Conectivity problem ISP cant solve

Associate
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20 Apr 2008
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Nr Liverpool, Uk
Hi All,

I have fiber broadband and was on BT but got fed up with the high price, so i moved to Talktalk and to be honest the 1st 6 months were fine.

After 6 months i all the devices both wireless and hard wired would constantly loose connectivity but on checking the router it would say ive been connected 10 days etc and no errors in the routers log

I reported it to talktalk and gave them times and dates it was happening and they would get a engineer to check it but would not find any disconnection issues, eventually they sent me a new router and it worked fine for 2 days then the same thing happened again doping connection approx 1-2 times an hour.

today i spoke to a CEO and a senior engineer (because I reported it to the internet Ombudsman) and was told because of the very high usage they think the supplied router cant handle the throughput and i would be better to buy and high end router in the range of £100-200

so am i being fobbed off? as I don't want to spend that sort of money to still have this problem ( didn't have it with BT)
 
Soldato
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11 Oct 2009
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Greater London
TalkTalk routers are usually cheap quality with low features. Do you still have the BT hub? You could try set that up as an access point (change the IP to something different from the TalkTalk, and disable the DHCP server) and connect that to the TalkTalk router via cable (make sure to use the LAN port on the BT and not the WAN port), then disable the wifi on the TalkTalk router. That would be the free method if you can't spend that sort of money.
 
Soldato
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12,096
What high usage? Is it very high? What are you doing to make it high? If it was okay for six months did the usage change at that point to cause an issue?

Try reducing the usage down to a 'normal' level for a few days. Does the problem go away?
 
Associate
OP
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Nr Liverpool, Uk
Ive got the bt hub set as an wifi access point already,
today i turned off all downloaders and the only thing that is using the inter net is
1 Iphone
1 pc playing Tera online
I just got disconnected. router say connected 1 day still
 
Soldato
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2 Oct 2012
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3,246
Sounds like a faulty router. Modem which is part of the router as it's a modem/router combi the modem part is staying connected but it looks like the router side of things is dropping connectivity. Any chance you can turn your TT router into bridge mode and have the BT router handle routing? Or just grab your details from TT as in Internet account name and password. Usually [email protected] for example and then a password. Configure the BT router and try that?

edit - just noticed they sent a new router. Could be what they said about it not handling multiple devices but you have tried restricting devices. Id still give the BT router a try with your TT details if that worked fine on BT? If the Issue arises on the BT router too then it's something on the line. I forgot what it's called where it appears your connected but keeps dropping connection for you. Could be one of TT access racks causing issues. Usually you have to leave your equipment disconnected for at least half a hour to ensure connection to a new access rack.
 
Man of Honour
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30 Jun 2005
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London Town!
This is potentially a semi-known problem with the network where the network thinks you've disconnected and your router thinks you're still connected. Your issue will be getting Talk talk (or any consumer ISP) to recognise that this is a genuine issue rather than user error.

I don't really have any suggestions apart from using an ISP who're prepared to chase the problem to resolution unfortunately...
 
Associate
OP
Joined
20 Apr 2008
Posts
116
Location
Nr Liverpool, Uk
Sounds like a faulty router. Modem which is part of the router as it's a modem/router combi the modem part is staying connected but it looks like the router side of things is dropping connectivity. Any chance you can turn your TT router into bridge mode and have the BT router handle routing? Or just grab your details from TT as in Internet account name and password. Usually [email protected] for example and then a password. Configure the BT router and try that?

edit - just noticed they sent a new router. Could be what they said about it not handling multiple devices but you have tried restricting devices. Id still give the BT router a try with your TT details if that worked fine on BT? If the Issue arises on the BT router too then it's something on the line. I forgot what it's called where it appears your connected but keeps dropping connection for you. Could be one of TT access racks causing issues. Usually you have to leave your equipment disconnected for at least half a hour to ensure connection to a new access rack.

Thanks that worked a treat, left my router off for the night and 2 days no problems now
 
Soldato
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Thanks that worked a treat, left my router off for the night and 2 days no problems now
Glad that worked! :) I remember when i worked for Plusnet they had a couple of access racks that did this which took around 2-3 weeks to resolve i even discovered one my self. Shows as connected but people could not access the internet. I used to force the connection to drop by killing it at plusnet/BT side until i saw a new connection establish on a new access rack. Only way a user can do it is keeping the connection dead for at least half a hour by turning router/modem off.
 
Associate
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Salisbury, Wilts
Glad that worked! :) I remember when i worked for Plusnet they had a couple of access racks that did this which took around 2-3 weeks to resolve i even discovered one my self. Shows as connected but people could not access the internet. I used to force the connection to drop by killing it at plusnet/BT side until i saw a new connection establish on a new access rack. Only way a user can do it is keeping the connection dead for at least half a hour by turning router/modem off.

Work for an Wholesale ISP and my company call this a "PPP reset".

PPP/Layer 2 goes stale/dies on the ISP side, the Exchange thinks PPP is up as a KBD test shows current working session on the Port which likely mis-matches the uptime on the bRAS as the customer has rebooted the router. Customer still has no Internet despite service showing online. Advise a simple switch off for 30mins and when customer powers back on the Router it re-establishes a fresh PPP/Layer 2 with the ISP and away they go.

Shawrey.
 
Soldato
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I used to have a similar issue with the BT Home Hub 5, just constantly dropping out for no real reason, syncing wireless devices at crappy speeds, etc. Just bought a proper router/AP instead.
 
Soldato
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2 Oct 2012
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3,246
Work for an Wholesale ISP and my company call this a "PPP reset".

PPP/Layer 2 goes stale/dies on the ISP side, the Exchange thinks PPP is up as a KBD test shows current working session on the Port which likely mis-matches the uptime on the bRAS as the customer has rebooted the router. Customer still has no Internet despite service showing online. Advise a simple switch off for 30mins and when customer powers back on the Router it re-establishes a fresh PPP/Layer 2 with the ISP and away they go.

Shawrey.
Cheers mate, yea i forgot about stale connections. Sometimes you can see two connections in KBD too, i remember that blowing my mind.
 
Associate
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Salisbury, Wilts
Cheers mate, yea i forgot about stale connections. Sometimes you can see two connections in KBD too, i remember that blowing my mind.

That's correct yeah! Sometimes if a number of re-auth's have happened you can see these sessions in the IP connectivity table where the Exchange hasn't disconnected them from the ISP automatically. Eventually these are sure to go stale and cause the 'live' session to go stale.

Shawrey
 
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