Any Suggestions?

[zipadeedodah]

We've been having Broadband connection problems for a long time now. The problem is we lose our connection, and then for anything from 30 seconds to several hours we cannot connect again (no dial tone). I have spent hours on the phone to our ISP, and have checked many things (such as plugging directly into tester socket, switching filters etc), but nothing has helped.

Today we had a BT engineer out, who found that a tree had been rubbing the phone line about 20-30 metres from our house (but in our garden), and had exposed some of the wire. He replaced all of the cabling. I had hoped that would fix the problem, as he thought likely, but unfortunately it is still doing the same.

The last thing my ISP told me to do was try a different modem, so I am trying to track one down at the moment to buy. Does anyone know how likely it is that the modem could be causing these seemingly random disconnections? Or if that makes no difference either, what any other possible cause may be?

It's been playing up for over 6 months now, and it's slowly driving me mad. Thanks...

[Mattk]

It could be the modem but it is unlikely.

2 free suggestions are :-

1 lend the modem to a friend and see if they can connect with no problems.

2 but an new modem from a shop with a returns policy such as amazon.test it and return it if unwanted.

Also try this site...

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/

some very knowledgable people on their forums who helped me with my problems.

[puzzlesRus]

Er...dial tone ?.

There is no dial-up with broadband. You are not by any chance trying to re-connect via a dial-up modem, are you?

What broadband modem/router do you have and who is your broadband ISP ?

[zipadeedodah]

Mattk - I'm not holding out any hope for it being the modem, as it was suggested as 'last resort' really, but I just want to rule out any possibilities. Thanks for the suggestions, good ideas, will try one of those before forking out for a new one. Thanks for the link too - will definitely have a look.

puzzlesRus - that's just want the error calls it - it's error 0680, which is "no dial tone". I'm sure i'm not going through any dial-up modem. It's a Thomson SpeedTouch 330 modem, and my ISP is Tesco. The SpeedTouch icon in the bottom right hand corner of my screen changes colour and says "Initialising ADSL line". It can say that for hours before going green again and allowing me to connect.

I've tried a different computer (a laptop) and still the same problems. I've tried a different filter on our phone. The BT man has checked and put in new wiring. That kind of limits (I would have thought) it to somewhere between the computer and the phone socket - i.e. equipment or cables - though I'm probably wrong.

Thanks for your help and suggestions so far =)

[puzzlesRus]

Have you tried direct connection to the tester socket SINCE your external cabling has been renewed ? Also, a different cable between modem and tester socket ?

Another thing you could try, to rule out faulty extension wiring is to try-out your dial-up modem to see if you can get a connection and if that works, then it would seem to point to a modem fault. It would be nice if you could borrow a broadband router/modem to test your connectivity.

As regards Tesco.net, suggest you have a look here, to see what problems others may be having :-

http://www.the-scream.co.uk/forums/f38.html

[zipadeedodah]

I'm just just trying the tester socket now. It disconnected a few times a while ago, so waiting for it now to do the same when connected with a filter to the tester socket.

We have an ADSL specific socket, which BT put on when we were unable to connect to broadband at all when we first got it. So instead of plugging staright into the ADSL socket, I tried a different cable then went from the modem into the phone side of the socket, via a filter. But that still did the same.

Wil try the dial up modem later if I can figure out how. Have tracked down a different modem I can try in the next day or two, so hopefully that can rule out a problem with that.

Thanks for your help...and thanks for the link! Very useful!