Anyone offer a semi-literate PC owner advise on dropped connections on Virgin.net ADSL broadband?

After 2 emails and 3 phone calls to Virgin, Customer Services say that they will refer to BT but didn't seem terribly keen on the idea. Given that I'm paying

How old is the speedtouch?

I assume you are putting both the modem and the telephone through the filter.

IIRC the line test charge is £50-75 if they don't find a fault and come into your house.

There is an option on ADSL MAX to tweak a common setting (forget the name) to make the line more stable.

We had the same and BT dug up the road fixed it and we now get over 4Mbit from a line that couldn't do any more than 1Mbit before.

I think BT are the right people to deal with it, and if not then Virgin should be compensating you for their lack of ability to provide you service.

How old is the speedtouch?

I assume you are putting both the modem and the telephone through the filter.

IIRC the line test charge is

My parents are not on virgin, but plusnet, who are quite frankly sometimes useless.

I would suggest taking all phones off the phone line and plugging your computer directly into the master socket (through a filter).

You will infact find that if you undo the lower part of the master phone socket can be taken off, and there is a test socket behind this which you can plug in to and will have the effect of ignoring all extensions.

Are your microfilters the plug in ones of the ones that have a small bit of wire between the phone plug and the little box. The second type are the active type and the first passive. If you have passive microfilters (which are cheaper) then BT will automatically blame these as this type is not certified (or wasn't).

Do the disconnections get better / worse with any specific type of weather?

tends to be a BT issue. Was with me with my recent dropping connections using Wanadoo. Spent ages going through techie stuff with them, and their last resort - get mr BT man round - sorted it in about 5 minutes or less.

My parents are not on virgin, but plusnet, who are quite frankly sometimes useless.

I would suggest taking all phones off the phone line and plugging your computer directly into the master socket (through a filter).

You will infact find that if you undo the lower part of the master phone socket can be taken off, and there is a test socket behind this which you can plug in to and will have the effect of ignoring all extensions.

Are your microfilters the plug in ones of the ones that have a small bit of wire between the phone plug and the little box. The second type are the active type and the first passive. If you have passive microfilters (which are cheaper) then BT will automatically blame these as this type is not certified (or wasn't).

Do the disconnections get better / worse with any specific type of weather?

Yes, tried it without any phone connected over a period of a couple of hours. Connection still dropped out several times. I don't seem to have a master socket which I've seen people refer to. Mine is a 2.5 ins square white box with the BT logo (installed by BT about 10 years ago) I've taken the face plate off but there's no sign of a test socket. Nor is there any sign of one on the oval shaped BT box which connects the outside overhead lines into the house - this box is way down in the basement.

The micro filters came with the modem via Virgin. I ordered 3 at time of delivery (last of the big spenders!) and each has about 4ins of wire between the plug and the filter. Two have never been used (until now) but changing them doesn't make any difference.

Re the weather - well here in the west of Scotland we had a scorching summer (up to 30 C!) and constant torrents for the whole of November. No matter which, it still disconnects!

Thanks for your continuing interest:thumbup:

As above disconnect all extension cabling in your house and test connection.

Try a router.

It may be that your line simply cannot handle the extra speed due to distance or line quality, which means it may need throttling.

If your box is in the basement does the line come from above or below.

How is the quality of the phone line without a microfilter with just a wired phone.

Is it a bit noisey? If sounds like a bit of corrosion on the phone line to me.

IIRC the lines are steel rather than copper as this is a lot cheaper, so I'd definately get BT out. It also sounds like you have an old BT master socket not a newer NTE5 Master.

IIRC the lines are steel rather than copper as this is a lot cheaper, so I'd definately get BT out. It also sounds like you have an old BT master socket not a newer NTE5 Master.

BT trialled Aluminium lines but due to them not being very good they resumed using copper. All cabling should be back to copper now (or fibre) for backbones.

may need throttling.

Often felt that way talking to Wanadoo customer services in Mumbai / Delhi!

Often felt that way talking to Wanadoo customer services in Mumbai / Delhi!

GF keeps telling me I should change ISP because other ones are cheaper than Pipex. Used to like getting through straight away to an english bloke in england for tech support from Pipex.

Now she may have a point as due to their Hoff advertising campaign you can't get through to anybody!

If your box is in the basement does the line come from above or below.

How is the quality of the phone line without a microfilter with just a wired phone.

Is it a bit noisey? If sounds like a bit of corrosion on the phone line to me.

IIRC the lines are steel rather than copper as this is a lot cheaper, so I'd definately get BT out. It also sounds like you have an old BT master socket not a newer NTE5 Master.

Apologies for the delay - I've been down the basement investigating!

The house is a bungalow and the wires from the BT pole have a termination on the exterior wall. From there its a wire down for about 15 ft to the basement where there is the oval brown BT box (about 3 ins long by 1.5 ins wide). From there the wire runs under the floor boards for about another 15 feet and ends up in the white BT installed box which the modem is plugged into. Surely this wouldn't be classed as an extension? I ain't sitting down in a dark basement just to connnect to Briskoda at the brown box!!!

Both phones are cordless Siemens and seem clear enough. (I've also tried an old 'ordinary' phone and its slightly better).

Thanks to all for the thoughts so far- keep them coming:thumbup:

Mine used to drop out ...then I bought one of these and it seems fine now ...and faster

ADSL Nation On-Line Shop

Nope the place you ahve to try is the first BT socket in the house.

Get BT to check the line (they don't need to come into your house for some parts of this), as you could spend a lot more than the call out charge working out what is up.

Mine used to drop out ...then I bought one of these and it seems fine now ...and faster

ADSL Nation On-Line Shop

Thanks for that - it seems a good option.

Where does BT's responsibility as far as wiring/terminals are concerned end and the householder's begin? Is it the first of their terminal boxes in the property (in my case the basement) or the last one they installed 10 years ago ie the white box I've my modem connected to?

I'm on a great learning curve today;)

Apologies for the delay - I've been down the basement investigating!

The house is a bungalow and the wires from the BT pole have a termination on the exterior wall. From there its a wire down for about 15 ft to the basement where there is the oval brown BT box (about 3 ins long by 1.5 ins wide). From there the wire runs under the floor boards for about another 15 feet and ends up in the white BT installed box which the modem is plugged into. Surely this wouldn't be classed as an extension? I ain't sitting down in a dark basement just to connnect to Briskoda at the brown box!!!

That's ok, the white BT box is your NTE (Network Terminating Equipment or Endpoint depending who you talk to) This is where your ISP or BT will ask you to test from as this is where BTs responsibility ends. As long as there are no further cables running from this box to another point in your house you are ok.

Yep, it it the first box in the house you can plug a phone into, eg not some round grey or brown box in the basement.

Thanks all for the comments, suggestions and thoughts - all appreciated:thumbup:

3 hours since I started this thread. During this time I've been disconnected NINE times:eek: That's about average...........

The little box with 'Error 680 - No dial tone' and I have become the best of friends over the past months. I wonder if the BT person will separate us? Watch this space....

Thanks again to everyone. I'll keep you updated.

Yeah, no dial tone is a BT fault.

The line is loosing connection somewhere, so something is broken on your line or your extension. Have you tried a different cable from the modem to the bt socket?

If you have then it isn't your problem IMHO

Hope it works out and do let us know the fault.

As pointed out to increase the stability and speed of your line get a filtered faceplate instead of a passive filter and ditch the USb speedtouch for an ethernet based router.

I see you have disconnection issue as well as the speed problems. What speed tester did you use to to get the 1.5mb result? have you tried the BT one ( bypassing your ISP ). do one of each and compare.

( set up a new network connection to "speedtest @ speedtest_domain"

and go to Test Result. )

Also what are your line stats ? Attenuation etc.

To get the snr reading on a speedtouch 330 modem you need to

Install dr speedtouch program and run "Diagnostics".

Right Click the icon in your system tray >>

Advanced >>

"Write log to disk"

Now open the log file in IE (its in .xml format so you may have to set IE to open it). You should now be able to see your line stats amongst a lot of other information.

The stats you are looking for are:-

ReceiveAttenuation_dB=

ReceiveMargin_dB=

SendAttenuation_dB=

SendMargin_dB=

Have you used the latest drivers for the 330 for high speed http://www.speedtouch.co.uk/download...8_ISO_MODE.zip

Dr SpeedTouch download as well as drivers for the 330 SpeedTouch :: UK & Ireland :: SpeedTouch 330

Anyway , please let me know how you get on. Good luck if it a line problem.

mulv

I still think it is a line problem.

Rather than use the NTE5 faceplate to do filtering you can use the plug in BT active filters, it just depends on what you want to do.

As pointed out to increase the stability and speed of your line get a filtered faceplate instead of a passive filter and ditch the USb speedtouch for an ethernet based router.

I see you have disconnection issue as well as the speed problems. What speed tester did you use to to get the 1.5mb result? have you tried the BT one ( bypassing your ISP ). do one of each and compare.

( set up a new network connection to "speedtest @ speedtest_domain"

and go to Test Result. )

Also what are your line stats ? Attenuation etc.

To get the snr reading on a speedtouch 330 modem you need to

Install dr speedtouch program and run "Diagnostics".

Right Click the icon in your system tray >>

Advanced >>

"Write log to disk"

Now open the log file in IE (its in .xml format so you may have to set IE to open it). You should now be able to see your line stats amongst a lot of other information.

The stats you are looking for are:-

ReceiveAttenuation_dB=

ReceiveMargin_dB=

SendAttenuation_dB=

SendMargin_dB=

Have you used the latest drivers for the 330 for high speed http://www.speedtouch.co.uk/download...8_ISO_MODE.zip

Dr SpeedTouch download as well as drivers for the 330 SpeedTouch :: UK & Ireland :: SpeedTouch 330

Anyway , please let me know how you get on. Good luck if it a line problem.

mulv

Thanks for the comprehensive response!

Spent the morning doing the various tests althought expecting a call from Virgin.net/BT re doing a line test. Not buying anything new until that is done.

In the Best Effort test the results were:

IP profile for your line is 2500kbps

DSL connection rate: 448kbps (UP-stream) 4320 kbps (Down stream)

Actual IP throughput achieved during test 2297kbps

Meanwhile, Dr Speetouch reported:

Receive/Attenuation = 47

Receive margin = 15

Send attenuation =24

Sendmargin =23

When I ran Dr S test the modem and ISP both received ticks but Intenet didn't and - despite the so-called help - I can't quite work out how to fix this. Under 'Internet Config' the result is 'False'. Is this the cause of my problems?

Are these results poor/average/good?

Yes, I downloaded the 8mb driver (again). Do I need the XP64 bit thingy?

Sorry but all these numbers are double Dutch to me but if you can be bothered sending me a reply then I would be truly grateful! Cheers

I'd bet the whole contents of my pants drawer that your line doesn't support the bandwidth your circuit is set at. It happened to me when they upgraded me automatically from 512k to 2mb I had to get them to throttle the speed back.

You only need the XP64 driver if you are running a 64bit version of Win XP.

i get a stable 4Mb/400k on lines of worse quality than that.

I'd bet the whole contents of my pants drawer that your line doesn't support the bandwidth your circuit is set at. It happened to me when they upgraded me automatically from 512k to 2mb I had to get them to throttle the speed back.

You only need the XP64 driver if you are running a 64bit version of Win XP.

:eek: Ye gods, what have I started? Do you want a PM if you're wrong????

Thanks anyway for the tip. Still no word from Virgin/BT when they might do the test. The drop outs have been driving me crazy all day - I feel an urgent need for a very large malt.

Cheers