General connection problems

[PeteC]

I've been having problems connecting to any ISP since Sunday evening. It's affecting my Tiscali Unlimited connection, (but also ic24, icScotland and ic24 local rate connections.)

All will connect eventually (I know about authentication problems reported with Tiscali yesterday) but with connection speeds as low as 16800 bps and downloads no better than 0.5kB/sec. I have also experienced disconnections from Tiscali after only a few minutes.

Strangely, the WOL/Tiscali connection started working normally yesterday afternoon for 2 hours with no intervention on my part, but on the next dial-up reverted to low speeds etc.

I have resorted to a clean installation of Win98, new DUN and reinstalling the modem drivers this morning - still no difference.

Can the (win)modem "half-work" i.e connect, but with impaired performance or is it more likely to be a problem with my local telephone exchange? If the latter, is there anyway to confirm?

Any help appreciated.

Pete

[silver]

sounds like a line fault ?

try BT Line Tests (quiet line/distance from exchange etc)

Sil

[MegaTsunami]

Sounds like my problems

Pop over to the Freeserve thread.

[silver]

All Ive seen of 'your problem' MT leads me to believe it is different, perhaps if you started a new thread people might be able to find the post?

Sil

[PeteC]

I'm back. Sil,I tried your suggestion about doing the quiet line test from the master socket and it's very definitely full of pops crackles etc.

Thanks for reviewing Mega's thread for me - it takes me 5 mins to get to each link so I have to be a bit selective at the mo. (Just been cut off 2 mins after re-connecting again)

Am I right in thinking that when I report the fault to BT I have to emphasise that it's the voice aspect that's troubling me as they don't guarantee the line's suitability for data.

Edit:

Spoke to BT / WOL (got a bit complicated for them to decide to whom any fault should be officially reported) BT acknowledged a very noisy line" in the words of the BT lady who arranged for an engineer to call.

But as I type this - I'm back with a connection at my normal 42,666bps and downloading at 4.4 k/sec. I just hope it isn't one of those faults that disappears when the engineer investigates and they charge for a "wasted" visit. I think they must have waggled the wires at their end

Thanks for the advice.

[silver]

yes - say its really hard to use the phone and you cant hear the other person

Sil

[panikos]

PeteC, if they say it's your fault then just stand firm. You know it isn't and the engineer who calls doesn't really care either way. it's not him paying for it.

[PeteC]

Just to finish off the story....yesterday evening and this morning the line noise and hence connection problems disappeared. So when the the engineer called this afternoon (his appointment was for tomorrow morning btw)- I thought he'd have trouble isolating the fault.

He listened to the line and said he could hear a very slight crackling. This and the intermittent nature of the problem suggested to him that it was a faulty fuse at the exchange. He said BT had been supplied with a batch of rogue fuses and weren't quite sure where they had all ended up (if you can believe that). He did find a fault at the exchange and hopefully I'm now sorted.

So thanks again for the contributions and I hope this is a useful pointer for anyone else similarly affected.

Pete

[silver]

my line went funny once, then after I put the call in for an engineer, within 1/2 hr it was working (and still is) fine - I told the engineer not to bother, weird...

Sil

[JetSilver]

I have the same problems as you Pete C.
Noise on the line but its intermitent and always seems to be after it rains.Just the other day i washed my car on the driveway then later went online and that was enough to give me noise on the line and poor connection.Im back with BT next month so im gonna call em in then to sort it out.

[PeteC]

JetSilver, for the record - I'm not yet a proper BT customer though I've applied for the transfer back to them (June 4th, I hope). I reported the fault initially to BT on their standard number. They told me that as I was still a Localtel customer I would have to deal directly with them.

Although my heart sank at that point - I got through to WOL Customer Services first time and I have to say they were very efficient at arranging with BT for the engineer to come out.

So if you are a Localtel/WOL/Tiscali customer - and you need your line sorted there's no real need to wait on that score.

[silver]

agree pete, I was with WOL when I reported my line fault an they logged it an were very efficient

Sil

[JetSilver]

I did call WOL a few months back and left a message to call me back.When they called next day the fault had gone again.I didn't want to take a chance on being charged £50 because they could find no fault.Next time tho the garden hose is coming out and im soaking everything till the noise on the line appears

[diqa]

This evening the email server refused to recognise my password. I went off for a while and when i tried to dial up the server refused to recognise my password too! I have had to connect to another ISP