Anyone on BT getting disconnected every few minutes or is my modem fooked?

 

Cheers

 

Pete

Pete - have you recently upgraded to the max for your line? I did and it took a week to settle down, I think the line connects you at a theoretical max, then disconnects you at a lower speed if this isn't sustainable. This was happening every few mins and was very annoying.

 

If you haven't upgraded then just ignore me!

 

Matt.

Yeah I have! Hopefully that's it then - cheers Matt :cool:

 

How is a gent supposed to Limewire in these conditions :headvswal :D

BTW - my line still disconnects 2-3 times per evening and gives me a lower speed. That's nearly 2 months on. Never did before, I'm wondering if upgrading was the right thing to do!

Ah :(

 

Although since I've posted this, it's been sitting and has not disconnected, and the download speed has settled at much higher than it's been all evening.

Mine took about 4 weeks to settle down when I went to 8MB Pete :rolleyes:

 

Steve :)

8Mb - blimey, you might as well download the whole tinterweb one night then you wont have to connect again :P

 

The BT guy said we'd now be on 4.5Mb max when I spoke to change addresses last week, we were previously limited to 0.5Mb because of our distance from the exchange or something, despite living in a built up area of Daventry :wack:

 

4.5Mb has turn out to be 1.5Mb :rolleyes: Maybe it'll settle 'up'. Still much quicker than I'm used to though :)

As has been said, if you are now on a Max service it can take a little time to settle down. If the line is really unstable and things are working correctly it should settle within 24 hours, but that assumes you are connected and using the service (and experiencing a problem). Normally it could take a few days to settle and the more time it's in use, the better the analysis of the line.

 

One of the biggest factors that affects this service is the wiring in your home, but there are ways to test if you have a problem and ways to fix it. It's far easier if you have one of the NTE5 boxes where the phone line comes into the house. You can tell because the box is split into 2 and if you undo the bottom screws you can unplug the bottom bit of the phone jack. This effectively disconnects all the wiring in the home and leaves you with a clean line. Inside the NTE5 you should see a phone socket, plug your microfilter into that and then try your modem or router to see if there is any improvement.

 

Another thing that causes problems is bad microfilters and you might not have realised it was knackered on your old fixed rate service, so if you see no improvement after doing the above, try a second filter if you have it.

 

If you still see no improvement and you can borrow a different modem/router, then that's always worth a try depending how desperate you are to eek that extra bit of speed out of your line.

 

Don't forget to ensure you have microfilters on all sockets that something is connected to, including the sky box, fax machines etc. And don't think that your nice shiney new house will be noise free, some of the new houses around have badly laid out wiring with no thought put into how to cut down on background noise. I have run CAT6 cable about my place whilst I had some building work done, it makes a big difference.

 

If you do find things improve with the home wiring unplugged and can live with a wireless router sitting next to the main socket, then it might be time to consider a service specific front plate (SSFP). These things replace the bottom half of your NTE5 and split the line into phone and ADSL as they have a microfilter built in (and tend to be good filters). These SSFP's have two outlets on the front, one for a phone and one for your ADSL. You can still have all your phones around the house, but the SSFP is the only access point for ADSL, but it's about the best set up you can get if you want speed and stability.

 

Of course if you're lucky enough to be close to the exchange you'll likely get an 8M sync rate without any problems and laugh at us poor sods on a long line.

 

Sorry, went on a bit there, but there's a lot of info on the net out there and a lot of it is misleading.

 

Gaz

Excellent info thanks Gaz, yeah it's an old house with what looks like old phone wiring actually. The upstairs phone seems to be hard-wired in :wack: I'm going to pull the maze of phone cable out and simplify it :)

 

Re the microfilters - now you mention it, in our last place we never had a filter for the sky box!

keep checking you speed to see what your getting i went from 2mb to 8 mb and actualy ended up with 0.600-1.2mb and screwed up my service. then i found out i'm not the only one loads of people have had this problem it tokk a month for them to sort mine out and my friend is still waiting after 6 weeks

keep checking you speed to see what your getting i went from 2mb to 8 mb and actualy ended up with 0.600-1.2mb and screwed up my service. then i found out i'm not the only one loads of people have had this problem it tokk a month for them to sort mine out and my friend is still waiting after 6 weeks

 

I'd be interested to know what was done to fix your problem in the end and also what your mates Service Provider is telling them.

 

The cause of dropping to below 1M (I assume this is your sync up rate) could be many factors, one of them is lightning of course, something we've had a bit of recently. But if you find you get a low sync rate every now and then, it's worth seeing if it is at any particular time of day or maybe it just happens at weekends. Even a neighbour switching on something could in theory cause problems if the noise spikes are big enough.

 

The Max service works very differently from a fixed rate service and as such highlights issues with noise and bad filters that won't have been noticed before.

 

Unfortunately because it's quite a complex product I've seen a lot of bad advice out there, so if you have any specific issues, post them here and I'll try to help where I can.

 

Gaz

they never told me. i live in the sticks and this problem i had seems very common when upgrading. my friend is with virgin but the problem is with bt and they are telling him the same rubbish they told me its only "upto" 8meg

Anyone on BT getting disconnected every few minutes or is my modem fooked?

 

Cheers

 

Pete

 

 

Hi, no Broadband or internet connection at all for 2 weeks now. This message is coming from my work line. We were quite happy with Wannadoo at the old pace, but then Orange bought them out and decided to upgrade everyone to a higher speed. Big mistake. We had no choice in the matter and are still internet-less despite several phone calls to Orange's call centres. God knows how much it's cost me in phone bills.

Apparently they are going to send us another modem thingy and if that fails send round an engineer to fix it. How long will that take? I reckon "if it ain't broke don't fix it" and that applies to Z32's as well.

I shall be refusing to pay this month's Broadband bill.

they never told me. i live in the sticks and this problem i had seems very common when upgrading. my friend is with virgin but the problem is with bt and they are telling him the same rubbish they told me its only "upto" 8meg

 

Well at least they got that bit right, yes unfortunately it is an 'upto' 8Mps product and in practice about 25% of people are getting 8M and the average speed of everyone on Max is just over 6Mps. Of course that's no comfort to everyone having problems, but if you follow the advice I posted above, then you can rule out lots of potential problem areas.

Hi, no Broadband or internet connection at all for 2 weeks now. This message is coming from my work line. We were quite happy with Wannadoo at the old pace, but then Orange bought them out and decided to upgrade everyone to a higher speed. Big mistake. We had no choice in the matter and are still internet-less despite several phone calls to Orange's call centres. God knows how much it's cost me in phone bills.

Apparently they are going to send us another modem thingy and if that fails send round an engineer to fix it. How long will that take? I reckon "if it ain't broke don't fix it" and that applies to Z32's as well.

I shall be refusing to pay this month's Broadband bill.

 

 

So what actually happens, does the moden sync up then disconnect straight away or just never sync. What fixed rate service was you on before and if it was a 0.5M service, did you have that because you are a long way from the exchange?. Have you tried connecting the modem where the phone line enters the house (see above post about NTE5's).

 

If the modem is syncing then disconnecting rapidly then my advice would be to leave it plugged in and switched on for at least a day or two as this will help the BT systems determine if anything can be done automatically to stabalize your line.

 

Gaz

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Netgear-DG834G-v2-802-11g-wireless-router-w-ADSL-modem_W0QQitemZ250015154327QQihZ015QQcategoryZ44997QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

Is this the kind of thing I can connect on the other side of the house on it's own to the main phone socket and transmit the connection across to the PC?

 

Cheers :cool:

 

Pete

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Netgear-DG834G-v2-802-11g-wireless-router-w-ADSL-modem_W0QQitemZ250015154327QQihZ015QQcategoryZ44997QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

Is this the kind of thing I can connect on the other side of the house on it's own to the main phone socket and transmit the connection across to the PC?

 

Cheers :cool:

 

Pete

Yep - that'll do the job Pete. Just need a wireless adapter in the PC. Go for an external antenea (wireless USB adapter) rather than a PCI card IMO :)

So what actually happens, does the moden sync up then disconnect straight away or just never sync. What fixed rate service was you on before and if it was a 0.5M service, did you have that because you are a long way from the exchange?. Have you tried connecting the modem where the phone line enters the house (see above post about NTE5's).

 

If the modem is syncing then disconnecting rapidly then my advice would be to leave it plugged in and switched on for at least a day or two as this will help the BT systems determine if anything can be done automatically to stabalize your line.

 

Gaz

 

Yep, we tried disconnecting and reconnecting all the other phone lines in the house, unplugging and re plugging the modem, disconnecting the Sky lead etc.. all to no avail. We were getting NO line at all, even though the two green lights on the modem thingy were on, so we couldn't even Email Orange to tell them the problem. However, finally after hours sitting on the phone Orange did finally send us a new modem thingy to replace our old one that plugs in the back of the computer and sits on the top, and new phone line filters and this seems to have worked. We are now back on line, but what a fiasco. I dont think it's any better or quicker than before.

Yep - that'll do the job Pete. Just need a wireless adapter in the PC. Go for an external antenea (wireless USB adapter) rather than a PCI card IMO :)

 

Nice one thanks Steve :bow: