Sky interwebz failing for last week, constant disconnections

Mercenary Keyboard Warrior

Mercenary Keyboard Warrior

Mercenary Keyboard Warrior

Soldato
Joined
4 Aug 2007
Posts
22,395
Location
Wilds of suffolk
About a week ago we started having constant disconnections from the internet. A few days ago I found an article saying sky had just launched a new download service for downloading tv to watch on the go/later. This it claims has reduced download speeds for affected areas and lo and behold when I check the Sky postcode checker our exchange is affected.

I must admit it does seem slower, I downloaded a 35mb file last night and you could see the speed fluctuating quite dramtically rather than being almost static as it used to be.

Now the timing I guess is probably about right for peak usage, weekdays about 7-8 it starts and weekend it seemed to be more like 5pm.

But what seems wierd is that rather than a slow down we are getting constant disconnections, like every 5-15 minutes. The broadband lines goes then 15 secs later its back.

Anyone got any idea what could cause this, as I say we expected the slow rates until the exchange is fixed (they say early Feb) but I am wondering if its a coincidence and we may have another isue.

We were with BT until late 2012 (never had an issue like this) and sky has been fine for 2-3 months, but its a nightmare now, sometimes you just recover from the last drop out start to load webpages again and boom its off again.

Broadband speed checker always said 6.5mb/sec or so with BT and sky said the same, even at peak times I never noticed it being slow. Would an exchange overload drop the broadband line? I has assumed it would just go slow intermittently...

If anyone has any ideas greatly appreciated
 
Disconnections are not usually caused by an exhange overload so I'd expect it to be either a line issue or a router issue.

You might want to run routerstatslite and set it up to monitor your speed, noise margin on a graph.

Also you might like to post your actual router stats as they stand. Maybe there is something there that you have missed.
 
Tealc said:
Disconnections are not usually caused by an exhange overload so I'd expect it to be either a line issue or a router issue.

You might want to run routerstatslite and set it up to monitor your speed, noise margin on a graph.

Also you might like to post your actual router stats as they stand. Maybe there is something there that you have missed.
Click to expand...

Thanks thats pretty much what I feared, probably coincidence although the timing is pretty much perfect...

Will take a look at that routerstatslite when at home (assuming I can access the net ;) )

When you say post up, post up what exactly, the details from router stats or something else?
 
Your router should declare something like...

Code: 
ADSL Link Downstream Upstream 
Connection Speed 7611 kbps 796 kbps 
Line Attenuation 44.0 db 25.4 db 
Noise Margin 6.0 db 14.5 db

This is basically a metric that describes your line speed, rough length and margin between ADSL tones and background noise.
 
I often connect at 8191kbps on my line which is a good kilometre longer. A rough estimate on 30dB attenuated line should be around 15Mbit. So clearly something is causing a slower speed.

Plug into test socket/master socket, remove phones and repost figures.
 
You might also want to try swapping the microfilter when you plug into master socket/test socket.

If you don't have a NTE5 type master socket you wont have a test socket and if this is the case you should remove all wired extensions from the circuit.

What you'll be looking for is a change in speed, possibly attenuation or a big difference in noise margin. Make sure you take a reading just before you unplug as things can vary between times of the day.

Hope this helps.
 
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