Advice from a Technical bod please.

[old man]

Having suffered with sporadic drops over the last few years with two different providers I am getting a tad cheesed of having to move the router to the test socket etc. The test socket being in an awkward location. The standard responses from both are it's fine now and the usual 'anyway it's probably at your end and an engineer call out will be £85.'  Not much help really.

When we left BT the response was 'you will be back soon.' 

Anyway, thinking on I need hard evidence of the failures, the internet says Raspberry Pi's can help but only really knowing meat pies from raspberry pies is not that much help. 

So the question is, can anyone please advise in simple terms of a solution to record and log the drops before the last brain cell vapourises? Don't say 'go cable'as I don't want to thank you.

 

 

 

 

[martyn2233]

Old man are you actually losing internet or wireless signal drop out 

 

only asking as I lose wireless connection sometimes but not internet 

Edited June 23, 2018 by martyn2233

[Flyboy1950]

Try any of these :-  https://www.capterra.com/sem-compare/network-monitoring-software?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI8aH33qzp2wIVFRQbCh2mRgyNEAAYASAAEgJJKvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

[old man]

33 minutes ago, martyn2233 said:

Old man are you actually losing internet or wireless signal drop out 

 

only asking as I lose wireless connection sometimes but not internet 

Both I think.

The wireless connection I can work on but the internet drop is a pain.

29 minutes ago, Flyboy1950 said:

Try any of these :-  https://www.capterra.com/sem-compare/network-monitoring-software?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI8aH33qzp2wIVFRQbCh2mRgyNEAAYASAAEgJJKvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

Ta FB, will have to study that. Speak soon.

[williamwansbeck]

had a similar problem went on for 3 years in the end BT renewed cable from post to house socket, and this fixed it.they kept saying it will cost you if the fault is in your house, the engineer who came said thats just to put you off,and if the cable is older than 30 years thats were he always starts.

[screamingdead]

I use a security device https://www.fing.io/fingbox-network-security-appliance/ to monitor speed and dropouts. Might be overkill but very simple to set up and monitor. 

Edited June 23, 2018 by screamingdead

[old man]

Thanks so far but the problem so far is that even the paid services only monitor when a specific computer is on line? We have multiple devices so maybe multiple licences and only recording outages when said device on line?

Maybe Pi better as connected 24 X 7?

[Wb123]

I was impressed with sky when we had frequent drop outs. The better half phoned up and kicked off that she was missing days of work over it and they sent an engineer out in 48h, fixed the problem (inside the house) for free, and gave a good bit of money off. We are on a business connection paid for by her employer though. 

[screamingdead]

The fingbox hardware connects to a network port on the router and monitors the network 24/7. No subscription to pay just the hardware purchase price.

[old man]

4 hours ago, screamingdead said:

The fingbox hardware connects to a network port on the router and monitors the network 24/7. No subscription to pay just the hardware purchase price.

Mm, thanks for that but price a bit steep compared to a Pi.

[wascal]

have you tried the quiet line test number ? -

dial 17070 option 2  it should be almost silent , lots of pops and crackles indicates a bad phone line .

 

[Cranfield]

8 hours ago, williamwansbeck said:

had a similar problem went on for 3 years in the end BT renewed cable from post to house socket, and this fixed it.they kept saying it will cost you if the fault is in your house, the engineer who came said thats just to put you off,and if the cable is older than 30 years thats were he always starts.

A very similar thing happened to me, they told me the bit about "in your house problem" costs would be charged to me, but I went for it and the Engineer had to change the box on the pole outside my place. He reckoned it was solid with rust and he was surprised it even worked.

Get an Engineer out.

[JohnfromUK]

17 hours ago, williamwansbeck said:

had a similar problem went on for 3 years in the end BT renewed cable from post to house socket, and this fixed it.they kept saying it will cost you if the fault is in your house, the engineer who came said thats just to put you off,and if the cable is older than 30 years thats were he always starts.

This is similar to what happened to me, but 3 months, not years.  My cable insulation was flaking off where the linecame down the wall and letting water contact the copper core.  Mine was especially bad when it rained.

 

9 hours ago, wascal said:

have you tried the quiet line test number ? -

dial 17070 option 2  it should be almost silent , lots of pops and crackles indicates a bad phone line .

I had the line noise - especially bad when it rained and the line down the wall was wet.  Sounded like crumpling up newspaper!

[old man]

Thanks again so far.

17070 quiet.

Edited June 24, 2018 by old man

[stuartc44]

Some routers keep logs of internet connection drops, errors etc. Try logging in to the router and look for status / support area. Also see if you can find snr margin / noise info, it indicates how much noise there is on the phone line, whilst broadband will 'work' with noise on the line it can cause problems such as drops in connections.

[Munzy]

20 hours ago, old man said:

Mm, thanks for that but price a bit steep compared to a Pi.

Apologies if you already know this but the Pi is just a basic computer.

You can install some software onto it and have it do various network tests and monitoring, however, out of the box it is very simply a PCB and some chips, you’ll need to install an operating system, then some software and configure it all. I doubt it’s what you actually want in order to solve your issue.

[old man]

Thanks again. I am thinking of a Pi running as a server to highlight and record all drops. Being a computer thickie is not easy but still working on it.

Will maybe speak local computer bod and get one built. Kugelfish makes it look easy for a 5 year old.

[oi69]

This is what i do now for a living. First thing is to establish if there is a problem with the cable where it enters the house i normally check it at the point where it first attaches to the house if there is a little box up there i get in there and check the line. If there is no problem at the little box its internal if there is its external and you cant say where BT will say there liability starts and stops i have heard it all from them cable at edge of garden cable where it attaches to house they make it all up. I also check the internet as there is a setting called SNR this is always set at 6 when you have a new internet put in but if there is a problem it goes up trying to fix the problem and can be as high as 35. The higher the SNR goes trying to fix a problem the slower the internet goes so as the SNR goes up trying to fix a problem the speed goes down. Now if you have had a problem on the line that has been fixed the SNR could have gone up to say 20 but it never comes back down again unless the line is reset and normally the engineers just fix what causes the problem and thats it with no reset of the line. You could ask for a reset of the line to be done which puts you back in the training period as if you have had a new line installed. As for the £85 for the call out thats not bad BT upto £150 and i charge at least £60 if local but after 3 weeks of people messing about with there provider hrs on the phone being baffled getting no where they pay up no problem just to get the info of whos fault it really is.

[old man]

2 minutes ago, oi69 said:

This is what i do now for a living. First thing is to establish if there is a problem with the cable where it enters the house i normally check it at the point where it first attaches to the house if there is a little box up there i get in there and check the line. If there is no problem at the little box its internal if there is its external and you cant say where BT will say there liability starts and stops i have heard it all from them cable at edge of garden cable where it attaches to house they make it all up. I also check the internet as there is a setting called SNR this is always set at 6 when you have a new internet put in but if there is a problem it goes up trying to fix the problem and can be as high as 35. The higher the SNR goes trying to fix a problem the slower the internet goes so as the SNR goes up trying to fix a problem the speed goes down. Now if you have had a problem on the line that has been fixed the SNR could have gone up to say 20 but it never comes back down again unless the line is reset and normally the engineers just fix what causes the problem and thats it with no reset of the line. You could ask for a reset of the line to be done which puts you back in the training period as if you have had a new line installed. As for the £85 for the call out thats not bad BT upto £150 and i charge at least £60 if local but after 3 weeks of people messing about with there provider hrs on the phone being baffled getting no where they pay up no problem just to get the info of whos fault it really is.

Thanks bud. Hopefully all solved now.

Was their end.

[oi69]

it normally is out of 100 jobs i go to i doubt 5 are customers fault i hate telling them its BT fault here is your bill thanks

[RockySpears]

OK, just maybe to add a bit of learning:

  If you are not cable, you are probably ****e

  Nnothing more.

If you are are on a new cable network, with a new cable to the house, not a pole, not old BT/Telecom/****e, chances are that if you are not within 1-2Km of the exchange, you are going to get **** Broad Band.  End of story.

  Want to know where your exchange is?  Check Sam:  https://availability.samknows.com/broadband/exchange_mapping

  At work, you will have 4 pairs of twisted cable, newer places will have 4 pairs of shielded, twisted, cable.  You are given 100 Mb with this cabling, have been for 20 years.

Telephone lines are 1 pair of crappy, solid core, maybe copper, maybe aluminium, maybe 2 ANYTHING THEY COULD LAY THEIR HANDS ON **** IN THE UGANDA COPPER CRISIS.

BT, Vodacrap, Orange ****, Talk ****, etc ****, etc **** ALL use the crappy wires to your house.   Cable companies, that have laid their own cables , stand head and shoulders above these;  their worst, is better than the others best.

IT DOES NOT MATTER YOUR SUPPLIER.  THEY ALL USE CRAPPY CABLES, unless they have laid new cables to you house, one is the phone, one is the important stuff: TV, Broad Band.

You can choose BT or Talk Talk or "cheapest out there", but if they us the crappy cables that have been at your house for fifty ears, tough.

  Country folk are mostly screwed.  what's new

 

RS

[oi69]

So i take its all down to Crappy cables (like i didnt know that even the customers know that) Where does at work come into it its the same cable there??? (unless its isdn30 over fiber) I went to a brand new build house last week still same old crappy cable not seen any shielded cables been put in anywhere Domestic/Business all the same infrastructure. BT are only installing to new build places G.Fast and thats only if it is covered by some scheme that pays them to put it in and in dorset i have only heard of 1 new build estate that has it in giving the customer the choice of adsl/vdsl/g.fast and all over fiber installed direct to the house but it will be years before they upgrade the other  people because of the expense.