This is going to be a bit long winded so if you want to skip the exposition and head straight to what I'm experiencing with the HG612, jump down to the third paragraph. OK so I've had problems with my broadband since mid march now. I had an HG612 connected to it; Long story short; I moved in here late last year, had BT infinity connected beginning of January. BT sent me a HomeHub 5 (type a) but I wanted to use my own router (Billion 7800DXL). Luckily previous occupiers left their HG612 here so I just used that. It worked fine, got relatively constant 37 up 9 down up until mid-march, then I started getting line drops every few hours. Eventually my speeds started to be reduced due to the dropping presumably kicking in the DLM.
Anyway, I tried unlocking the HG612 to get line stats and, aside from a few hiccups with that (I posted on here about it actually, the HG612 kept locking up but I wasn't sure if it was because I unlocked it or it or because of another reason). In the end, because I couldn't make much sense of the line stats I reflashed the modem with locked SP08 to put it back normal. It's seemingly worked OK, but I still get line drops. Then one day it seemed to stabilize. I had a connection for over ten days. My speed was close to half what it used to be though, so maybe that's why it stayed connected. Then it dropped shortly after the ten days and reconnected back to nearly what it used to (around 36 up and 8 down). Just like that the line started dropping again, and hasn't stopped since.
So that's the story of where I'm up to. I still haven't bothered to bring this up with BT as I'm still in half a mind as to if the actual HG612 is the problem here (even though I do have some issues when using the phone which I'll mention in a minute). Someone in the other thread suggested maybe it was faulty power supply on the modem. The HG612 is a 3b, running locked SP08 firmware, and has white switching power 1amp power supply which I believe replaced the older black supply that was rated lower. However it does exhibit some odd behaviour when it drops the connection.
Usually, the line drops when I'm doing something, like playing an online game. It doesn't (or rather hasn't thus far) dropped while I've been streaming video. I think it may have done once or twice, but it seems to do it more when I'm gaming online than anything else (maybe the games I play are more intensive than watching video, no idea, suppose I'm using both upstream an downstream for gaming but mostly just downstream for video so perhaps that has something to do with it).
When it drops, most often, the modem DSL light simply goes out, and after a while it begins flashing and goes solid again indicating it dropped and reconnected by itself. Other times however, the line drops and apparently I have no internet connection but the modem seeingly still has a solid green DSL light on. I believe when it does this; the modem has frozen because when I press the rest button for ten seconds, nothing happens. I usually have to turn the modem off at the wall and back on again. I have found however, sometimes when I turn the modem off, and turn it back on, nothing happens. No lights come on, I get nothing. It's almost as if it's dead. I tried pulling th eplug out, plugging it back in, removing the connector from the modem and plugging that back in, nothing. I get absolutely nout for sometimes at least a minute before all of a sudden the lights come on and modem reboots. Could this indeed be the power supply that's gone south?
Other times I've lost connection, turned round to look at the modem to confirm and found it's power light flashing indicating the modem actually rebooted. Though I'm unsure if this is because it crashed, realised it had crashed and reset itsewlf or if the power supply conked out and caused the modem to power cycle. As a matter of course I've actually bought a replacement power supply and it's currently on the way. It did say in the product listing it would work with an HG612 but it seems to be rated for 1amp - 2amp. Hopefully that's not too much for the modem? I suppose I'll find out in a few days.
In the mean time, I have another modem I could try. The problem is, it's an ECI modem, ,a B-FOCuS v-2FUb/r Rev. B. I'm fairly sure my cabinet is a Huawei cabinet with G.INP since I believe few if any ECI cabs were enabled with G.INP. And when I had the HG612 unlocked running dsl stats they said the line was G.INP enabled. It also stands to reason it's a Huawei ca since, as I said previously I got this HG612 from the previous occupiers who apparently had Bt Infinity, too. I assume an Openreach engineer would supply a HG612 to a premises if the cabinet was a Huawei (I guess that isn't fool proof though). Anyway this ECI I have is from my friends house, he gave it to me after he switched to virgin media.
Problem is it doesn't have a power supply with it. So presumably I'd have to use the HG612's power supply. Which kind of defeats the purpose if the power supply is at fault here. Again I'll just have to wait for the replacement to come though, but, would using an ECI modem even be worth trying in order to determine a fault with the HG612? I mean, if I have G.INP enabled would the ECI exhibit line drops anyway? I know people have reported ECI modems run at slower speeds and higher pings on G.INP lines but not sure about if they constantly get line drop outs? Only reason I'd use the ECI is to see if the line was then stable.
As for the phone, I've tried a quiet line test. Seems quiet. However I've phoned people (mostly just one person I speak to in fact) and on occasions I can definitely hear crosstalk on the line. I can hear someone in the background waffling away. It's very very faint though, and I'm not sure if it would be considered an actual fault on the line. Sometimes also you can hear a click every now and then. I might also add I tried connecting the modem directly to the test socket using a filter for over a month but that didn't seem to make a blind bit of difference.
