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[HPsauce]

I'm on old-school wet string broadband with PlusNet though the landline is actually with BT (takes too long to explain why...).
Recently I have periods of a few minutes up to 2 hours when the router just repeatedly resyncs, keeping an internet service for maybe just 20-30 seconds between resyncs.
The worst one recently was last night (Sunday) around 10pm to almost midnight. 
Once the "storm" is over normal service resumes with about 18mbps downloads.

It happens at different times of day and talking to PN this afternoon (during another "storm") they could see them logged going back some months but getting worse recently.
I've only been aware in the last couple of weeks so earlier ones were less of a problem.

I think we've pretty well eliminated anything in side my house as a cause and that includes the router as swapping it makes no difference.
Any thoughts what it might be?

[Weaver]

I’m wondering about a poor quality connection with loose contact, low contact pressure and wet getting in maybe. Changes in weather might explain the changes in behaviour, temperature changes, water ingress? This is the kind of problem I might have although I don’t remember one where the details matched exactly.

[burakkucat]

As Weaver has mentioned, any form of interruption to the metallic pathway would be sufficient to cause the CPE to retrain.

I am wondering if your service is provided via an aerial drop? If "yes", does that drop run through one or more trees?

[4candles]

My sympathies HP - an intermittent one like that could be literally anywhere, and of course it won't happen while OR are on the scene.

Hopefully you'll get an experienced OR guy/gal like our resident sheep on the case, who'll know the likeliest places to check.   

[HPsauce]

The last few metres are aerial, from a pole the other side of the road, so about 25 metres at most. And it's a clear path.
It's then underground to the exchange and I know in the past water ingress has been a problem.
Plus we have gas main works alongside for about 200 metres down our road! That's been going on (and off) for over 3 months.

My overhead wire was replaced/improved a few years ago but only to the eaves, the cable down the wall and into the master socket in the hallway is old-school twin flex!

So plenty to work on for a competent engineer.

Currently I also have a phone fault registered with BT but that's a bit vague (occasional noise on the line) and an engineer is due out tomorrow, but with the threat of a charge if they find nothing though I did explain to the BT agent last night that the main issue is that the broadband goes down as we rarely use the landline for calls. I'm tempted to let that be closed as "no fault found" and leave it to PlusNet to get the problem attended to as they can see it's an ongoing intermittent issue and can't do anything while BT have an open fault.

What do you folks think?

[g3uiss]

The voice route is the best. They should be able to source the point of failure. Do you get noise on 17070 quiet line test ? Often if you let it run a few minutes often gets the noise back.

[HPsauce]

Thanks for that, I just spoke to PlusNet and they said the same re Voice first. 
Interestingly their first diagnostic (Sunday evening) said "FAULT - Battery Contact".
They've emailed me a screenshot of their tests and I've printed it for the engineer to look at tomorrow.

I think I've got hold of a guy at PN who likes tricky problems and he's delving into the details. 

Good tip on letting quiet line test run, I've only ever done them briefly.

[g3uiss]

Yes sounds like a battery contact fault. I’ve had them and experienced similar problems

Hopefully you will get a good engineer who will identify the problem.

[HPsauce]

I'm thinking Sunday night was wet and windy so could be terminations on my overhead cable.

Or I could blame Florence........... 
(HS2 TBM which will be passing pretty much under my cabinet any day now and only a few metres down)

[Black Sheep]

Indeed, there could be multiple issues on your pair of wires, but for info purposes .... a 'Battery contact' fault means your circuit is contact with another circuit, so unless you have more than one circuit in your premises, the battery contact fault can't be in the overhead span from the pole to your house.

Like I say though, that doesn't mean you have two, three, etc different faults on your pair of wires. The older wiring (twin-flex as you refer to it) that is DW3 or DW6, is notorious for having its insulation cracking and allowing an ingress of water, causing a high resistance (HR) fault. Plus, the newer DW (Dropwire) from the pole terminates with the older DW on your house and if the correct crimps haven't been used, this too can create a HR effect.

The thing with the CP's remote test, it only gives the one result ie: loop, dis, battery contact, earth contact, receiver off-hook, unknown termination, faulty line card .....   a battery contact will always be reported above a high resistance fault. Only if it was a full on disconnection (dis) would it be the returned test result. 

[HPsauce]

Ah many thanks @Black_Sheep for explaining a Battery contact. 
I've heard of battery faults before but didn't know that specific detail. 

[Black Sheep]

A pleasure, mate. 

[HPsauce]

PlusNet have just sent me an updated graph showing all the resyncs before and AFTER BT "repaired" the line yesterday morning up to about 8pm today.

The "down time" when BT (presumably Openreach on their behalf) were presumably working on it is shown clearly and it stayed up for about 6 hours after the message they sent me to say it's fixed.
Since then there has been one big "storm" about an hour long and at least two other shorter resync events, plus a batch of resyncs yesterday evening when I was talking to a BT agent and they were testing the line.

All quite intriguing and PlusNet tell me that the BT (Openreach?) engineer "should" have the same information (at least) available, but I've printed it all off anyway to show them.

[Weaver]

Why is it called a battery contact? Is it because in ADSL the voltage from the battery in the exchange is getting through into the other pair because of broken insulation?

[4candles]

It means that one or both of the copper conductors of your pair are in contact with the 'B' leg of another customer's pair.

It could be anything between low insulation in a damp underground joint and direct contact via a solder splash on the MDF.