Is anyone else having connection trouble with Pipex?

[abeacock]

Phoned Pipex Broadband this morning to be told that BT have identified a problem on the voice side of things that is affecting the broadband service (?!?).

Pipex Broadband told me to report a fault to my 'voice service provider' who I mentioned was also Pipex (HomeCall). Was told that they are completely seperate companies and so I would have to call them.

Anyway, Pipex HomeCall said there was no problem and so it's all back to BT to look into it further! Will now have to wait a further 1-6 days before BT get back with an answer.

I've had enough of this rubbish!

[abeacock]

Found this Hexus thread:
http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=93862
that has a number of broadband diag tools, one of them being an exchange checker, mine (Ormskirk) is in the red...
Any one know if this could be the cause of my broadband disconnects?

[abeacock]

Just as an update, I called Pipex Broadband back yesterday morning (got through really fast as well!) and they have made an appointment for Friday where a BT engineer will come out to my house to check the line, pole, etc.

Let's just hope he finds something wrong...

[abeacock]

Just to finish my story - not that anyone's interested...

BT engineer came out Friday and after many tests found a fault in the underground wire that runs from the top of the pole to a point under an access cover down the road.

He nearly left it that my router was at fault as he couldn't find a problem when he tested with his equipment but a final test found the issue thank god!

Underground BT engineer was out on Saturday and swapped me onto a spare cable and now everything is sweet again!

I've been very impressed with both Pipex Technical support and BT's responsiveness and I'm a happy broadbanner again!

[streetster]

good stuff we had our connection with nildram (pipex) upgraded from 1mb to 2mb at some point this year, and the connection kept dropping at least once a day... got a BT engineer out who gave us a new master socket box jobby, and everything is sweet

[tiggerai]

BT engineer came out Friday and after many tests found a fault in the underground wire that runs from the top of the pole to a point under an access cover down the road.

I've been having terrible problems with Pipex recently...
but the solution to your problem seems to be exactly what I suspect is wrong with mine.

My connection dropped off on the 15th December... and I finally booked an engineer (for the 3rd time) for friday. Funny that i'm on a new estate, and a new BTHomehub appeared on the wireless network the day after my line went. I think a BT engineer has messed up an install at some point.

[abeacock]

I finally booked an engineer (for the 3rd time) for friday.

Good luck, I hope they find something wrong as they nearly left my house after testing different things for over an hour with no fault found. His very last quick test before he left finally highlighted the problem.

My line sync speed is lower than it was before 4900 rather than 6500 but at least my connection is stable and online games are playable.

[Lee H]

I'll check mine tonght for ping and packet loss as well as latency issues as I'm on pipex now apparently as bulldog is now part of pipex.

[jaggy]

Hi all, first post so be nice .

After reading just about all post`s on here about ppl haveing connection problems, i thought i`d add mine.

I been with pipex for about 3 year and up until last october-ish i never had a problem running at 1.7mb { was upgraded back in march }and when ever i downloaded a file, it was coming smooth at anywere between 124kbs to 172kbs.

Then oct.. everything went stupid with connection drop`s. When it reconnected, i`d see my connection speed was 642.0 Kbps , then after a while the adsl light on the modem would start flashing then go solid and auto reconnect at about 423.0 Kbps, and ever since oct.. anything i download no matter what site i get a trailer or game update or what-ever from, it don`t come down any faster than 30kbs, that pigging about the same speed i was getting back when i was on 512kbps service.

Just before christmas i checked all links i could find that tell you about what your exchange is upto and found mine showing red and was being updated around the 28th Nov so i left it a week or 2. Was all still the same problems so i rang pipex about 2 week agao and they asked me to check all me equipment ect.. and do a number of these test`s were ya change ya log-on anem an stuff. All results were poor which pipex agreed and now a BT engineer will be out tomorrow afternoon to charge me £60, oh!!!! i mean run test`s on my line ... So we`ll see what happends .

Great site might i add.. some great info on here too.


Shaun

[abeacock]

Jaggy, that pretty much describes my problems that I had back in December. I now have a stable connection with good download speeds but no where near my 6.5MB connection that I had (I now get about 4.5MB).

I have no idea why as my exchange is listed as "green"!

[jaggy]

Yup,, everything show`s the same Green for my exchange. I also have tryed another 2 laptops , 3 modems, a number ov brand new cables on and still cuts off and slow download, so i know it aint a problem within the house. Also a few off the neighbours have had similar problems so we`ll have to see if the engineer that is coming out is either a putz or knows what he`s on with. I`ll post what i find out tomorrow. Lets hope it`s good news lol

[merdat]

Just remember folks that it's like 'overclockin' fastest is not always best -it's stability that counts.

[abeacock]

merdat, I agree with you but when you had a rock solid 6.5MB connection and then you get loads of faults and end up with a rock solid 4.5MB connection it kind of hurts!

[tiggerai]

I'd be happy with a 512 at the moment.

[jaggy]

Ok here`s an update.

Bt enhineer came out , hooked his laptop up , ran his little program and BAM!!! his first words were. * shaun, You have a problem* { cricky, he`s a bloody smart lad }. so he did some more test and desided to swap wires over in the box at top ov the pole outside me house from the 'D' line to a 'G' line { lost me at that point} and go do the same at the exchange.

Came back and ran same test`s a few times and found a very slight differance but not much so he said he`d go check the cabin thing just up the he road, Came back and told me the problem is between me house and that cabinet thing{ ya know, them green box`s ya see up and down the street}.

So he said there`s an brand new 'D' line that he will hook me upto but needs BT to activate it { or something like that } so he`ll be back in the morning to see if he can get things going as they should. Though he said i`m on ADSL Max which is news to me as i dint know what the differance was so i just said 'OH! ok lol.'

To be honest he lost me when he got on about D lines and G lines but got me thinking when he said that at a guess my service provider { Pipex} have set a dslam or something like that, could`nt make it out dew to his acsent.

So i think i`ll have to wait till he comes back in the morning before i deside wht to do if it is down to Pipex that is the problem.

[abeacock]

That is the exactly the same thing that my engineer said, found a problem between the wires in the ground and the top of the pole (with a wire to my house). He changed it over and we got better results.

I don't really understand this DSLAM stuff myself but it seems strange that we both had major internet connection issues (did you phone work fine during this time?) and got our wires swapped out in the street...

Let us know how you get on and what type of speed and latency you get. I still had fluctuations in my speed for about a week after the 'fix' as the BRAS profile training has to sort itself out.

Was going to post a link but it's strange how few links you get from Google when searching for "bras training"