Hi all
I have a very strange intermittent connection fault on my Telkom ADSL line. At some point in the day (usually in the morning or evening but not restricted to these times) my router starts dropping it's connection: both ADSL and Internet lights on the router instantly go off, and browsing, pinging, etc become impossible. Within 10 seconds, the router reconnects and browsing is again possible. After another 10 seconds, the connection drops again. This can go on and on for hours! The connection is virtually unusable at this time.
The History
This problem has so many parts and has gone on for so long that I have no real idea what is causing it. That means that there's a lot of history, some of which may be irrelevant.
Last year, say June 2008, I had exactly the same problem, with my Netgear DG834GT. I tested the line with another router, and had no problems. This led me to conclude that the router was at fault. I replaced it with another DG834GT, and had no problems for a year.
Recently, it started happening again. I immediately thought it was the router and replaced it - this time with a Netgear DGN2000. This time, though, the problem continued, even with the new router.
I called Telkom support, where they reset my port on the exchange. This had no effect. Another call with Telkom support, this time while the fault was happening, had the woman at the other end telling me that she could see the connection going on and off, but couldn't tell what was causing it.
On a third call with Telkom, the woman decided that I was losing sync due to my line speed being set too high. I had previously been syncing at between 2800kbit/s and 3200kbit/s - clearly the limit on Telkom's side was 4Mbit/s. I was trying to avoid having to move this down but I had to give in. She changed the limit down to 2Mbit/s, which is exactly the speed at which I am syncing now (since yesterday). However, the problem has still not gone away.
The router is at the end of a rather long phone extension cable and in the house with other phones, filters, etc, but I don't think any of this is the problem as everything worked fine for over a year on this setup.
Another strange thing is that when downloading using Grabit (on local cap), the download speed graph "spikes" for about 10-20s, then is at zero for about 30s. It does this continually - even when the router isn't dropping the connection (according to the lights on the front, at least).
When the line disconnects, it loses sync entirely: the stats window of the router's web interface has 0kbit/s downstream and upstream, and Noise and SNR figures aren't even given.
Some specs that might be useful
I have a Telkom 4Mbit/s line, with Telkom as my ISP (standard 3GB shaped). My router is a Netgear DGN2000, but this also happened with a DG834GT.
I am in Newlands, Cape Town (021 671 xxxx).
My connection stats (when up):
Downstream
Connection Speed 2048 kbps
Line Attenuation 55.0 dB
Noise Margin 9.0 dB
Upstream
Connection Speed 512 kbps
Line Attenuation 30.5 dB
Noise Margin 12.0 dB
Help?
Does anyone have any ideas about what could be causing this? I'm really at a loss here.
Thanks
I have a very strange intermittent connection fault on my Telkom ADSL line. At some point in the day (usually in the morning or evening but not restricted to these times) my router starts dropping it's connection: both ADSL and Internet lights on the router instantly go off, and browsing, pinging, etc become impossible. Within 10 seconds, the router reconnects and browsing is again possible. After another 10 seconds, the connection drops again. This can go on and on for hours! The connection is virtually unusable at this time.
The History
This problem has so many parts and has gone on for so long that I have no real idea what is causing it. That means that there's a lot of history, some of which may be irrelevant.
Last year, say June 2008, I had exactly the same problem, with my Netgear DG834GT. I tested the line with another router, and had no problems. This led me to conclude that the router was at fault. I replaced it with another DG834GT, and had no problems for a year.
Recently, it started happening again. I immediately thought it was the router and replaced it - this time with a Netgear DGN2000. This time, though, the problem continued, even with the new router.
I called Telkom support, where they reset my port on the exchange. This had no effect. Another call with Telkom support, this time while the fault was happening, had the woman at the other end telling me that she could see the connection going on and off, but couldn't tell what was causing it.
On a third call with Telkom, the woman decided that I was losing sync due to my line speed being set too high. I had previously been syncing at between 2800kbit/s and 3200kbit/s - clearly the limit on Telkom's side was 4Mbit/s. I was trying to avoid having to move this down but I had to give in. She changed the limit down to 2Mbit/s, which is exactly the speed at which I am syncing now (since yesterday). However, the problem has still not gone away.
The router is at the end of a rather long phone extension cable and in the house with other phones, filters, etc, but I don't think any of this is the problem as everything worked fine for over a year on this setup.
Another strange thing is that when downloading using Grabit (on local cap), the download speed graph "spikes" for about 10-20s, then is at zero for about 30s. It does this continually - even when the router isn't dropping the connection (according to the lights on the front, at least).
When the line disconnects, it loses sync entirely: the stats window of the router's web interface has 0kbit/s downstream and upstream, and Noise and SNR figures aren't even given.
Some specs that might be useful
I have a Telkom 4Mbit/s line, with Telkom as my ISP (standard 3GB shaped). My router is a Netgear DGN2000, but this also happened with a DG834GT.
I am in Newlands, Cape Town (021 671 xxxx).
My connection stats (when up):
Downstream
Connection Speed 2048 kbps
Line Attenuation 55.0 dB
Noise Margin 9.0 dB
Upstream
Connection Speed 512 kbps
Line Attenuation 30.5 dB
Noise Margin 12.0 dB
Help?
Does anyone have any ideas about what could be causing this? I'm really at a loss here.
Thanks
I'll give it a shot, though.