Broadband rein problem

Zuzzie

Hello chaps,
I have never heard of 'Broadband Rein' (Repetitive Electrical Impulse Noise) although I'm sure you techies are probably well aware so I thought maybe I would share my experience in the hope that it may help somebody else.

Our broadband went off completely but the phone was still fine. So we reported it to TalkTalk and after 2 hours going through the mill with them they agreed to send out an engineer on 18th October (2 weeks ahead). Not happy about having to wait 2 weeks but we were stuck with that date.
Then we discovered that our neighbour's broadband had disappeared too. He has Sky and BT broadband. Because he operates his business from home he has 24 hour call out so he got a visit quickly. Engineer said that he could detect broadband rein at the top of our lane which may be interfering with our internet connection but he couldn't find anything else. I have to admit laughing when I heard this as I thought we were being fobbed off. Second engineer came out (they had to send 2 as he has 2 different providers). He confirmed the rein but didn't solve the problem.
Then, the local pub up the street lost its broadband and more engineers came out. Every house in the street eventually lost their broadband. Then more houses in a side street started to lose theirs.
It was finally tracked down to a faulty BT Hub in a house smack bang in the middle of all the other houses.
We are now back online thank goodness.

It appears that Broadband Rein can be caused by any electrial equipment, more commonly the following:

Typical causes of REIN are ignition systems in central heating boilers, thermostats, motors, pumps, fans, faulty power adaptors, railway power lines, street lights and roadworks.

Faults in equipment like set top boxes, televisions, and other appliances can also be the cause of interference, along with poor internal wiring.

Christmas tree lights (especially the type that flash) are another common cause of interference:eek:

So the moral of the story is, always maintain good relations with your neighbours!

Geep

And there is also SHINE - Single Isolated Impulse Noise, the one-time equivalent of REIN, where line errors can occur just (only) at the time a device is switched on or off. Clearly this will have somewhat less effect on broadband, but be more difficult to identify.

grimsalve

My old Orange Broadband connection was hit by REIN. Openreach managed to eventually track the problem down to some cctv installed on a house up the road but they wouldn't do anything about it so I switched to cable.

bod1467

Something in the back of my mind says that people can be prosecuted for not addressing such issues once they've been notified. (Something to so with the Telecommunications Act or similar). Am I right or am I barking up the wrong tree?

donny-gal

grimsalve wrote: »

My old Orange Broadband connection was hit by REIN. Openreach managed to eventually track the problem down to some cctv installed on a house up the road but they wouldn't do anything about it so I switched to cable.

That's fine if you have cable in your area!
DG