Reynard
Guru
- Location
- Cambridgeshire, UK
As I've mentioned over on the Mundane News thread, I'm having some rather irritating problems with my internet and phone, and I just want to pick some brains - assuming there are some comms whizzes on here. Please bear with me while I explain...
For the last week or so, my broadband kept on dropping out. Not during the day in the main, usually late evening / early morning. The internet status light on my router was off and the one for the broadband was blinking. Sometimes the connection would come back of its own accord, sometimes not, necessitating a reboot of the router. Speed was down to a quarter of what it usually is.
I've had this happen before when the weather is really hot, but usually it rights itself after a day or two. Not this time. (I do not have this problem at all during cooler / cold weather.)
I unplugged everything else (two phones, one corded, one cordless) and changed the filter on the master socket - where the router is plugged in.
That seemed to sort it for a couple of days, but then the problem returned with a vengeance. So I plugged the router into the test socket instead. That has solved the stability of the connection, but what I have is glacially slow - about a tenth of what it should be. After three days of a stable connection, it should have begun to speed up, surely?
The other issue is the landline. The dial tone has been on the quiet side of late, and a wee bit crackly, but nothing I can't live with. We're very rural here, several miles from the nearest exchange btw.
I plugged in a cordless phone to the filter attached to the test socket. That gave me a lovely loud dial tone. Then I tried a corded one which did the same. So I left it plugged in - it's kinda handy to have a connected phone when the downstairs extensions are out of the loop. When I tried it this morning, it was as dead as a doornail. A Grand Prix and a football match later, I try the cordless phone at the master socket - which works. And a quick try of the downstairs corded phone (which is fixed to the wall) using an extension cable also worked.
While I was at it, I did a quiet line test. Which was, well, quiet.
Now, I think I've successfully rules out any equipment problems (filters, router, computer) and I'm left with either an internal fault or an external fault:
1) About ten-ish years ago, the (late) male parental unit had someone come and add a repeater bell and an extra two port socket downstairs. This circuit is connected to the original downstairs phone socket. It rarely gets used, so I could quite happily remove it if it's causing some kind of interference.
2) The external line comes off the pole and attaches itself to the house just under the eaves, then goes into the box. A cable runs from the box, round the corner and along the edge of the roof before it goes into the house. The box is quite an old one - it has the T in a circle symbol on it - and is in direct sunlight until the late afternoon / early evening.
3) Some of the things I've been experiencing point to a broken / damaged external wire, but I can't be 100% certain of that.
I've almost run out of things to try that I can think of. Thing is, I want to definitively rule out an internal fault before I book a BT engineer as I don't want to have to pony up the hundred and something quid unnecessarily. I could seriously use some thoughts / suggestions here.
P.S. Sorry about the long post, this thing's been driving me potty...
For the last week or so, my broadband kept on dropping out. Not during the day in the main, usually late evening / early morning. The internet status light on my router was off and the one for the broadband was blinking. Sometimes the connection would come back of its own accord, sometimes not, necessitating a reboot of the router. Speed was down to a quarter of what it usually is.
I've had this happen before when the weather is really hot, but usually it rights itself after a day or two. Not this time. (I do not have this problem at all during cooler / cold weather.)
I unplugged everything else (two phones, one corded, one cordless) and changed the filter on the master socket - where the router is plugged in.
That seemed to sort it for a couple of days, but then the problem returned with a vengeance. So I plugged the router into the test socket instead. That has solved the stability of the connection, but what I have is glacially slow - about a tenth of what it should be. After three days of a stable connection, it should have begun to speed up, surely?
The other issue is the landline. The dial tone has been on the quiet side of late, and a wee bit crackly, but nothing I can't live with. We're very rural here, several miles from the nearest exchange btw.
I plugged in a cordless phone to the filter attached to the test socket. That gave me a lovely loud dial tone. Then I tried a corded one which did the same. So I left it plugged in - it's kinda handy to have a connected phone when the downstairs extensions are out of the loop. When I tried it this morning, it was as dead as a doornail. A Grand Prix and a football match later, I try the cordless phone at the master socket - which works. And a quick try of the downstairs corded phone (which is fixed to the wall) using an extension cable also worked.
While I was at it, I did a quiet line test. Which was, well, quiet.
Now, I think I've successfully rules out any equipment problems (filters, router, computer) and I'm left with either an internal fault or an external fault:
1) About ten-ish years ago, the (late) male parental unit had someone come and add a repeater bell and an extra two port socket downstairs. This circuit is connected to the original downstairs phone socket. It rarely gets used, so I could quite happily remove it if it's causing some kind of interference.
2) The external line comes off the pole and attaches itself to the house just under the eaves, then goes into the box. A cable runs from the box, round the corner and along the edge of the roof before it goes into the house. The box is quite an old one - it has the T in a circle symbol on it - and is in direct sunlight until the late afternoon / early evening.
3) Some of the things I've been experiencing point to a broken / damaged external wire, but I can't be 100% certain of that.
I've almost run out of things to try that I can think of. Thing is, I want to definitively rule out an internal fault before I book a BT engineer as I don't want to have to pony up the hundred and something quid unnecessarily. I could seriously use some thoughts / suggestions here.
P.S. Sorry about the long post, this thing's been driving me potty...
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