Any1 wanna give me a hand with my mum's internet?

[Rudd]

Hi guys, I've finally given up with phoning various tech support up, and I know alot of you guys are wise in the ways of the magic that is the internet, so I hope you forgive me for filling the forum with clearly non-PR related tech problems.

Here is the problem.

The internet keeps cutting out and giving crappy speeds.
The Router is plugged directly in to the master socket, its nothing to do with the internal wiring of the house since the socket goes directly outside to teh BT line.
The micro-filters have been changed over 3 times

The crazy thing is that the internet tends to drop off, and come back on whenever som1 calls the house. Which is very annoying when calling tech support since the fact you called seems to fix it for a while.

Mum pays for 8MB internet from BT. She changed from Sky because she was getting the same problems she is getting now and was pissed off with their tech support when they plain faced lied to her (and that they were always using Indian call centers, which extended extortionately priced calls due to accent related problems) The lie was that the guy said that the router would only have a download speed of 120kps and an upload of about 30kps, when I was actually looking at the router transfer rate when on the phone to him and it was currently at 800kps, 220kps. At this second its reading 1,130kps 488kps. Speedtest.net confirms this and gives a ping of 58 to maidenhead.

She lives in a rural area, thus we don't expect a speed of more than 2MB max at the best of times. However atm she is getting inconsistent speeds as low as 200kps according to router (which translates in to 20kps downloading files on her laptop)

The local phone exchange supports 2MB speeds, and has no special equipment, and no equipment from companies apart from BT.

We're at a loss, and its very important we get this fixed tbh, she needs the internet for research, contacts and also has the oppotunity to lecture to other professionals online, which could be a source of income.

Advice welcome, I cant be arsed with tech support on the phones anymore, they just go in circles. (I've actually sent complaints to the watchdogs now)

[VoXiNaTiOn]

Ok, how does the house phone connect to the filters?

I had a phone that connected via DSL as opposed to the standard phone plug. We had the problem of whenever someone called, the internet would drop off. This problem plagued us for a few months, I then spotted a phone > DSL converter in my dads old electrical stuff, whacked that in (So it goes socket > DSL Filter > Adaptor > Phone) and now we no longer get a drop when the phone is rang.

This may help and be a cure, as it sounds like her line isn't "active" until it is phoned, after a cool-down period after the call (A few hours) the line is then "de-activated" so to speak.



One last thing, it's Mb (Mega bits) not MB (Mega Bytes) but that's just me being picky .

[Rudd]

atm its in the phone socket of the microfilter, so
Router
/
Microfilter
\
Phone

[VoXiNaTiOn]

Bang goes that idea then lol.




Have you tried just disconnecting the phone?

How far away is the exchange?

Could the line leading to the house be damaged?

[Rudd]

The dudes on tech support insist its a problem inside teh house, the phone engineers my mum paid for to have a look say its the ISP's problem.

exchange is 1.5k away

Disconnected the phone for 3 hours without any change in performance, though it didn't cut out.

[Nimise]

Is the computer plugged directly into the router?

[PLODDITHANLEY]

In an old house I found all the phone connections in the outside box and the interior box were green, indicating damp, but more importantly a bad connection, cleaned them up with a bit of emery paper and WD40 and all was OK.
As the house was near a river and therefor fairly damp I recleaned and WD40ed the connections about once a year.

My only idea ....

Is your Mum cute?

[Rudd]

Originally Posted by Nimise

Is the computer plugged directly into the router?

its wireless, but I did connect via LAN to test if that was the problem, there was no change at all in the transfer rate.

I'll look in to that Ploddit.

and your last question has alot of buckshot in it :P

[Nimise]

Originally Posted by Dr2B Rudd

its wireless, but I did connect via LAN to test if that was the problem, there was no change at all in the transfer rate.

I'll look in to that Ploddit.

and your last question has alot of buckshot in it :P

To solve the problem when someone calls the house(I assume she has cordless phones?) change the routers wireless frequency to something that is different than that of the phone.

[Rudd]

problem is, its the router disconnecting from teh internet, not the computers.