Broadband intermittent-ness nightmare

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Sometimes my connection is on, sometimes off, completely at random. It can flicker about or go for hour after hour in one state of the other, which makes me very nervous indeed. Unfortunately things are complex in that the phone socket is in my housemate's room. She doesn't use it, so I ran a phone extenion through to my room, and set up a phone and broadband, and am now paying the bills for same.

Very recently, the intermittent-ness started after 2-3 weeks of no problems at all. Now I've found out that the extension itself may be causing this, but I need at least 10 metres to get it out of her room and into mine. Getting my own phone socket in my room would cause a whole other load of problems, mostly with my landlord.

Can I solve this problem with a special kind of extension cable? The one I have now is some kind of all-in-one extension-and-microfilter thing with 'ADSL capable' written all over it, but it's not immune to the problems. Could I maybe run a long DSL cable around the skirting board to my modem or would this be even worse?

― Vic Fluro, Sunday, 19 June 2005 17:21 (twenty years ago)

are you in the Toronto area on Rogers by any chance? this has been happening to us as well. maddening!

― Kim (Kim), Sunday, 19 June 2005 18:01 (twenty years ago)

my dsl was super sketchy. the phone company put a speed cap on the connection, which helped

― ronny longjohns (ronny longjohns), Sunday, 19 June 2005 19:32 (twenty years ago)

If possible, I'd try and see if it works in your housemates room by having it running for a while in there without the extension.

When I had a problem with this, British Telecom couldn't figure out the problem - but they managed to switch to a different cable between our house and the junction box on the road which solved the problem.

― Chewshabadoo (Chewshabadoo), Sunday, 19 June 2005 19:55 (twenty years ago)

Not possible, unfortunately. I'd have to move my whole computer into my housemate's room, which would come under the heading of 'grotesque imposition'.

It's literally just started happening in the last couple of days, which is the strange part. Do heatwaves affect this kind of thing? Higher resistances due to the extreme heat and such?

BT gave me a lot of noise about having a telephone extension in the first place. Apparently they 'don't support' such things, which leaves me either having to shell out for my own phone socket, which will leave me badly broke, or trying ever more outrageous cable-based solutions.

― Vic Fluro, Sunday, 19 June 2005 21:07 (twenty years ago)

i had to get a strange adaptor thingie for the extension i use for my broadband connection (but i forget if it came with my modem or wz an advisory purchase)

― mark s (mark s), Sunday, 19 June 2005 21:09 (twenty years ago)

A filter? Yeah that could help - Vic, do you use the line for other things? Does it have a fax machine, or call waiting or people using the line to make calls? That can screw with DSL if you havent put the little filter box onto the line, I believe.

Deteriorating phone lines will also cause problems, and if its within the building or out to the street, theres not much you can do but get the telco involved.

I'd be calling yr ISPs helpdesk first, to eliminate anything obvious like config problems or ISP outages.

― Trayce (trayce), Sunday, 19 June 2005 22:21 (twenty years ago)

I tried that, but BT basically said that it was my fault for not having it directly connected to the phone socket. Apparently any length of extension cord between the socket and the microfilter is a no-no, although other people have told me that that's just their excuse to get me off the line quickly.

Unfortunately, unless I want to splash out of a new phone socket in my room, and all the infinite problems that would cause, I need at least ten metres of distance between the phone socket and the modem.

― Vic Fluro, Monday, 20 June 2005 06:19 (twenty years ago)

That is just an excuse, the microfilter is for phones not for routers and I have an extension for mine that goes up to my room from downstairs and I have no connection issues.

One solution is it really is the extra 10 meters of copper extra on top of the 100's that the telephone company uses to get to your house is to get a router and run a 10 meter network cable to your PC and have the router by the telephone socket, you'd need a power socket by your telephone socket though.

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Monday, 20 June 2005 07:55 (twenty years ago)

I had the same problem. Called the bloody phone/internet company. They fixed it... for 150 euros. I mean, it wasn't *my* fault, but their frigging cables OUTSIDE my house. *S.I.G.H.* Ah well. It's fixed.

― nathalie's post modern sleaze fest (stevie nixed), Monday, 20 June 2005 07:58 (twenty years ago)

Is that an ethernet cable you're talking about? That might be problematic... would a DSL cable that length be having similar problems?

― Vic Fluro, Monday, 20 June 2005 10:15 (twenty years ago)

It's unlikely to be to do with the extension, but each phone, where ever it is on the line needs to have a microfilter between it and the line, otherwise yes, the broadband connection is interrupted each time the unmicrofiltered phone is used. You can pick up a microfilter for a couple of quids.

― tech support, Monday, 20 June 2005 10:21 (twenty years ago)

the microfilter is for phones not for routers

A *faulty* microfilter between router and line can break connectivity, though. If you can find a spare, try swapping it. They do tend to be cheap and nasty little widgets, and can randomly fail.

― Another Tech Support Droid, Monday, 20 June 2005 10:32 (twenty years ago)

It's definitely not the microfilter - I've tried three of them. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. At the moment it's hiccupping on and off seeingly at random - a few seconds with, then a few seconds without, or a few minutes. Or an hour and a half. Or I might get four hours solid use in the middle of the night, with it still merrily chirping away when I finally hit the sack, only to have it gone again the following morning.

The only factor I'm noticed - and this is superstition at best - is that if the TV next door is on, the internet is more often than not likely to be off, and vice versa. It's a digital TV and the thick black cable leading to the set-top box is positioned right next to the cable for the internet. Am I being a mad conspiracy theorist or can two digital signals in seperate cables interfere with each other?

― Vic Fluro, Monday, 20 June 2005 17:10 (twenty years ago)

If the cable's not shielded properly, I guess its possible.

― Trayce (trayce), Tuesday, 21 June 2005 03:09 (twenty years ago)

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