Internet turns off for 1 hour at exact same time each week...

Mark Toney

Mark Toney

Mark Toney

Associate
Joined
13 Nov 2019
Posts
6
Hi,

I'm having a very strange problem with my talktalk internet connection.

Since my line was connected in July, every week at the exact same time my internet turns off for 1 hour. This happens from 00.00 to 01.00 on Mondays. The rest of the time, my connection is fine.

During this 1 hour period, I am unable to load web pages on any devices connected to the wifi (it says "PR_END_OF_FILE_ERROR". No streaming will work. No data whatsoever is coming through to any connected devices.
  • The light on the router remains white
  • The connected devices still show they have wifi signal
  • If I go to the router settings page (192.168.1.1), it says everything is fine (I still have upload / download data).
We've tried a new router, updating firmware on router, changing wifi channels on router, nothing works. An openreach engineer has visited (NOT during the period the fault is occurring) and he said all his line checks came back fine.

According to the talktalk fault management team, there is nothing wrong with my connection. They are saying that it doesn't disconnect during this 1-hour time period (no connection drops).

It's got to the point now where the fault management team are basically telling me they don't believe me. All the line checks they're carrying out at their end are saying everything is fine, even during the period the problem is occurring. They can't / won't send someone out to take a look during this time period. Most outrageously of all, when I threatened to leave my contract early they told me I will need to pay a termination fee, because as far as they're concerned there is nothing wrong with the service they're providing!

Does anyone have any idea what could be causing this?
 
Possible it is a device near the line that goes on for an hour and causes enough interference to knock the sync out.
Or more likely the ISP has something running accidentally on that account to kill it, i had all sorts of issues a while back and they blamed lines, interior extensions (which i didnt have any) and my own hardware and it turned out to be because they had messed up the port in the box.
 
Have you maybe put a setting in the router to deny access to certain devices at those times? What error messages are you getting?
 
ISPs can see graphs for telephone lines to tell if it goes up or down. When I worked for a company that did isp level stuff we had access too a lot of tools to diagnose lines including reseting them remotely.

The graphs where to the nearest 1kb of data so it was nearly perfect all the time and logged and very accurate.

Can you get a screenshot of this error on multiple devices and also you can do a continuous ping to Google’s IP not by domain name to see if it might be a DNS issue.

Can you confirm what browsers are been used in each device? Mixed mode or a certain browser?

Are you saying this “PR_END_OF_FILE_ERROR” is on ALL devices, Mixed Browsers at EXACTLY between 12pm and 1am?
 
mrbell1984 said:
ISPs can see graphs for telephone lines to tell if it goes up or down. When I worked for a company that did isp level stuff we had access too a lot of tools to diagnose lines including reseting them remotely.

The graphs where to the nearest 1kb of data so it was nearly perfect all the time and logged and very accurate.

Can you get a screenshot of this error on multiple devices and also you can do a continuous ping to Google’s IP not by domain name to see if it might be a DNS issue.

Can you confirm what browsers are been used in each device? Mixed mode or a certain browser?

Are you saying this “PR_END_OF_FILE_ERROR” is on ALL devices, Mixed Browsers at EXACTLY between 12pm and 1am?
Click to expand...

Thank you for the reply. The fault occurs on both an iphone (safari) and windows PC (tried with firefox and edge), no web pages will load in any browser on either device. On the iphone it just says "safari cannot open the page because your phone is not connected to the internet". On the PC with both firefox and edge it says “PR_END_OF_FILE_ERROR”. Things like spotify say I'm not online. Instagram won't refresh, etc etc. It happens between exactly 12am and 1am, on Monday mornings. The rest of the time it's perfect.

I tried right clicking on the internet button in taskbar and running the troubleshooting, it said "Windows received an HTTP error message: 403 (Forbidden) from "www.microsoft.com"". I don't know if that's useful?

Could you explain how I set up the continuous ping. What do you mean by "not by domain name"? Thanks
 
Open a run box, type CMD and press OK

In the resulting box, type ping 8.8.8.8 -t and press enter

You will then have a continuous ping running to Google's DNS server
 
If you upload your image to imgur (a free hosting site) then just paste the link it creates here. That error is relating (by the looks of things) to be an SSL error of some sort.

It could well be the ISP having issues with HTTPS traffic but further diagnostics is needed.

You could create 2 batch scripts on your desktop. One to ping Google’s domain and one to ping the IP address. If it drops then there is 100% connection issue with the isp. If it doesn’t it’s something possible either an issue with HTTPS traffic OR internal to your network. (This may sound a little complex to you right now but once you set it up it really isn’t) it’s literally 2 files that sit on your desktop you would run these at said time.

A continuous ping to a website (set this off at 11:59 exactly) which would help with finding the fault a little further.

Question: Are you running and security software on any of the devices that you are aware of?
 
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Used to have this exact same problem years ago when Pipex were my ISP. The PPP session kept between 1900 and 2030hrs EVERY day. Made clan matches on R6V nigh on impossible for me.

Turns out there was something going on their end with the RADIUS server when support finally got their act together.

Check your Router to make sure the PPP session is still active and as above, try PING's out to 8.8.8.8 and www.google.co.uk to see if you are getting traffic in and out of the Network.

Shawrey
 
mrbell1984 said:
If you upload your image to imgur (a free hosting site) then just paste the link it creates here. That error is relating (by the looks of things) to be an SSL error of some sort.

It could well be the ISP having issues with HTTPS traffic but further diagnostics is needed.

You could create 2 batch scripts on your desktop. One to ping Google’s domain and one to ping the IP address. If it drops then there is 100% connection issue with the isp. If it doesn’t it’s something possible either an issue with HTTPS traffic OR internal to your network. (This may sound a little complex to you right now but once you set it up it really isn’t) it’s literally 2 files that sit on your desktop you would run these at said time.

A continuous ping to a website (set this off at 11:59 exactly) which would help with finding the fault a little further.

Question: Are you running and security software on any of the devices that you are aware of?
Click to expand...

I've done the tests you and others have suggested. Here's the outcomes:
  • Using a cable didn't work. When I plug in the cable my PC just says "no internet" (I made sure the cable was working before it turned midnight).
  • I'm not running any security software on any phones, amazon fire TV etc. My PC is running windows defender but I tried turning it off and it made no difference.
  • This is the wierd one: I set up continuous pings to 8.8.8.8 as well as www.google.com and www.hotmail.com. They all continued to successfully ping while the fault was in progress, all returning pings of around 10ms. There was literally no interruption at all. I tried pinging various websites and they all worked fine.
Any ideas anyone?
 
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