Strange DNS failures

[mitchgixer6]

Hi all

I have been having issues with my connection recently, mainly slower speeds (still hitting 30mbs) and disconnects. 

I have just spent 40 minutes on chat with the tech team trying to nail it down, but no errors with the line showing, suggested it may be wiring in my house but nothing here has recently changed. 

I was just looking at my router setting and noticed some strange behaviur in the logs. Lots of DNS name resolution failures during the night when there would be no acces on my connection.

Anyone have a clue whats going on or if this could be the cause of my instability?

Thanks

[mitchgixer6]

Hi Chris

It gives me the options for Fibre 35 or Fibre 65

[Chris-TalkTalk]

Hi mitchgixer6,

What does it say if you run the availability checker - Guide to Full Fibre and FTTP | TalkTalk

Chris

[mitchgixer6]

It shows I can renew my fibre at £29.95 per month for speeds up to 67mbps 

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Hi,

Can I just confirm, does it show if Fibre is available if you log into your My Account, under the offers and upgrades tab?

Thanks

[mitchgixer6]

Hi Michelle

I'm not sure to be honest, we seem to be going round in circles here. The engineer who visited on Friday definitely couldn't find any faults between us and the street cabinet and was scratching his head some what as to what could be causing the dropouts (and hence speed drops). 

He did mention that BT are starting to install Fibre to the premises in my area, is there any way you could find out when that might be available to us? That would obviously help with our problems, and the engineer did suggest that running a new copper line to our house might be the only ways to cure these dropouts, so would seem crazy to me to do that just now if full fibre is on the way..... 

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Morning,

Thanks for the update and I'm sorry to hear this. I've re-run the line test now which is clear, however I can see re-connections on the line and that the sync speed has started to drop. Would you like us to arrange another engineer visit for you?

Thanks

[mitchgixer6]

So I'm not entirely sure what is going on with our service. An engineer visited on Friday and couldn't find any obvious faults with the line or with our kit inside the house, but we still seem to be having dropouts even after he fitted (another) new face plate. Potentially the drop outs are worse when it's raining, but we've not had much rain recently to fully test this theory. 

Our speed is definitely still low however, currently sitting around 30mbps...... 

[Chris-TalkTalk]

no problem 

[mitchgixer6]

OK thanks for the update 

[Chris-TalkTalk]

Hi mitchgixer6,

Line test is still failing and speeds are dropping so I've passed this back to Openreach for further investigation. If you don't hear anything tomorrow or over the weekend can you bump the thread on Monday and we'll check for updates

Chris

[mitchgixer6]

Unfortunately I don't know and can't check that as we don't own a land-line telephone anymore. 

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Morning,

Thanks for keeping us updated. The line test is still detecting a potential line fault. Is there any noise on your voice service? Unfortunately we can't manually reset DLM as this is completed during a engineer investigation.

Thanks

[mitchgixer6]

Hi there 

Just as a follow up to my issue my connection seems to be stable now since installing the 3rd party connection equipment (modem and separate router). 

I think the dropouts I experienced since the last DLM reset have affected my overall speed again though, I am now receiving roughly 35Mbps on both wired and wireless devices. Previously I was in the low 50'sMbps. Is there any way to request another DLM reset to see if the speed will come back up? 

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Hi,

Ok thank you. I will feed this back.

Thanks

[mitchgixer6]

Hi there 

I'm not sure of the firmware version, but the new router was sent to me a few weeks ago so can only presume it was on the latest version of firmware.

Both routers I tried were Sagecom Fast 5364-3.t8 

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Morning,

Can I just confirm, the make and model of both TalkTalk routers you've tried and also could you confirm the version of firmware on the router please so I can feed this back.

Thanks

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Morning,

I will pass your feedback over to our Products Team. We have new firmware coming soon for the Sagemcom router so we can always try this to see how the connection compares.

Thanks

[mitchgixer6]

To be honest I'm not sure if the DNS failures were the cause of the dropouts. My question in my OP was never really answered on that point, whether they either would cause dropouts or indeed if they were normal.

The fact that I now have a much more stable connection using 3rd party equipment leads me to not want to try another TT router. The new one you sent didn't do anything to fix the issues I was having. Plus what's the point if I have already bought the 3rd party kit that I'm now using... at my own cost 

I think the best course of action would be to look at your own equipment or to test more thoroughly the routers you are sending out as I am certainly not the only person who is having these issues. 

Also I don't have a huge amount of IT experience, but it seems crazy to me to have the DHCP lease set at 15 minutes. Every single talk talk router in the country is sending a renewal request every 7.5 minutes. That's a huge amount of unnecessary network traffic 

[Chris-TalkTalk]

Hi mitchgixer6,

Apologies, I thought you were just asking about the DHCP lease, I'm sorry for any inconvenience caused by this issue. 

I'm not sure why you're experienced DNS issues with the Sagemcom but not with the 3rd party router. As far as I'm aware there are no current DNS issues with the Sagemcom. We could try the Sagemcom again to see if we can see what's going on

Chris

[mitchgixer6]

So no interest whatsoever in that its almost certainly confirmed that the issues I've been having for the last 2 months have been caused by Talk Talk equipment? 

No interest in that I've had to spend over £60 in an attempt to fix the issue? Not to mention my own time wasted trying out everything possible to rule out faults in my home as well as time taken to set up the new equipment that I bought... 

No interest in the fact I've wasted 2 days waiting for a BT engineer to visit my home again for no point?

No interest that Talk Talk have wasted their own money by sending me a new router which did nothing to fix the problem? 

No interest in the inconvenience to me and my family in having to deal with a broadband service that's been disconnecting multiple times a day for over 2 months? 

Not a hard decision for me to say I'll be leaving Talk Talk as a provider next month when my contract ends