Evening disconnects, what to say to engineer?

[Dean]

Ok for maybe 4 months I have been having 6 disconnection each evening, lasting anything from 5 seconds to sometimes as long as 20 minutes. I'm in the SA2 area of Swansea.

If I'm downloading, my utorrent graphs will drop to zero, and then begin to pickup again once I reconnect. Msn messenger, will say I'm offline. If I'm just browsing, I will get page not found, or "server is taking too long to respond". And worst of all, Warcraft will disconnect me from the server.

The sync and ready light always remain on. The send light will flicker occasionally. Upon reconnect, the send/rec lights will flash again. It's almost as if data isn't being sent to my CM.

I have the fifth engineer out to help sort this out next Tuesday. They really don't have any idea whats going on, and tell me to get back to CS if theres a problem. CS send out clueless engineers. I'm just going around in circles. I really don't want to have to cancel, and move to Sky, but I don't think this is going to get fixed.

What do I say to the engineer when he comes out? Does anybody have a clue what might be causing this to happen?

[Horace]

My modem randomly reboots when using utorrent and I'm opening too many connections. If it only happens when you're downloading a torrent, particularly a very well seeded one then it could be the reason. Reducing the maximum allowed connections should help this. I'm using an Ambit 120 (silver) modem, not sure if this particular problem affects the newer (blue) 250's.

[JonathanLH]

similar here, ambit 120 too on 10mbit, but only once/twice a night

[ecksmen]

Right, so let's calirfy. You say it disconnects, by that you mean the connection doesn't seem to want to work?

How do you re-connect?

What hardware are you using? Router, usb etc...

What are the logs on the modem saying?

What are your signal levels?

You need to provide more conise info!

[Dean]

Sorry, guilty as charged, here's a bit more information. Your help is appreciated folks, it's driving me mental.

How do you re-connect?
I have to sit it out, pulling the plug sometimes gets me back, sometimes not. Coming back after pulling the plug works 40% of the time. Even if I come back, I'll be in a 20 minute ish wide window of disconnections.

What hardware are you using? Router, usb etc...
Direct connection over ethernet. If I plug in the GF's laptop after resetting everything, I get the same problem, Sync light on, no data getting to the modem.

What are the logs on the modem saying?
First Time Last Time Counts Level ID Text
Time Not Established Time Not Established 2 Critical(3) 68000300 DHCP WARNING - Non-critical field invalid in response.
Sat Apr 21 14:27:57 2007 Sat Apr 21 14:27:57 2007 1 Critical(3) 82000500 Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - ...
Time Not Established Time Not Established 4 Critical(3) 68000300 DHCP WARNING - Non-critical field invalid in response.
Time Not Established Time Not Established 1 Critical(3) 82000500 Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - ...
Time Not Established Time Not Established 3 Critical(3) 68000300 DHCP WARNING - Non-critical field invalid in response.
Time Not Established Time Not Established 1 Critical(3) 82000200 No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
Time Not Established Time Not Established 1 Critical(3) 68000300 DHCP WARNING - Non-critical field invalid in response.
Time Not Established Time Not Established 2 Critical(3) 82000200 No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
Time Not Established Time Not Established 1 Critical(3) 68000300 DHCP WARNING - Non-critical field invalid in response.
Time Not Established Time Not Established 2 Critical(3) 82000200 No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
Time Not Established Time Not Established 1 Critical(3) 68000300 DHCP WARNING - Non-critical field invalid in response.
Time Not Established Time Not Established 2 Critical(3) 82000200 No Ranging Response received - T3 time-out
Time Not Established Time Not Established 2 Critical(3) 68000300 DHCP WARNING - Non-critical field invalid in response.
Thu Apr 19 17:51:43 2007 Thu Apr 19 17:51:43 2007 1 Critical(3) 82000500 Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - ...

What are your signal levels?
They are within Docsis spec, the one thing I notice though is that as soon as I notice a disconnection, if I'm able to get to the modem info screen, my upstream is between 56-59dB

Here's what I've tried so far:
Replaced cable modem (NTL sent another).
Tried running CM off USB to eliminate problems with my ethernet driver.
Deleted my Norton firewall and virus scanner.
Deleted and fully reinstalled my tcp/ip stack.
Patched tcpip.sys to allow more than 10 connections/second.
Switched off central heating in case power spikes are fubaring the CM
Swapped all internal cables.
Run CM without conditioning filters.
Put CM out the window to keep it cool.
Opened CM and added heatsinks + 1.5 inch fan powered by PC.
Turned off moblile phone.
Turned off cordeless phone.
Put wireless radio thermostats into the microwave oven to isolate them from the house.
Connected CM to downstairs connection point.
Dremmeled a load of corroded grime off main cable feed to house.
Disconnected TV and digibox from cable feeds.
Swapped CM PSU, and plugged it into a seperate socket.

The main feed was open to the elements when I moved in 6 months ago, the f connector on the main feed from under the street is heavily corroded.more info
The CM is a ntl 250

[Dean]

So engineer 5 came out, he popped the old meter on the coax, the levels are fine, and he left.

I've spent the evening watching my speeds drop to zero, and not being able to access pages, check email, listen to lastfm for 2 minues at a time.

Does anybody know how I get out of this and cancel my account? Whats the procedure? There's no use trying to get this sorted, I'm beaten.