Internet connection "drops" at busy times of the day

Hi everyone, my name is Grant.

I would like to ask for some help with my problem. I do not yet know whether the problem is with the isp (aol), with my telephone exchange, or with my configuration.

Basically at certain times of the day my internet will stop. The green light on my netgear DG834Gv2 router that is green when i am connected to the internet turns orange and flashes. I am currently writing this at half past 9 in the morning. This seems like a time where less people are using their phones/internet in my village. Usually when most people are in work it is fine but on weekends the connection drops out. yesterday which was a sunday the connection was gone from 11am untill about 8pm. At 8pm it just connected automatically, the yellow light stopped flashing and turned green. We were thinking of driving up to the telephone exchange to ask them a few questions to see if the problem could be resolved. It is a fairly urgent problem as one of our family members works from home and needs the internet for emails. We live about 5 miles away from the telephone exchange so the connection has never been of a great speed but we have always had consistent connection. AOL told us when we phoned them that the speed that the exchange were sending to my village was 0.5meg and we have been receiving o.4meg but this was fine for us as we could access emails and play online games at this speed. For about 3 years whenever we have turned the router on we have been able to connect and access the internet. However now the internet light on the router will flash orange during almost random times of the day (seems to be when other people are using the internet/phones). Also sometimes when we answer the phone when we have an incoming phone-call the internet will stop, and as soon as we hang up from that phone call the internet light will go green on the router and we will have access to the internet again.

So our internet is dropping connection several times of the day where we cannot access the internet. When we answer a telephone call sometimes (not always) the connection will cut out/drop again.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Grant

sounds like you haven't got microfilters on all your phone connections, explains the phone interference.. go around your house and check every box where a phone plugs in, there should be a microfilter on everyone - even the one that your router plugs into.

Thanks for the reply.

but I only have one working telephone socket in the house, and that has a dsl filter on it. I have tried replacing the filter many times but the problem remains. So I have a filter on all my telephone sockets, and i do not see how my setup has changed, because it has been working for 3 years since we moved in, and now we suddenly have these problems.

The symptoms you describe are consistent with either a defective filter or a very noisy line.

Looking at the filter first - What sort of filter is it? The cheap ones (look like a phone doubler) really don't cut it, especially if line conditions are marginal. Expect to pay about £6.00 or so for a proper BT spec device.

The line. If you only have one phone socket in the house (and no extensions) there isn't a lot you can do - however if it is one of the new tupe of master sockets (they are split) removing the two front screws reveals another connector behind it, which connects directly to the incoming line. Try connecting the ADSL line (through a filter) to that.

If neither of those solves the problem, then it probably lies externally, and you will have to get AOL to escalate the problem to BT.

(Just noticed - you said you only have one working telephone socket = do you have others that are connected but not in use? If so they can pick up noise, especially if the "bell wire" is connected. If that is the case, post back and I'll tell you how to solve that.

Thanks alot guys, this seems to be a really helpful community.

The filter I have, was provided by AOL when we first purchased the internet package. Its a white filter but been as it came with the package AOL sent me. I will defiantly get a better dsl filter if you think it may fix my problem, I will take a look on amazon now.

As for the extentions, we have one working phone socket. There are two others in the house but we have plugged our telephones into them and we get no dial tone, so we presumed that they were not working. The previous owner of the house also told us that there was only one phone line. But if you think they still may be connected and interfering what would be the best thing to do? I will take the cover off and have a look behind and see if there is anything i can plug into. Once i have taken the cover off, do i plug in the dsl or do i need to put the filter in first?

Once you take the faceplate of the master socket, every other extension will go dead.

You will see the connector behind the faceplate, plug your filter into that, and your DSL Modem into the filter, as with a usual phone socket.

This point is the "demarcation point" - anything after it on your side is your problem, anything after it on the other side is the Telco's problem, BT in this case.

If you still have issues with this, it would be wise to push AOL to push BT as much as you can, otherwise you may never get the issue solved, and if its happening there, then its either your DSL equipment or the line, I'd be more inclined to suggest the latter.

So if i take the cover off my telephone socket, and plug my dsl filter and dsl cable into it, what do i expect to happen. If the internet comes on and that works, do i have to leave the cover off the socket all the time? If the internet light on my router does come on after i do this, does that mean it is BT's fault, or is my problem fixed? What do i need to do once i have plugged my router to the dsl filter and the phone-line socket directly with out the cover. What do i then need to do?

The connection behind the faceplate is the same as as regular socket, so you just plug stuff in the regular way :)

If the connection works connected into the master socket, the in indicates a problem with your internal wiring on your side of the master socket.

If the one working phone socket is the first extension after the master socket, it might be worth disconnecting the wires going from it to the others, so any noise they're generating wont affect your working extension, if it is a wiring problem - that might be it.

034738 - BT ADSL MICRO FILTER (034738)

Thanks alot guys, I will try taking the telephone socket faceplate and plugging into that next time the connection goes down (probably this weekend). I will post back with any findings.

Hey guys, its now Sunday at 11:15am and the internet was fine all day yesterday and appears to be going well today. Maybe the problem was with my telephone exchange and maybe they have fixed the problem? I hope that it was a problem with the exchange and it has been fixed, as I have had internet for almost a week now with no "drops" at all :).

If the problem re-emerges next week or something I will try the fixes you mentioned and I will post back. But hopefully this whole thing has been a problem with the exchange and hopefully it is now resolved.

Thanks so much for all your great help

Grant