Can't stay online for >30s

[sjt269]

Copy and paste from my post on another forum:



Right, this time I need help with my internet connection. It got upgraded to somewhere between 6 and 8Mb a few months back, and we got BT Vision as well (glorified Freeview with a hard drive recorder and on-demand TV - only cost us £1 since my dad works for BT). Up until I transferred the computers across to the BT Home Hub (from a Netgear router), I could get 6Mb on speedtests. I never came close to maxing out the connection in general day-to-day use though, even on torrents - I think BT cap the bandwidth on P2P programs. But I digress...

So I switched across to the Home Hub, and I struggled to get 1.5Mb speeds. I wasn't too happy with this, but as I never max out the connection, I wasn't too worried about it either. Then, a month or so down the line (a few weeks ago), the BT engineer guy comes out to install the BT Vision TV service, and since then, it's all gone to hell.

At the time of the installation, both PCs could connect to the internet fine, and there was no problem, but fairly soon afterwards, they started being disconnected from the router at random intervals. It happens to both PCs, but at different times - mine can be downloading things at 400Kbs while the other PC can't even connect to the router, and this also seems to be completely independant about whether the TV service is being used (it uses the phone line, I think). It's majorly annoying at times - imagine getting halfway through a 300Mb game trailer at 20Kbs, only for the connection to fail, and the download to be lost. Or yesterday and today's problem, when I've been trawling through the entire Ctrl+Alt+Del archive, and I need to reconnect after every single comic strip.

All I need to do to reconnect is go into the software and tell it so reconnect, but this takes around 20 seconds each time, and the connections seem to only be lasting about 30s at the moment. Though as I type this, it seems to have settled down a little again - it might be hours or seconds before it fails again, I dunno.


Anyone got any advice?


Thanks in advance
tTz








And some other details that I forgot to add on that forum - I'm connected wirelessly with a Belkin PCI wireless card (the other PC uses a Netgear USB dongle thing), and the Home Hub is required for that TV service thing, otherwise I'd have junked it and gone back to the Netgear. Just done a speedtest and I'm getting about 2Mb speeds, but only when the connection lasts long enough for it to complete the test. I've already had one reply from the other forum, saying that changing my filters might help. I'm not sure if I've got any spare ones, but I'll give it a go.

 

[J.B]

There are no end of problems with the home hub!
I havent seen this BT vision thing first hand yet, how does it connect to home hub? The only other thing to suggest would be to see if BT have released a new firmware for it.

 

[tolien]

Even if it's temporary, trying the Netgear (or at least trying connecting with a cable rather than wireless) would help narrow down where the problem is.

 

[sjt269]

I havent seen this BT vision thing first hand yet, how does it connect to home hub?

It's just a cable straight from the Home Hub into the TV box gizmo. I haven't looked too closely at it since it was installed tbh.


Another suggestion I had last night (from my mother, no less - I'll be mortified if she solves a tech problem for me) was that the Home Hub is now next to the TV, so that it can connect via cable to the TV box. Apparently it's not wise to put phones next to the TV, so maybe the same thing applies to the Home Hub?

It's been moved away from the TV into an annoyingly prominent place in the room, so we'll see how it goes. I'll maybe give the Netgear a go too, but the connection problem is so sporadic, it'll be difficult to tell whether the Netgear solves the problem, or if the line just goes back to normal. That, or I could haul the PC downstairs and connect directly to the Home Hub with a cable, and see if it is indeed the TV interfering with the wireless signal, or something.

 

[sjt269]

I had just left this thread for dead, thinking that moving the router away from the TV had done the trick, but it seems to be playing up again today.


I'm connected via the Netgear atm, which is working wonderfully. Speedtest speed is slightly up, though real world download speeds are still woefully low. But more importantly, I've had no wierd issues with the connection being cut off or anything, meaning it must be a Home Hub problem - right?

Also, interestingly, the BT Vision TV service seems to be working fine atm, with the Home Hub unplugged. And while the Hub is connected to the recorder-box via an ethernet cable, the recorder-box thing is independantly connected to the telephone line, and seems to be working. I don't imagine that BT hooked the Hub up to the box just for fun, so I'd prefer to go back to using the Hub for the internet access, but I'm at a loss as to how to fix it.










And while I'm here, anyone got any tips/tricks/links to improving speeds? I'm on an 8Mb line, and can just about touch 3Mb in speedtests. Real world, I get around 40kb/s constantly, sometimes as much as 100, and sometimes as little as 10 (on torrents, as well!). I think I get traffic shaped or something, but it's annoying me.

 

[ste_bla]

And while I'm here, anyone got any tips/tricks/links to improving speeds? I'm on an 8Mb line, and can just about touch 3Mb in speedtests. Real world, I get around 40kb/s constantly, sometimes as much as 100, and sometimes as little as 10 (on torrents, as well!). I think I get traffic shaped or something, but it's annoying me.

Do you actally have a 8meg line or an upto 8meg package? Also if you can actually connect @ 8mb you wont be able to use all of it due to overheads + the vision box uses/reserves 2meg

 

[sjt269]

BT's own speedtester seems to suggest the line is 8Mb. I had already found out about the 2Mb cutoff thing too, but its nice to see it confirmed. I did once get 6Mb on a speedtest with the Netgear shortly after the package was upgraded, so it must be possible.