WAN DHCP client (1) stopped

[unhappycustome1]

My home broadband connection has been dropping on the WAN link multiple times a day for the last few months. I have reported it many times to talk talk through the support chat service and still nothing has been done. I work from home and so many of my meetings have been interrupted. I am really at the end of my temper and do not know what to do.

When I look at the router logs, at the time the problem occurs I get the message

WAN DHCP client (1) stopped

and the LED on the router goes from white to orange for about 3-4 minutes.

I am also getting lots of 

Error

DNS

DNS name resolution failure (_dns.resolver.arpa)

occurring every few minutes, sometimes more frequently.

I have raised multiple support cases with the chat and nothing ever gets resolved

PLEASE PLEASE HELP!

[unhappycustome1]

Hello Michelle

Hopefully, all of my case history is on file with the support team as this problem has been going on for many weeks now. If you look up the case history you will see that a TalkTalk engineer visited a few weeks ago to investigate the problem and his conclusion was that it had to be investigated by Openreach.  However, Openreach never made a visit and we found ourselves back to square one again. One of the key challenges with working with TalkTalk support has been a lack of continuity on cases, until this conversation it has been like starting fresh every time I started to talk to support.

However, if you think sending an engineer again will help to get this fixed then please go ahead. I am out all day but my wife will be available to meet the engineer. However I feel that you should be conducting some tests on the line for noise or interference, it seems to me like it is some kind of transient interference that is causing the XDLS connection to drop. My router logs are giving you the exact time that the connection is dropping, surely this is also being logged by the switch at the exchange and that has some kind of log or information on line signal strength and noise margin for our connection?

just for the record, the connection dropped at least once today at 12.14, here is the router log timestamp

31.10.2023 12:14:26 Info XDSL VDSL connectivity is down port 1

The dropping of the connection causes a lot of hassle for my daughter who is on conference calls most of the day, she gets thrown off her calls every day and it's extremely annoying. She has recently had to conduct important work calls over 4G mobile data as the house broadband has become so unreliable.

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Morning,

Thank you for confirming. I've re-run the line test again now which is clear, however I can see some re-connections on the line. If all testing has been completed at the test socket with 2 different routers then the next step will be to arrange an engineer visit to the property. If you would like to go ahead with this then please let us know and we will confirm some details with you.

Thanks

Michelle

[unhappycustome1]

Hello Michelle

The connection dropped just one time today at 10.09 UK time. The logs show the usual 

            30.10.2023 10:09:23 Info XDSL VDSL connectivity is down port 1

My daughter was thrown out of her online school lessons for 4 minutes until it reconnected.

Yes, I am using a replacement router that TalkTalk sent me last week. It seems to make no difference. 

Some weeks ago when I was troubleshooting with one of your engineers on the "chat" they asked me to connect to the test socket using a micro filter I did that and it ran like this for about a week, there was no difference, and it still disconnected regularly. I have since replaced the connection into the normal socket.

You ask if phone calls are impacted when the connection is down, I do not know as I have not tried to make a call when the XDLS connection drops but I can try to do that test tomorrow assuming it drops sometime tomorrow.

Thanks 

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Hi,

My apologies, I missed that. Does the connection also drop directly at the test socket? Is the voice service ok with no noise on the line?

Thanks

Michelle

[Gliwmaeden2]

The customer has already tried with an alternative router sent out by Talktalk support and it made no difference,  @Michelle-TalkTalk.

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Morning,

I'm sorry to hear this. I've run a test on the line now which hasn't detected a fault. The router also has the latest version of firmware. Do you have an alternative router that you could test with please? If not then we can send a replacement router for testing purposes to rule this out. We would also send a router returns bag so that one of the routers can be returned.

Thanks

Michelle

[unhappycustome1]

Hello Support, I know no one is available to look at this until Monday but I am not available tomorrow so just fyi the connection dropped again today at 11.24am, and here is the message in the logs again

29.10.2023 11:25:14 Info SYS TR-069 connectivity to (acs.talktalk.co.uk) has been closed
29.10.2023 11:25:11 Info DHCPC The WAN DHCP client IP address 92.11.163.11
29.10.2023 11:24:37 Info DHCPC WAN DHCP client (1) started
29.10.2023 11:24:35 Info XDSL VDSL connectivity is up port 1
29.10.2023 11:22:28 Warning DHCPC WAN DHCP client (1) stopped
29.10.2023 11:22:28 Info XDSL VDSL connectivity is down port 1

Every time the fault occurs I get this message in the logs.

there is also a lot of 

DNS name resolution failure (_dns.resolver.arpa)

errors occurring every few minutes.

Here are the line statistics 

Actual Rate [Kbps] 27360 5699
Maximum Rate [Kbps] 26534 5699
Noise Margin [dB] 0.00 3.00
Attenuation [dB] 25.60 0.00
Power [dBm] 10.50 6.90

The noise margin seems very low to me.,  should it be that low?

As I said earlier I was sent a new modem/router to try last week after many weeks of complaining and it does not seem any different. Sorry I am not around in the daytime tomorrow to reply as I am at work.

[Gliwmaeden2]

@unhappycustome1, strangely, both your threads have escalated at the same time, despite this topic being started weeks ago!

I'll move the more recent one out of the way so as to avoid confusion/duplication on the forum. 

[Divsec]

Hi @unhappycustome1 thanks for getting back. The TT team here are very thorough and will get to the bottom of your undoubted issue. They will be back to work early tomorrow morning.

D

[unhappycustome1]

Hello,

I have contacted the support team 4 times in the last month to try to get this escalated. Every time they ask me the same set of questions and I am online to what I think is a Bot for about an hour answering questions until I finally get through to a human but even them I am never sure,  Last week after about an hour and a half on the chat they finally decided to send us a replacement router to try. This arrived on Friday but it has made no improvement at all. The xDSL connection is still dropping for about 4 minutes several times a day.

The modem logs show that the XDSL connection is dropping, here is what is shown in the logs each time the connection drops and the light on the front turn orange then flashes orange white for about 4 mins..

28.10.2023 11:06:39 Info DHCPC WAN DHCP client (1) started
28.10.2023 11:06:37 Info XDSL VDSL connectivity is up port 1
28.10.2023 11:04:56 Warning DHCPC WAN DHCP client (1) stopped
28.10.2023 11:04:56 Info XDSL VDSL connectivity is down port 1

I think this means that the problem is between the modem and the exchange.  However, no one I contacted at TalkTalk support seems interested in looking at the modem logs.

[Divsec]

Hi @unhappycustome1 your post has been escalated and you should hear tomorrow.

Do you have a spare router you could try for a few hours today.