Intermittent outages - Telkom not helping

MrGray

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South Africa.
Any advice would be good.

We have an intermittent ADSL problem whereby every 30-40mins we lose all Internet throughput for 2-3mins. The ADSL line stays synced, though, and the connection is not lost.

We have repeatedly reported this fault, and every time we have to go through the whole rigmarole of proving that it is not our ISP, router, etc. This is very tedious as they refuse to take into account all the previous fault logs every time, and they clear the faults without asking us. They always argue because the line doesn't physically drop and shows in their logs as having been connected for days, and invariably when they test the connection is working.

Usually after they clear the fault, everything is fine for a week or so and then it starts again. We've now established that there is a DSLAM in the basement of our building and the problem seems to start every time a Telkom van is parked outside. After the latest occurrence, we asked the techs what they were working on and they told us they had another similar fault log from someone else in the building. I asked them how they resolve it and they said they just swap the DSLAM ports for the line!!! When I asked them if they could swap ours, they said not without another fault reference (and all the inane repeated steps to test with another ISP account, etc)!!!

So what is happening here? I'm betting there is a bum DSLAM port and every time we log a fault they just swap around the port, so somebody else in the building gets the port. The other people duly complain and a few days later we're back on the bum port?? Is that possible??

Very frustrating, and the fault reporting people are (mostly) seriously unhelpful, refusing to look at the history and every time we log a fault asking us to rule out the same stuff as the previous fault. We are at wits end.
 
Haha, good luck with that.

Telkom techies know next to nothing, from what I have seen. I have exactly the same problem, with intermittent time-outs to the authentication server, on a daily basis, coupled with erratic ping spikes from 19ms to 3000ms. Nothing I do on my end fixes this, and I am on my 3rd perfectly functional modem just to prove it.

Try this program: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/multiple_ping_tool.html

Include the IP of your router, and your default gateway in the setup by adding the IP's on separate lines. Whenever there is a problem I start this program and it gives me my ping stats (I have 4 devices to ping before I get to the gateway, so I needed to prove the problem was not my connection to the ADSL modem).

I set the ping interval to 10 seconds, just so I am not flooding the gateway. You can export the results to HTML, or Excel.

Then, at least you have some proof that the fault doesn't lie with you.

I trust (silly question) you have eliminated the modem as the source of the problem?

Then you somehow need to get this escalated to Transmission, as the techies have no frikkin clue what is going on.

I am still waiting.

Then just keep logging a fault, and when they say the problem is on your end and try to bill you, show them your ping stats and tell them to suck a toffee.
 
You didn't supply any information that I could use to try and do something about this ...
 
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