A curious thing, yet again. - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2013, 11:51:10 am
content: My internet went down yet again on the night of the 15th October. Spent the best part of the following day on the phone to BT. In the end they arranged for what they term a "Boost Engineer" to visit on the 18th at 8 am. Just ten minuets before he arrives the internet goes back on, he says this is his first call of the morning and that he has done nothing to bring the internet back on.This is the third time that this has happened and twice this year. He phoned whoever he phones and is told that they have done nothing as well. Any one have any ideas as to what is going on.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2013, 11:58:37 am
content: They were working on another cable in the area and accidentally broke yours, or there is a poor connection in a street box or in the exchange that remakes when the cabinet is disturbed. A TDR on the line will tell a lot.

author: Shock
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2013, 12:46:42 pm
content: So 10 mins before he arrived it was up. What time in the morning did you test and confirm exactly it was still down?For example if you booted a computer or rebooted for the first time in the morning it may just look like it was 10mins before he arrived.Let us know exactly what type of internet connection you have there is about a dozen varieties world wide.Assuming it's related to him arriving he could have visited an exchange or inspected a connection box, moved something etc.Perhaps alerted someone else that he was arriving and they could have rebooted some equipment or perhaps seen that there was a work order in to reboot equipment and acted on it.A lot of things get fixed a few days later because of service agreement response times.So while it could be a mystery problem, it can be an easy fix by the time the deadline arrives. Some companies won't lift a finger until higher priority work is done or try to avoid setting a precedence of speedy fixes.If you had to paid for a call out or an unnecessary call out then it could even be revenue related.I've seen both sides of it. Techs and customers both tell good stories.

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2013, 01:54:30 pm
content: ADSL. It was down alright it would not sync and that was remotely confirmed bt BT. I did not turn on the computer until after the Boost Engineer arrived, the light on the router which had been flashing orange indicating that the thing was trying to sync. was orange when I looked at it in the morning and then when the boost engineer phoned to say that he was on his way the light had turned blue. He was perplexed as well but the event log from the router showed exactly when it connected.

author: c4757p
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2013, 02:27:17 pm
content: Isn't it nice how when you tell them you have a recurring problem, and it's not acting up when they stop by, they don't do anything to investigate it?Mine goes down frequently in the summer on hot days, I figure due to thermal expansion of some connector or whatever. Tech comes out, wiggles something up on the telephone pole, all is good. Tech leaves. Surely it would cost them less to replace whatever is faulty than to send a guy climbing up my telephone pole every single time it stops working...

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2013, 02:58:47 pm
content: It's beginning to feel like someone at BT is trying to jerk my strings and turning the internet off and then on again just in time for the boost engineer to arrive ( why they are called boost engineers I don't know) they certainly aren't engineers or even tech's the one that came yesterday was nothing more than a linesman, They rely on what their box of tricks tell them, and can't think outside of it.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2013, 03:51:00 pm
content: To replace an entire line box with one or two intermittent Krone blocks is not going to be done. Best is if you have a good relation with your local tech and have him clean all the connections to the exchange. With ours they replaced all the blocks in the building, and then in the street box they took our lines out of the frame and scotchlocked them direct to reduce the problems caused by the 40 year old 3M punch blocks vibrating loose.

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2013, 04:00:35 pm
content: I dont have a street cabinet, there are two poles from the house then the cable goes into the main trunk cable that goes to the exchange so other than the two overhead drops all the cable is underground. The man that came yesterday commented that if it was a cable fault he was going to have a hard job tracing it as he was not even sure where the cable ran, I think that it could go back to WW2 when they built the West Raynham airfield which is now closed. We do not even have 3G around here let alone 4G which is being heavily advertised on TV the only alternative for me is satelite connection.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2013, 08:23:34 pm
content: If the cable is that old then it is likely to be a bad joint somewhere in the lead cable underground. There should be a cable map in the exchange, otherwise there will be a map in a central office that will need to be found, or they will have to bring out a cable tracer and walk along from the exchange. Simplest is to go from the patch point and use another pair and hope it is still working. At least as you are in an old area there is not going to be any aluminium cable, just good old copper and paper insulated cable. Most likely point for a poor connection is where it joins the feeder, and any other junction on the way to the exchange.

author: KJDS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 20, 2013, 11:24:48 am
content: I've seen a few old lines with aluminium cable. Hopeless for getting bandwidth on a long run die to the loss.

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 20, 2013, 02:20:47 pm
content: I seem to get more bandwidth than would expected for the line. But I am still having to restart the modem/router or hub as BT call it at least once a day as the speed drops until the internet just about no longer works after a re-sync is forced trough restarting the hub the speed increases for a while.

author: Shock
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 20, 2013, 02:33:30 pm
content: I'm pretty confidant he stopped by the exchange on the way to your house and whatever was done there fixed you.There is no way they would waste time coming directly out without visiting the exchange first to see if everything is up.He might have dismissed it or he might not want to admit the actual problem (e.g. customers been down 2 days and we flicked a switch)In case you didn't know some ADSL routers have advanced logs (sometimes you need to telnet into them) and can show the handshake process and heartbeat.While you cannot guarantee to see when it's the router vs exchange vs cabling problem, you can generally deduce from recording good several synch speeds and a "when working" copy of the from boot to synch router logs.Hopefully your aware that you require filters either in the wall socket or inline before every phone so they don't interfere with the ADSL connection. Make sure also your ADSL connection is unfiltered.Then there is your connection distance to the exchange. Every 1000M by road you are away from the exchange quality goes down by about 20% cumulatively.If you haven't got a telco line test of the copper you should get this done (call service or faults etc). You might want to get one with and without devices connected.Talk to the operator nicely and get them to provide the test they are performing and the results. Record it.If it continues and you cannot deduce anything, request that they redo the connections at the wall, demarcation point and curbside.Let that go for a while and then if still problems move you over onto a port that hasn't had issues on it and flag you old port as suspect.When your ADSL goes down next it's the best time for comparative line test to show working vs not.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 20, 2013, 02:34:10 pm
content: Do you have a spare modem to test with? In my area, Time Warner is infamous for sending out modems that break down in a year or two. Once they started charging a fee for renting the modem, I decided to just buy a good one and return their junk.Also log in and get the signal stats.

author: Shock
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 20, 2013, 02:51:07 pm
content: Quote from: G7PSK on October 20, 2013, 02:20:47 pmI just read this. In the rare case you have this exact problem. Ports can have firmware/software problems where they lock up if certain string of data passes through them.You can attempt to reproduce by trying this:If you browse the web after a full router reboot and everything is fine and appear to have no problems.Try then viewing a lot of large images and look for any breaks/lines in them. You web browser should display them with a connectionless protocol so the problem data gets skipped. In some larger files this would result in corruption as well.If you go to download a large file from somewhere using a connection orientated protocol such as FTP or in software that retries when data is dropped or missing the computer will keep requesting the same problem data and it will hit the port at the exchange over and over until the port hangs/crashes/reboots.This on your computer looks like your downloading something quite fast then it just goes slower slower then dies and your ADSL either starts rebooting to handshake (if configured that way) or stays down until you reboot it.They reason for checking on larger connection orientated downloads is it increases the chance of failure. If you have this fault you can reproduce it by downloading the exact file again.You need to get your port re-flashed (corruption) or upgraded at the exchanged or change ports if you have this obscure fault.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 20, 2013, 03:42:18 pm
content: Quote from: G7PSK on October 20, 2013, 02:20:47 pmThat's probably because the Homehub is a complete piece of shit. It's so bad they started putting reboot buttons on them.

author: baljemmett
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 20, 2013, 04:18:32 pm
content: Quote from: Shock on October 20, 2013, 02:51:07 pmI would rather hope not!

author: Shock
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 21, 2013, 06:49:46 am
content: Quote from: baljemmett on October 20, 2013, 04:18:32 pmThis is a test to show this specific ADSL problem. I would say it's very rare and would doubt it's ever properly diagnosed.The bad thing is if you have a faulty port and they move you, then the next customer to sign up to ADSL gets all your problems.

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 21, 2013, 08:15:26 am
content: I have tried looking at large images, all that I can see is that they load slowly in stages just like they used to do with dial up, if any one remembers that the image starts at the top and spreads down the page in jerks.

author: Shock
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 27, 2013, 08:15:05 pm
content: Quote from: G7PSK on October 20, 2013, 02:20:47 pmI took what you said literally word for word. If you aren't exactly sure of what is happening speed wise it's probably not this problem at all.But again it's like a line of data missing in the image so looks like a glitch. This will not affect the speed till you download a file that has error correction, FTP for instance.The indicator is your download speed goes slower and slower till it auto reboots or hangs and you see the other end being non responsive in logs. It's only if all those things occur at once.Otherwise what I said earlier is a good plan of attack. Something to add, line filters also have a life expectancy.https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/a-curious-thing-yet-again/msg313469/#msg313469