ADSL disconnecting at approx 9pm every day?

[Mike Fishcake]

Just had a call from my mum, who's with Zen ADSL in a rural area of Staffordshire.

For the past couple of weeks, her ADSL connection appears to be have been bombing out at approximately 9pm every day, unusable for the evening, but has re-appeared by the morning.

It's not a computer issue, because the Netgear router control panel shows it as 0 kbit up and down, or the router's connection light is flashing like it normally does when it's dialling out.

The connection, (although slow due to being a million miles away from the exchange) has been reliable for all the time she's had it... just under a year if I remember correctly. BTW, when I say slow, she normally gets about 500kbit, but on the occasional good day she might get 700ish. Woo!

She's been on the phone to Zen tech support, but they can't find anything their side... so, does anyone have any ideas what could cause a connection to fart out at the same time every day for the past couple of weeks?

[Stoo]

BT being inept most likely..

FYI, when they test your line, they don't test end to end, only from the exchange to the last cab, so if something is borked between the cab and the house nothing other an engineer visit will help..

BT have a laundry list of things which can apparently knacker ADSL, anything from microwave ovens, to central heating systems, to fairy lights and CB radios in taxis..

The only way you'll get anywhere is if you raise a fault with Zen and refuse to close it, eventually it'll escalate high enough through BT's fault tracking and get picked up by someone with more than one brain cell...

[Jay]

a friend of mine had this once. It was a fax machine line testing at the same time every day.

[peterb]

Several things - as Jay mentioned, some form of line testing, but most likely interference from some source - particularly if the line conditions are marginal. I have read of a case where an electric fence installation caused problems. but the fact that something happens at the same time indicates that it is something on a timer. Typical things would perhaps be a central heating turning on, or an elecric motor (not an induction mtor) or a wireless transmitter. Even someone operating a hair drier (which users a different type of electic motor) could do it, although that would only be for a short time! (Unless they had very long hair!!). Farm machinery or an industrila plant opearting could do it.

Those are just some possible causes - tracking the actual cause is very difficult, although the repetitive nature might help.

Can you get any line stats from the router before and after the drop out? Are they very different and how do they vary? That might indicate if it is interference or an exchange problem. Zen have probably ruled out any problems on their network, but might be worth checking if they have escalated it to BT to see if they can investigate the line condition.

Sorry I can't suggest anything more practical.

[gamesaregood]

Its also worth checking a few standard things...

Check that no ones added anything to the line? Any new kit without a filter?
Are you using the master socket? If not give it a go around the time your getting the problem? Also try the test socket if you have one (unscrew the master socket to reveal it)
Try another Microfilter on the modem / router.

Again as said above please post the stats of when the issue is occuring as well as when its not so we can take a look...

[Mike Fishcake]

Cheers for the advice - I haven't got the stats to hand as she lives about 30 miles away, but I'll make some suggestions to her and see what I can find out.

[Lenny_Nero]

I had this quite a few years back, it took quite some time, but was found to be the street lights ! There was one right by the pole and something was amiss (I never got a real answer other than the above) but it was the fact that it was off all night and that the time was advancing very slowly each day.

Another part of the problem was that the problem could never be found during the day.

[kmac]

Does it disconnect at 8 in the winter?