[StuR6]

As far as I know, Im flogging a dead horse and need to move house. I have sky BB that comes through a BT copper cable telephone line as far as I know. The problems were instant. After waiting hours and literally days to speak to a technical person, I finally got some answers and tests, as follows:

1. We connected the Netgear modem directly into the main house socket, after taking off the face plate. It made little difference and we were getting about 0.7mb speed. Go to an extension socket and it barely dropped at all.

2. I live 2.5 mile from the exchange, and was told by the tech that the max possible speed I could expect was 2mb/s; so was pointless in upgrading to any super dooper amazing accounts.

3. I asked to have an engineer go to the exchange and have me swapped over to a different socket (non-rusty or whatever). This may or may not have happened, but I did seem to get quicker speeds.

4. The tech on the phone said it was an incredibly noise-free line, which was good.

However, upon real use, I've not really noticed anything great. The problem being, that it works best after 9pm, and goes on until about 8am. Any daytime use, and you can see the moden jumping offline, as the little green net light goes out.

I know the light is about to go out, as I will be bumped out of a game like COD4, then my PS3 looses PSN connection. Moments later the router confirms my lack of connection. Leave it and it may stay like this. Hit re-set and it sometimes comes back on for five minutes. Wait until 9pm and it fires back into life.

I know 9pm onwards works, I have managed download of patches etc, but its very slow. However it seems the GT5 Prologue is too big to get done before 8am. 9pm and the cod4 shows a good 3,4 or even 5 green bar connection. I cannot host COD4 games for long.

The PS3 is running wirelessly, about 2m from the router. I doubt a cable would help, as seen as the tech on the phone was at best getting 0.7mb at 6pm. Rember, it dropps out totally during day.

Anyone know any fixes?

Is there any chance that there is local interference? I've heard it told that if your neighbours are on sky BB, then thier router might interfer. I know my next door is on sky BB; could it be that his fleabay searching until 9pm is kicking me off? Can I get my router to run on a different wifi frequency? Or will it just be the case of all sorts of daytime electrical items could be hindering? The sky tech guy did ask if we are near any masts etc, to which I know we are not - we're in fields. The phone line runs past nothing nasty. Would presume the line is above ground.

There is no fibre optic/virgin in our street.

Help?

[andyr300]

yep, you should be able to change the 'channel' the wireless operates on, if you perform a simple scan you should be able to see which 'channel' your neighbours are on, otherwise just change yours and see if one channel is better than any other. you should have the option from 1-11. competing wifi's could harm your wireless connection whatever ISP they are with.

An easier fix would be to connect to the router with a wire and see if the problem still persists which seems likely given you say the light goes on and off. have you tried a new router?

[chalkywhyte]

I wonder why it drops out at certain times?

I would defo try the advice above and if all else fails mate get back onto sky and try have it out with them for paying for a service you just aint getting.

EDIT: Try in the broadband forums aswell mate as there are some very vlever members in there who can normally get to the bottom of these things.

[StuR6]

ok, thanks, will try BB forum. Just trying to avoid double posting.

Yes, I've tried other Sky netgear routers too. Both the wireless fix and swap router fix, dont seem to tie in with the day time problems though...?

[Workshed]

Try doing this it should help determine whether it's really your distance from the exchange or whether it's Sky that's at fault.

[Workshed]

Originally Posted by StuR6

ok, thanks, will try BB forum. Just trying to avoid double posting.

Yes, I've tried other Sky netgear routers too. Both the wireless fix and swap router fix, dont seem to tie in with the day time problems though...?

The different effects at the time of day is likely due to too many people on Sky's network at that time or too much contention at your local exchange at that time.

[StuR6]

Thats my worry

They shouldn't be allowed to do it. Can hardly give a discount on a "free" product. We only bought sky to get the broadband and dish. Looking forward to 6 months time when our contract runs out - but no idea what to go to, if the exchange is full, or overloaded.

[nero0410]

I am with sky, and had a 2mb connection when I was supposed to be getting around 4mb as I have the higher service. I also live 2.5-3 miles from the exchange.

When I spoke to them about it, I had all the usual checks done so skipped all that nonsense and simply asked them to boost the line.
Within 2 minutes they had just typed in a couple of details, basically telling the system to push 4mb instead of 2mb down my line, and there it was, done.

I'd ask them to boost it if I were you if you are only getting less than a 1mb, as almost everyone should get 2mb due to sky now using their own equiptment at the exchange (which caused me hell as I went without a phone for a week, caller display missing for 2 months, and messed about by them getting it back on and working. Though I was compensated adequately for loss of service, after a fight since they first only offered £10 )

tris

[StuR6]

Thank you Tris.

I've noticed Sky are advertising better speeds etc and since then I've had reasonably fast rates from what I can tell. However, I am still getting knocked off a peak times and I strongly suspect that this is a contention rate issue - something I cannot solve?

What makes me laugh is how Sky wrote us a snotty letter saying we've over used our download allowance for the month - first time I've seen this as my previous sky account never had an issue. Anyhow, I only laugh at the whole issue, because its sky's own fault; you see, I download the PSN patch for my PS3 every so often... but in fact it fails. Every time it fails, you have to start over; ie I can fail at 90% ten times which means I've downloaded 10x117MB, ie 1,170MB which is over half my allowance, all because the darn thing knocks me off and crashes my system.

[nero0410]

I dont usually get cut off hardly at all in peak time's, or any time really. I used to a little before my phone call to them, but that seemed to fix that too.
How long have you been with sky? As if it is more than 6 months, you would have had yourself transferred onto their equiptment opposedto bt's what they used to be on. That's what happened to me, and may others also had problems after the switchover.
They evetually found that the circuit board needed changing in the exchange, though that was loss of phoneline, but bb was still active, due to being on seperate strand of line.
Worth seeing if you can have a boost put on your line to get you up to 2mb.

I'm not sure, but I think with the update you may find that when you have 90% downloaded already, it sort of seems it's starting and downloading pretty quickly, but it's actually catching up with what is already there, then continueing.
I foudn this with a partionally downloaded ps update and also World of Warcraft updates on the pc.

tris