Hi,
For years now I have a very slightly unstable DSL connection and I cant quite put my finger on what exactly the problem is, and BT dont want to know as its very infrequent in their opinion.
I've had various technologies over the years, from an ISDN line, then ADSL, VDSL and now I'm lucky enough to have G.fast.
Now, I've seen people say that a G.fast connection synchronises with the cabinet in a matter of seconds. I have yet to see this myself though - seems to take as long as VDSL ever did, maybe 30 seconds to 1 minute for a resync so I certainly do notice when the line goes down. My two son's are gamers and certainly notice when the line goes down. The unreliability does seem to depend on the modem I use and I have to say, the Draytek Vigor 166 is holding on to my connection longer than my previous MT992 has managed to.
Over the years I have contacted BT, spoken to many different call centres all to say that they cant find any fault or reason for the disconnections, which happen now nearly every day apart from since I got the 166 which has prolonged it to around 3 days now. DLM doesn't seem to have intervened luckily, I still can ping bbc.co.uk with around 6-7ms roundtrip so latency is still excellent.
Now dont get me wrong, 1 connection drop a day isn't bad at all - but it is more noticeably during lockdown when the kids are at home, and I'm trying to homework as is my wife. Any disruption to the internet causes MS Teams calls to drop, my son comes down to complain that his google classroom is cut off and my younger son cant attend his assembly! Arrrgghh!
So, this is what I know about the problem so far:
1) It is intermittent. Broadband and Landline can be crystal clear. My broadband Sync can be as high as 8db SNR with attainable speed of 220mbps down and 30mbps up. Just before a drop I start to see SNR drop to about 2db and I've even seen the Draytek 166 report -2db - how could it still be connected I dont know, but it does seem to cling on.
2) Now here's the strange one - if I listen to a quiet line test on the landline whilst we have lost sync, or whilst we have very low sync I hear some crackle on the line. If I wiggle the telephone cable at the socket end, the crackle disappears and the modem can resync. The problem seems resolved - at east for the short term.
3) I have replaced the cables, the router and even got a new BT telephone in case it was my Gigaset N300A IP going faulty, but doesn't seem to make any difference. My BT faceplate was changed multiple times by BT, once when going from ADSL to VDSL and again very recently since going from VDSL to G.fast. I have a new G.fast faceplate installed by BT. If I remove the phone from the socket, and plug it staight back in, the crackle is gone and nothing I do makes the crackle come back other than leaving it for another 24 hours or so. Strange.
I recently read that this might be a 'high resistance' fault where a poor joint or connection may be present in the line. Keith Beddow of the BT forums has talked about this, and the fact that it may be temporary cured by passing high current though the cable by letting the line ring for 20 seconds or so. This is all well and good but isn't a cure to the problem.
If I report a fault, if the engineer isn't here at the time this is occurring the there is no fault to be found. I was even thinking should about disconnecting the phone from the socket and just use a mobile all the time but as its the same copper pair I dont think that would make any difference.
I feel like there is no solution to this and just something I have to put up with. I was even thinking about the latest option of an additional broadband line. Presumably that would be provided over a new pair and not liable to the same fault in which case I could use it as a failover - bit expensive at £29.99 though when I know my own line is capable of good speeds.
Also, I realise that many people would die for. a G.fast connection that dropped only once or twice a day - but I would much prefer to loose a bit of speed to stop the disconnections and line crackles - but the same used to happen on VDSL too. Lockdown has just made it more 'noticeable' as more people in the house are affected.
Thanks for any guidance.