Connection Keeps Dropping in TW1

[mmoudi]

Hi,

I'm in the TW1 area, with a 10mb cable connection that has been playing up since yesterday morning.

When it "drops", it's not totally dropping out. There's still *some* data going back and forth. So for example, I can load up an iGoogle page, but not all the gadgets will load (g-chat specifically). Or some images won't load. Or Spotify will be really intermittent, constantly cutting out. And if i download from giganews (newsgroup server) I'll get like 1 mbps. Skype connects sometimes, but MSN won't, at all.

So, it started doing this some time during the day. It'd work for a few minutes, then go back to this state. By evening time (7ish?) it started working again, and kept working till I passed out that night ;)

Woke up this morning, worked well till about midday, and same thing started.
I called Virgin Support, and was told there was something wrong with the frequency of my modem, that it definitely wasn't the line, and that an engineer would be sent out on Wednesday :(

After the call I did a bit of reading (luckily I can tether my mobile to my laptop), and I logged into my Ambit 256 and here are the results:

Downstream Lock : Locked
Downstream Channel Id : 2
Downstream Frequency : 331000000 Hz
Downstream Modulation : QAM256
Downstream Symbol Rate : 5360.537 Ksym/sec
Downstream Interleave Depth : taps32Increment4
Downstream Receive Power Level : 8.2 dBmV
Downstream SNR : 39.5 dB

Upstream Lock : Locked
Upstream Channel ID : 1
Upstream Frequency : 18800000 Hz
Upstream Modulation : QPSK
Upstream Symbol Rate : 2560 Ksym/sec
Upstream transmit Power Level : 29.0 dBmV
Upstream Mini-Slot Size : 2


OK, so about an hour later, it started working properly again (still working right this second). And currently the Ambit is reporting:

Downstream Lock : Locked
Downstream Channel Id : 2
Downstream Frequency : 331000000 Hz
Downstream Modulation : QAM256
Downstream Symbol Rate : 5360.537 Ksym/sec
Downstream Interleave Depth : taps32Increment4
Downstream Receive Power Level : 7.7 dBmV
Downstream SNR : 39.4 dB

Upstream Lock : Locked
Upstream Channel ID : 1
Upstream Frequency : 18800000 Hz
Upstream Modulation : QPSK
Upstream Symbol Rate : 2560 Ksym/sec
Upstream transmit Power Level : 29.0 dBmV
Upstream Mini-Slot Size : 2


Any ideas? Anything I can do? Or is my only hope to wait 7 days for an engineer to make it through the snow? :(

Cheers, moodi

[Sephiroth]

Your power levels are unsatisfactory. There are marginal conditions in play and the fluctuating downstream power, which is unhealthy when over 6 dBmv is indicative of a network problem.

I'm surprised to see such low upstream power. It's kust inside spec, but has no headroom for marginal conditions.

I suggest you post a help request on the VM support newsgroup, who are 2nd line support techs and will respond quickly to you. If you're on Vista or Windows 7, you would use Windows Live Mail (a standard part of your system).

You'd click the "Newsgroups" link at the bottom of the screen and then Tools/Accounts then Add/Newsgroup Account.

Give your Display Name (like kiloman), your e-mail address then your server address for the newsgroup which is "news.virginmedia.com".

You'll then be able (via the Newsgroups menu item) to select the Virgin media icon on the left of a search panel, click on "All" and wait a few minutes till it's finished listing thousands of newsgroups.

Scroll down to "Virginmedia.support.broadband.cable" and double click it.

And you're there. You can post your stuff.

[Ignitionnet]

Zero help to you but all is fine here in TW1 1 so I suspect it's something specific to or close to yourself rather than being a wider network issue. Transmit power does seem too low, so hopefully not too much work to get things back as they should be, they should be ok just popping a device on the end of your modem which will bring your downstream power down and your upstream power up.

Depending on where in Twickers or St Margarets you are you might have been moved to a different tap or network conditions might have changed due to the weather.

[mmoudi]

Thanks for the replies guys.

I'll try posting to the support newsgroup, but by the sounds of it they're going to tell me I need a tech visit, i.e. put up with this till Wednesday, or till the techies stop using the snow as an excuse to skive off work, whichever comes first :P

edit: BBings, what's that device called btw?

[Ignitionnet]

Cable simulator mmoudi.

[mmoudi]

Great, thanks BBings!

I've only got Internet (no TV), but after reading about simulators, attenuators and signals, I thought I'd try putting a splitter and another length of cable between the modem and the wall.

The modem now reports:

Downstream Lock : Locked
Downstream Channel Id : 2
Downstream Frequency : 331000000 Hz
Downstream Modulation : QAM256
Downstream Symbol Rate : 5360.537 Ksym/sec
Downstream Interleave Depth : taps32Increment4
Downstream Receive Power Level : 3.0 dBmV
Downstream SNR : 37.8 dB

Cable Modem Upstream
Upstream Lock : Locked
Upstream Channel ID : 1
Upstream Frequency : 18800000 Hz
Upstream Modulation : QPSK
Upstream Symbol Rate : 2560 Ksym/sec
Upstream transmit Power Level : 34.0 dBmV
Upstream Mini-Slot Size : 2


Reckon that's fixed it?

[Ignitionnet]

That's quite a bit better. Whether or not it's fixed it we'll see, though I was at 34dBmV for quite some time on the upstream and it worked fine. How's the performance?

[mmoudi]

Working perfectly fine so far... but it had been working for an hour at the old levels... so I'll see if it starts playing up again tomorrow daytime - same as it did the last two days :)