Sky Broadband - all went wrong on May Day

ktothema

Thanks Penrhyn. I did repeat in the test socket last night, though I have the details on the laptop, not this device. The figures were much the same but noise margin was 6.8

I rang Zoe(!) who said there was some echo and slight noise on the line.

The slave has been up and running fine since 6:30. My partner hasn't connected to that and is finding the sky router still broadcasting patchily. We just can't fathom this out at all. Sky's technical broadband guys refuse to deal with us as from their end they can see the line is running. Very frustrating as there's an obvious issue here (not obvious in solution I'm guessing but it's obviously a problem I mean!).

We're sky unlimited btw.

My only other guess is that when the exchange problem hit on may day some setting changed at sky somewhere, but god knows what that could be or how to solve it!

penrhyn

OK, when you got the slight improvement in noise margin did the sync speed change?
Sync speed is inversely proportional to noise margin, i.e the higher the sync speed the lower the noise margin.

Have you tried monitoring the connection with routerstats?

Are there any extensions wired to the back of the faceplate? If so check if there are any wires connected to pin 3 (bell wire) and carefully remove them.
Explanation here.
http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/socket.htm

ktothema

Sorry for delay.

No extensions wired into faceplate. Faceplate can be completely disconnected.

routerstats has been showing very constant connection.

Here are the test socket stats from last night:

Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time
WAN MER 1073 1127 0 4126 19326 0:01:06
LAN Up 1875 2321 0 26537 5203 0:02:24
WLAN Up 666 102 0 136 12 0:01:55
ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 5017 kbps 412 kbps
Line Attenuation 49.5 dB 22.8 dB
Noise Margin 6.9 dB 16.0 dB

macman

If you've got noise on the line after doing the Quiet Line test (17070) then it may well cause drop outs and throttle down your line speed. You need to report noise as a line issue to your line rental provider, not as a broadband issue.

ktothema

macman wrote: »

If you've got noise on the line after doing the Quiet Line test (17070) then it may well cause drop outs and throttle down your line speed. You need to report noise as a line issue to your line rental provider, not as a broadband issue.

This has already been done, when sky picked up this noise problem they reported a line fault and we were sent a BT engineer who deals with phone lines. He told us he didn't deal with noise on the line, didn't do tests for it, etc. ran a ton of other tests. Line was fine in those. "noise on the line is a briadband issue" we were told, unless it was so bad the line was actively crackling etc. We're slightly stuffed here in that regard.

Due another call back from sky Monday morning. I slightly lost my temper on Friday whilst my partner spent an hour on the phone to sky repeating the same things and tests we've been doing several times a week for 4 weeks. My partner relayed to them that I wasn't happy and he agreed, so we've got some movement in that one person has agreed to act as a central point for us to stop all this repetition. Don't know if it'll get resolved quicker but it'll be less frustrating.

The slave is still running fine for wireless. We only experienced an issue last night when my partner (via Ethernet) started downloading some movies off iTunes. He seemed to steal all the Internet! That's never happened before either, though we rarely download videos.

Le73Uq86Uv

I don't think you are on Sky LLU as your upload speed is to slow and it looks like you are on Maxdsl.

And if I am right and you can't get LLU Sky the service you are on is terrible, I think it is called connect.

Put your details in here and see what is available at your exchange:
http://www.samknows.com/broadband/broadband_checker

penrhyn

OP rang Zoe for a quiet line test, you would not be able to do this unless you are on the Sky Voice and broadband network, I was wondering about this myself though.

ktothema

We're definitely on sky's broadband and voice service, just obviously on the low end of the suggested speeds. Very low end! Never been a massive issue before as we don't do too much more than surfing and downloading the occasional thing on anytime+. Weve been using that for well over a year, and I don't think you used to be able to get that as a connect customer.

ktothema

Not much movement since last post. The rep who is meant to be our single point of contact has failed to act as such. Sky never call back when they promise. I appreciate we have an issue they are struggling to resolve but I'd at least appreciate them calling as promised even if just to say they've gotten no further and arranging another call.

We did speak to someone who tried some different testing and was very perplexed as to what the issue may be, and similarly that it just appeared on may day after a year of working with no issues. In the course of the conversation he also realised we'd been sent reconditioned routers rather than brand new ones, so he promised to send a brand new router in the hope that we've actually been unlucky with the reconditioned ones.

Needless to say, a week later, the router never arrived. We chased last night only to discover for the second time they've not sent anything out as promised. We've got another week to wait to see if the last resort works.

In the meantime I've had to reset the current router on 3 mornings in a week as despite the lights showing, the Internet isn't coming through cabled or otherwise. Don't think we needed to reset the old router 3 times in the year before may day!

I'm finding myself very dismayed at the customer service at sky's broadband end. Part of the reason we switched to them was because we'd always found their customer service for the tv brilliant.

penrhyn

Looks like the time has arrived for some serious escalation.

Try emailing the boss who is Jeremy Darroch, with a brief point by point synopsis of your ongoing problem (not a rambling essay). [EMAIL="jeremy.darroch@bskyb.com"]jeremy.darroch@bskyb.com[/EMAIL]

When, hopefully the service is restored ask for Loss of Service compensation, which should be back dated to the date the fault was raised.