Faulty broadband router

[John Talk]

TalkTalk changed my router about 2 years ago and the current one is a large upright box with a single white led on the front. This has been working consistently well (albeit painfully slowly, but that’s another story!) until a couple of weeks ago when I started to get repeated BB dropouts which are now getting more frequent.  The outage can be several hours or just minutes and is getting more frequent.  It affects my Hive heating hub, my Alexa controlled lights keep randomly going ‘unresponsive’ and I can’t view a whole programme on the FireTV without the system starts to buffer.  All these systems talk to the router of course.

I spent a very frustrating hour on the TT chat last night resulting in the agent running a check on the line which turned out to be all ok.  I’ve done all the usual rebooting, checking the line filters but to no avail.

Anyone else with similar problems ?

I don’t know who reads these posts but if TalkTalk does, please could I have a replacement router?

[Debbie-TalkTalk]

Hi John

Thank you. If you do experience any issues then please let me know and I will get the engineer booked in ASAP.

Debbie

[John Talk]

Thanks Debbie - I’ll keep a close eye on it today

[Debbie-TalkTalk]

Hi John

I'm sorry to hear this.

I have completed a line optimisation following the work completed the engineers (as the SNR is low) and this has now increased.

If the connection continues to drop then we will need to arrange another Openreach engineer visit.

Thanks

Debbie

[John Talk]

Well, two very nice and knowledgeable engineers from openreach came on Monday last week and decided even though they could not see a fault with their test equipment, took a look at the phone line from the telephone pole to the house and saw that the cable was very old and in poor condition and replaced it right back to the box in the house.  Following this the responsiveness of the connection was really fast and I didn’t notice any drop outs or buffering for 4 days!  Amazing!  

Since Friday lunchtime though it’s been a very different story - dropouts and buffering every 20 mins or so, making it almost unusable for long periods and then periods like yesterday evening when it stayed up for over 3 hours before it started to buffer again and then eventually cut out.
The light on the new hub stays firmly lit each time and eventually it comes back on line. I went through the TalkTalk line test yesterday afternoon which came back as no problem found (which it always does by the way, since I have to be on line to ask for the test in the first place!).
I had an email from TalkTalk after openreach had been where they said “Our engineer has resolved the service issue” - please note the issue IS NOT resolved.
As all the wiring into the house is brand new now, could this point to another fault in old wiring further up my road?

[Karl-TalkTalk]

Hi

I'll drop you a PM to confirm some info so we can book an engineer.

Karl

[John Talk]

Yes please hopefully open reach can sort it although it’s intermittent . Just for your info the BB has disconnected twice since I started talking to you guys this morning. And that is using the test socket which I’m plugged into now.

[Debbie-TalkTalk]

Hi John 

Apologies the connection is still dropping.

If you have tested with a different router at the test socket then the next step will be to arrange an Openreach engineer visit to the property.

Would you like me to arrange this?

Thanks

Debbie

[John Talk]

Sorry I meant DLM

[John Talk]

Hi Michelle, I don’t know what DSL is but assume it’s nothing to do with anything that I have done. Debbie made some changes yesterday which affected the signal-to-noise ratio apparently so she said but it made no difference at this end as far as I can see. Broadband has been dropping out for several months now infrequently but now it is very frequent mostly happening several times a day and the last couple of days since I have had the new hub it has disconnected overnight which may just be a coincidence I suppose.

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Morning,

I'm sorry to hear this. I've re-run the line test now which is still clear. Can I just confirm, has the connection only started dropping again this morning or has it still been dropping over the last few days? The reason I ask is because I can see that DLM has lowered the SNR/increased the speed this morning and I'm just trying to confirm if this is the reason for the instability?

Thanks

[John Talk]

Hi Debbie. As far as I can see the new hub hasn’t made any difference! Still at random times I am unable to get Internet although the Wi-Fi itself as far as I can tell is still good. For example last night watching firetv at around 10 pm it started to buffer and then stopped completely. I had purposely kept fire TV on all day to see what would happen and it worked faultlessly and then from 10 pm through all night to this morning there was no Internet connection. I can do speed tests but of course only when there is a connection and when there is, the readings are fine so it looks like to the casual observer that there is no problem. I rebooted the hub this morning and it picked up the connection to Internet fine. After about half an hour it went off again but then maybe 10 minutes later reconnected itself and so far this morning it has been okay. The status light on the hub has remained normal all the time. At times when the Internet is down I have checked using the landline that there is a dial tone so this appears normal. I appreciate the fact that intermittent problems are difficult to find but I really do need an answer to this other than constantly rebooting the hub.

Is there some way that the connection can be constantly monitored to see when the dropouts occur? Can you get open reach involved ?

john

[Debbie-TalkTalk]

Hi John

I'm sorry to hear this.

I can see that the SNR is dropping low and this can affect the stability and performance of the connection.

I have reset the data port and optimised the connection and the SNR has increased.

Please can you monitor the connection today/tonight and let us know how it compares?

Thanks

Debbie

[John Talk]

Hi Debbie - well the hub arrived thanks but sadly it’s been a big waste of time!  I spent the whole evening yesterday setting it up (changing Wi-Fi name and passwords on all my devices). I had to factory reset all my 5 Alexa dots to get them to find the hub and all my Smart home bulbs and plugs have gone off line as well and I can’t get them back!
To start with I got the expected BB speeds but then I was watching firetv at about 10.30 last night. To start with it was fine and then it started to buffer a little bit, then more and more until the firetv stopped altogether.  I did and BB check and got an error I.e. no Internet. The indicator light on the hub looked normal. I gave up and went to bed.  I woke at 2am and still nothing. This morning the speed was back to ‘normal’ which is how I’m able to send you this note but so as far as I can see the new hub although it appears to be working has not cured the problem because this is exactly the state I have been for the past several weeks except that none of my smart home devices work😤.  Where do I go from here?

[Debbie-TalkTalk]

Hi John

No problem, please let us know how you get on.

Thanks

Debbie 🙂

[John Talk]

Hi Debbie thanks for that I look forward to receiving it!

john

[John Talk]

Hi Skynet

the light remains solid white.  The front of the router has a bronze colour behind the holes and there is one device in one of the Ethernet port which is the Hive heating hub.  The heating has been throwing up a few errors in the last couple of weeks as well.

thanks

[Debbie-TalkTalk]

Hi John Talk

I'm sorry to hear this.

I have ordered you a different router for testing, please allow 24-48hrs for this to arrive.

Let us know how the connection compares with this router.

Thanks

Debbie

[Skynet_TX]

Hi @John Talk,

What does the LED on the router do when you have these issues, does it remain solid white, or does it flash amber / white ?

Is the front of your router completely black, or does it have a bronze colour behind the holes ?

Do you have any devices connected to the router 'wired', if so do they also have the same problems.

The TalkTalk staff on this community will be able to help, they will hopefully be able to respond to this post tomorrow.