Hi All,
I have an non-aviation related issue that I need some help on, and remembering that basically this whole forum is connected in some way with IT, this might be a good resource.
I am having a huge dispute with my current internet provider. After many visits to the flat, they are unable to find or fix (or for that matter acknowledge) there is an issue. I have carefully connected/disconnected/swapped around all of my internal hardware and cabling. There was no effect on the problem. Indeed over the last few days I have connected only one device with various internal cables and the issue remains, no change. Therefore I am, by logic, excluding anything that I have done internally that could produce this issue.
What happens, is basically the connection drops for, I think less than a second. Hardly noticeable with normal web browsing. However given that the Mrs. has a home office which is part of a distributed office with Cloud drives and IP phones/video conferences, she does see the error because the phone/conference call will cut out, and the uploading and downloading of files becomes interrupted. It seems to do it with a degree of randomness but generally between a 3 to 10 minute interval. If the intervals are up towards 10 minutes then the speed will peak near the service level (150 Mbit/s), but when more frequent the speed is down near 30 Mbit/s, but I have seen it as low as 2 Mbit/s.
The provider of the IP phone services has offered to monitor the connection to the phones and produce an activity log. What I want to do though is try to produce another log, to build a case such that, I can start to identify a common root, to “improve” my conversations with the internet provider.
The video conferencing is done by Facetime and Skype depending on her customer. But also these apps are generally signed in for the whole of her working day. Is there a way to get these apps to output a connection log or detailed activity log? I am thinking that this way I could check both logs (from IP phone and Skype/Facetime) to see if there is a common failure, which would indicate internet connection rather that individual failure.
Does anyone have any ideas/recommendations of either applications that I could run, or some other things to try in order to attempt to locate this issue. I can run things on PC, Mac and/or Linux.
Thanks
Jon
Hello Jon,
Probably your best source of any logs is probably from the router. It will also probably point to the source of the error. I would also be tempted to swap out the router if you haven’t done this already as it is almost certainly going to be that or the circuit which is the issue.
You probably know this Jon but in the UK, on ADSL, it is the ISP who is the point of contact for everything to do with ADSL. So if the phone line works but there is some internet issue, you need to hassle the ISP.
And different ISPs offer a different level of, ahem, service 
I think the best ISP in the UK is ZEN Internet. I have used loads of them over the years and ZEN has been the most reliable. They are not dirt cheap… I use them at home, and would like to use them at work but can’t because (a) the work ISP has to be different, for redundancy, and (b) ZEN don’t offer a 3G backup with automatic switchover of all the IPs we have (without which we would have been out of action at work for a week recently, due to a lightning strike having melted a load of BT cables). At work we use Andrews & Arnold who are pretty good too but have a somewhat arrogant sort of “we know best” customer service.
Thanks for the responses guys.
@ Whiskey Bravo, yes, with you on that. I investigated and there are two problems that I can see. From what I can understand the cable provider links the account with the MAC address of the provided router. Therefore I cannot swap it out for another one without them tweaking things. Also given the tone of some.of the “customer service agents” that i have spoken to, i am loathe to touch any provider furnished equipment. I have tried to request a new one from the provider and they are saying, from what they can see, that there is no issue at the moment. Hence the start of this information gathering and logging process, to build a case to force a router exchange or, hopefully, a more serious focus on the customer service that I am receiving. The provided router does give the impression that it is purchased for pennies, from some sweat shop in the third world. There is very little you can do via the interface, and very little it supports. I will have another go at getting some sort of log out of it. Interestingly I have found some other expats who have customer service issues with the company on the expat “Toytown” forum; but alas no-one yet who has had similar technical problems.
@Peter, don’t forget that I am in Germany not the UK. Which, said from a position of pure frustration, is why I probably have to do all of this myself with very little customer service/support from the provider. Nothing is going through the standard phone line, but a dedicated cable similar to the Virgin Media connection I had back in Blighty. The landline phones run off the router. We haven’t experienced the issue with the landline phones, but to be fair we hardly use them, so I cannot conclude that the issue is or isn’t there. At the end of last week we called an alternative provider, that does ADSL/VDSL services over the phone line, and unfortunately at the moment on our street there isn’t much to compete with the cable provider… but the street should be upgraded in a year or two (joy )
So my current tactic is to gather as many activity/connection logs as I can, see what it tells me and decide the next step.
We provide Internet service to dozens of retail outlets and this sort of thing is an almost daily occurrence. Much time is wasted trying to bottom these problems out. One actual explanation was discovery of a tenant in a flat above the shop who had gained access to the phone line and was using it. (Without a filter). Another common issue is an old burglar alarm dialler which has been deliberately concealed, but is still connected. There’s even a story of a chap who found a tin box nailed to a telephone pole outside his house with a tape recorder in it!!
In older premises these types of issue are often intractible.
Objectively, the only economical fix is often to have BT install an entirely new line, get hold of the Openreach engineers when they are doing it to make sure it’s a clean installation from the distribution cabinet, move the ADSL to it and then cancel the old one. Or better still, move to fibre if you can get it.
Or better still, move to fibre if you can get it.
Yes, and not only for physical reliability and higher throughput reasons. I am not sure if it’s the case everywhere in the world, but wherever I lived in the era of high-speed Internet, providers with fibre optic lines (or other technologies delivering physical Ethernet to the user) tend to be a lot more diligent than DSL or cable TV ones – probably because data transmission is their core business rather than a secondary use of existing hardware.
Isn’t Italianjon already on fibre, or at least coax, as he speaks of 150mB/sec speeds?
And he is definitely in Germany, as he mentions his location above.
I guess you have Kabel BW Jon? They are very cheap and their internet is super fast (I have it myself) but they don’t always have their infrastructure under control and when they don’t, their customer support is kind of useless.
Nowadays they supply very high end routers (Fritzbox) so why don’t you try to get the router swapped?
Obviously when you search for problems on a product that millions of people have, you find lots of hits about all kind of problems. Nobody posts “my internet connection is working just fine”
Yes it is already fibre. And they came to renew the distribution box in the basement and re ran a cable to our apartment. On that occasion the guy was shocked that we had internet at all.. the signal was so weak. On replacement of the box he just made acceptable signal values.
Achim, you are correct with our supplier. How did you guess? I would love one of those Fritzboxes. We had one at the old house when we had VDSL… but here we have an unbranded black piece of #^$&$&#&^#**$… At the moment they are refusing to do anymore as they say there is no issue and that they can log into my router no problem.So I need to put some evidence down and demand a fritzbox.
Interestingly the first logs arrived from the IP phone provider. Makes good reading and looks like the net is up and down all day. They also gave us a nice summary of the data… it is definitely our net, as they can also get logs out of the phone. I think tomorrow can now be an more assertive phonecall.
Jon, now that you mentioned a cheap no-name box, I instantly remembered my mother’s situation where connectivity was intermittently lost because of an overheating router. Try opening the case, brushing the dust off, and aiming a fan at the board if you have one handy (or even putting a thick plastic bag full of crushed ice on the board – but be careful to keep the board dry). If you get a steady connection, then the router is at fault.
