Weird issue with my ADSL connection

C

cabous

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Centurion, Gauteng
Hi all,
I'm experiencing some unusual symptoms with my ADSL line which I am unable to figure out. Hopefully someone can provide suggestions or solutions.

Fibre is on it's way in my area but for the moment I have to make do with ADSL. I'm on an 8MB line and share the same account with my mother who lives in Jbay (I'm in Centurion, Gauteng). For the last few months the throughput on my ADSL line is zero from about 9.30 PM. This happens maybe 75% of the time.

During the time where I have no throughput I have tried port resets, connection reset, forget wifi network, plugged into ethernet etc but the problem doesn't go away. The weird thing is that all is fine according to my modem's (TP-Link W9868) status information page. It shows the line is active and the state is up.

I don't know when the connection gets back up - it must be real early in the morning as I have tried it between 11 and 12PM on a few occasions and still no throughput.

Now I have always had a very sensitive ADSL infrastructure - it would sometimes go dead for days when we had good rain for a day or two.

What irks me is I log calls with my ISP and they go through a standard script I guess. Port reset, ghost connection, guest account etc. I can't rely on Telkom either. I log a call with them, they do a port reset and sommer close the fault I logged.

So, I always figured it may be something interfering (powerline adatpter, NodeMCU, Sonoff etc) with my signal at home, which is why I also test on ethernet but I experienced the same thing when visiting my mother in JBay over December. As mentioned we share an account (up to 5 concurrent connections allowed by my ISP) so this to me points to an ISP problem. I can't see how the infrastructure could be the cause of the problem with to geographically dispersed connections. 'cept maybe for the modem - my mom has the same modem as me. Guess who's her network admin. :D

So at this point I've given up - I've cancelled my service with my ISP which comes to an end in Feb and signed up with Web Africa. Hopefully the problem goes away but I'd love to hear from you if you have ideas or experienced the same symptoms
 
Sounds to me that the exchange is running at capacity, which means that switching ISP will not resolve your problem.
 
rubber_otter said:
Sounds to me that the exchange is running at capacity, which means that switching ISP will not resolve your problem.
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Very possible. Is there some way Telkom or OpenServe can confirm this? Or even better have a page with realtime capacity usage which will help a lot of users I'm sure.
 
No they won't admit this. I guess if you can sweet talk a support desk techie, they might be able to confirm this (if they have the right monitoring equipment in place)

I think your best bet is to talk to your neighbors. If they are on ADSL, on the same exchange, and they experience the same issues, get them all to complain to their ISP's. It is then the ISP's job to take it up with the infrastructure provider.

I did this in our complex. All the tenants on different ISP's were complaining about speeds at night. So I motivated everyone to log a ticket with their separate ISP's. A month later, FrogFoot rocked up and upgraded the fibre in the cabinet from 1Gbps to 10Gbps. No more speed issues whatsoever.
 
I have a 10 Mb ADSL line which ran consistently at 9.4, however, since early december 2020 it has been awful. Erratic connection drops at any time it pleases. Registered the fault for the fourth time today after being sent an SMS saying that the fault had been fixed. Usually when they reset my port i get just over 10 but it doesnt take long to revert to a crawl or nothing. i'm in Greenshileds Park, Port Elizabeth.
 
S
Rickster said:
Log into your router and look for DSL stats, you looking for SNR etc.

Post everything here.
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SNR is normally the first thing I check when having issues and though it's been a problem in the past the values are just fine when I'm experiencing these nightly down times.

As Murphy would have it my connection was stable since my first post. I think the infrastructure is under immense pressure
 
pedruid said:
I have a 10 Mb ADSL line which ran consistently at 9.4, however, since early december 2020 it has been awful. Erratic connection drops at any time it pleases. Registered the fault for the fourth time today after being sent an SMS saying that the fault had been fixed. Usually when they reset my port i get just over 10 but it doesnt take long to revert to a crawl or nothing. i'm in Greenshileds Park, Port Elizabeth.
Click to expand...
Yeah - this can be a frustrating exercise. I actually like the OpenServe technicians that was assigned to fix my ADSL line. It was noisy on my side once (in my ceiling where I had messed with some wires when I installed a new ceiling a few weeks prior.) and then also at the exchange. I think another time my ADSL filter was broken.
 
cabous said:
S

SNR is normally the first thing I check when having issues and though it's been a problem in the past the values are just fine when I'm experiencing these nightly down times.

As Murphy would have it my connection was stable since my first post. I think the infrastructure is under immense pressure
Click to expand...
What you think good Snr values are good could actually be bad.
 
Glad to say that Telkom/Openserve have fixed my problem. A techi pitched up unannounced last Saturday found some fault in their underground cabling so logged a fault with their cable repair division. Still playing up all Monday and at one time my phone and ADSL were dead. Received a call from their cable repair team to advise that they’d found and repaired two dry joints in their system. Now flying, often as high as 10.6 Mbps with occasional drops to about 6. Thanks Telkom/Openserve .
 
So since I complained on the forum my connection haven't misbehaved at all :) Below is the SNR taken one evening when the line worked as expected. Waiting for it to die now so that I may grab the info :)

Screenshot 2021-01-28 at 10.45.58.png
 
pedruid said:
Glad to say that Telkom/Openserve have fixed my problem. A techi pitched up unannounced last Saturday found some fault in their underground cabling so logged a fault with their cable repair division. Still playing up all Monday and at one time my phone and ADSL were dead. Received a call from their cable repair team to advise that they’d found and repaired two dry joints in their system. Now flying, often as high as 10.6 Mbps with occasional drops to about 6. Thanks Telkom/Openserve .
Click to expand...
Since writing this I'm sorry to say that my line has reverted to what it was, slow and intemittent. Got the consultant to re set my port yesterday but not satisfied with result opened a case and got reply to say fixed, I replied that it wasnt. Technician phoned me in afternoon and said that he'd performed some tweaks and that I should SMS him if happy. I'm about to let hime know that I am not. Still cannot reach 9 Mbps.
 
pedruid said:
Where can I find this test programme?
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That is a screenshot taken from my ISP's dashboard/control panel for clients. I'm with Axxess. I'm assumed most ISP's have the option to report on the technical details. Maybe browse around your client control panel.
 

Understanding SNR and Attenuation Rates

Signal-to-noise ratio Signal-to-noise ratio (often abbreviated SNR or S/N) is an electrical engineering measurement defined as the ratio of a signal power to the noise power corrupting the signal. In less technical terms, signal-to-noise ratio compares the level of a desired signal (such as...
mybroadband.co.za mybroadband.co.za
 
So tonight I had problems connecting, checked SNR twice like 5 mins apart and the values were vastly different. Did a port recreate and internet connection restored. This kind of problem I can live with - what gave birth to this forum posting was the fact that a port recreate did not restore the service. I'm satisfied at this point that the latter problem must've been due to network congestion that somehow kept appearing nightly for about two months on end.


Screenshot 2021-02-03 at 20.44.09.png


Screenshot 2021-02-03 at 21.23.35.png
 
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