Very long running intermittent connectivity problems - any ideas?

ChrisJenkins · 09-05-2007, 20:09

Hi all, I'm almost at my wits end so thought I'd ask for ideas from this forum's collective wisdom. I'm afraid this is a bit of a long story so apologies for that in advance...

I have had NTL (and now VirginMedia) cable broadband since 2000. As speed upgrades have come along I have always upgraded and I'm currently on the 10 MB service. At first all was good but after about 18 months, I started getting intermittent losses of connectivity. These typically last around 10 minutes give or take and if left to its own devices normally starts working again. The strange thing is that during these period the cable modem lights still show it as online etc. just no traffic can flow upstream or downstream. Restarting the modem invariably clears the problem. Sometime the problem occurs just once or twice a day, at other times it can happen 5 times in an hour. it seems random - I have not been able to spot any correlation with time of day etc. I have exhaustively tested my own equipment (on numerous occassions) to rule out any faults there.

Without even beginning to go into the fun I've had with (non)customer service, the basic cycle that repeats every few months is as follows:

1. I persuade them to send an engineer.
2. He comes, fiddles with signal levels, tweaks something in the cabinet at the end of the road or replaces my cable modem (I'm on my 5th one now...)
3. Things seem much better for a while and then it all starts over again.

This week they sent the Principal Service Engineer for my region to see me (I had gotten really cross with them...). He listened to my detailed description and all the diagnostics I have done and looked at the modem log etc. He said it was not a fault with the modem and was likely something further upstream. He promised to investigare and get back to me...

He called today while I was out and spoke to my wife. He basically said that he *thought* it was due to traffic shaping and that it should get better when my are is upgraded to 20 MB.... Well, that does not stack up at all on so many fronts. And how come he doesn't *know* if it is due to traffic shaping or not (don't they have logs and traces to look at!). Of course I don't have any 'phone number for this guy to speak to him myself and when I called the service centre they basically told me they did not have any 'phone number for the engineering department nor any way to pass a message to them. Even when I spoke to a supervisor the story was the same. Unbelievable!

This is all so utterly unacceptable that I don't know what to do next other than start some heavyweight complaining.

Anyone got any technical ideas regarding this issue and/or any suggestions on how to get some proper attention from VirginMedia?

Thanks, Chris

devil · 12-05-2007, 21:25

First of all apologies..... I would say that please message me the mac address of the cable modem and I will check it out for you. Also it depends on a lot of things, some places, technician refuse to visit as the signal strength is so poor that they can't do nothing. pass the details I will check it out for u..

Cheers ! !

on in an hour! · 12-05-2007, 22:13

have none of the techs who visited ever done a check off the cabinet,if they get the same fault as in the house they can refer it to a network tech,these guys have a better escalation path than the service techs.i.e. they can ask the people at surveillance to keep an eye on your area,every time the rtn path drops they can see it on the area rather than just your equipment,may be worth a shot to get a tech to call and suggest he passes it on,dont know,may help.

devil · 13-05-2007, 20:04

I completely agree to ur point but the issue is only service techs can escalate this to the network team, it cant be done directly by us

that is the real trouble otherwise i have seen issues where service tech visited 4 times in a month still no joy...

sorry can't do much abt it.

ChrisJenkins · 14-05-2007, 12:38

The MAC address of my NTL 250 cable modem is XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX. Admin Edit (Chris T): It is unsafe to publish this information on a public website.

I understand that it is the service tech. who should escalate this but of course as the problem is very intermittent it typically never happens when a tech is present on site...

As I said in the (admittedly rather long and rambling) initial post I actually had a visit from the senior area tech who checked things out (it was all working at the time), and told me it was not a problem at my end. He then went off to check things out from the network side. He rang back 2 days later and spoke to my wife and gave some story about this being due to traffic shaping, but frankly there are many things that don't check out on that front (wrong time of day, we never reach the TF cutin limits, service stops rather than going slowly, etc.). Of course there is no way to reach this guy again since no one will admit to having any way to get a message to him or a 'phone number for the engineering dept. (apparently they are always contacted by telepathy or something it seems...)

What I was hoping for is that the network guys could monitor my MAC address for a few days until the problem had occurred a few times and then see hat the trace showed. Seems that is not something anyone wants to do...

Sigh

dontpannic · 14-05-2007, 14:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChrisJenkins

The MAC address of my NTL 250 cable modem is XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX.

I understand that it is the service tech. who should escalate this but of course as the problem is very intermittent it typically never happens when a tech is present on site...

As I said in the (admittedly rather long and rambling) initial post I actually had a visit from the senior area tech who checked things out (it was all working at the time), and told me it was not a problem at my end. He then went off to check things out from the network side. He rang back 2 days later and spoke to my wife and gave some story about this being due to traffic shaping, but frankly there are many things that don't check out on that front (wrong time of day, we never reach the TF cutin limits, service stops rather than going slowly, etc.). Of course there is no way to reach this guy again since no one will admit to having any way to get a message to him or a 'phone number for the engineering dept. (apparently they are always contacted by telepathy or something it seems...)

What I was hoping for is that the network guys could monitor my MAC address for a few days until the problem had occurred a few times and then see hat the trace showed. Seems that is not something anyone wants to do...

Sigh

I would block out that mac address and PM it to the guy who requested it. You could find your modem being cloned with MAC information gone public...

ChrisJenkins · 14-05-2007, 15:01

Whoops sorry! Yes, I should have PM'd that instead.