engineer may still choose to carry out work on the BT network if this test passes, but this would be considered an enhancement to the network, meaning the visit would still be chargeable.
The engineer found not problems and even tested the connect at the same time as "pulling the trees" He kindly called me back to tell me that. The day he can was a fine still day!
I have electronic record of outages in graphical form as well as in Excel since 10th March.
On the 5th May I contact my ISP again
Sorry to be a pain in the backside but could you have a look at the outages over the last 24hours and even just this morning. I was sitting working and out we go. And what - we just had a hailstone downpour.
Their reply was:
I have spoken to the supplier, and we've run even more diagnostics on the line over the course of today.
There are still no identified faults within the network that the diagnostics can detect. Infact it seems like a very clean line based on the results, with very low errors and whilst we can see that the line does frequently drop out (router disconnecting from exchange) it does not appear to be caused externally (again, based on the diagnostics).
What could I say -
I am more than happy for my Nighthawk to be the problem - so what I have done is at 5pm ( you will see the disconnect and reconnect) discounted this and connected the Openreach box with a N300 Netgear router DGN2200. The system is work fine and lets see what happens.
6th May the next day - The 14th Email
Sorry to say that as you will see there have been a lot of outages since I connected up the Openreach modem and router. Most of these have been overnight, one about 11:30 this morning and a drop at 12:10. I am still running with this configuration.
I accept you have arranged testing your end which I appreciate and accept their results.
I feel the setup at this end is straightforward - no phone connected, no extensions, just one cable from the Openreach master socket to the modem/router and the output into an N-way switch box running to some 9 devices.
When the Openreach engineer was here he naturally had his own test equipment to monitor the line and he found no problems as we know. So is it possible for you to find out what test equipment I need to temporarily install into my Openreach master socket, to ping you directly to monitor any outages? This would or should prove where the problem is - inside the house or outside.
Knowing what I need I am sure I can hire that equipment for a few days.
I guess I need a sealed Dedicated Pinging Logging Modem - DPLM. Yes I have been watching Line of Duty