Broadband (DSL) no longer working

S

Sherpa

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We've had broadband (from eircom) for over a year now and it has always worked fine. Now, out of the blue, we're having problems (no connection).

As far as I can make out, it seems to be a DSL problem - the "DSL sync" light isn't lit up any more, and when I run the Netopia diagnostic utility it says that the DSL sync has failed.

I'm not a techie, but that suggests to me that there's a problem with the phone line. Can anyone shed any light on this?

Thanks!
 
I have also had problems recently with broadband.I am with eircom and rang helpline which were extremely helpful and talked me through it. Ring your provider and ask for assistance.
 
have you since installed anything in the house that runs from your phone line, eg sky? This causes "noise" on the line. When I connected up for the first time, I had to disconnect my sky+ phone line and my multi-room phone line for it to work. worked fine then.
 
The filters only apply to filtering the frequencies for POTS vs ADSL services. It's not a filter for keeping the signal clean. There might be some inteference on the phone line within the house.
 
Yes - but I assumed that MrF was referring to the SKY+ use of the POTS line perhaps causing interference with the ADSL something that should be avoided by a correctly installed ADSL filter.
 
Mr Flapjack said:
have you since installed anything in the house that runs from your phone line, eg sky? This causes "noise" on the line. When I connected up for the first time, I had to disconnect my sky+ phone line and my multi-room phone line for it to work. worked fine then.
Click to expand...

We have a sky box and a monitored alarm, but neither of them have been installed recently - both of them pre-date the broadband and they all seemed to work fine together for the last year.

The position now seems to be that we're getting intermittent DSL syncing (but still lots of down time).

Eircom won't escalate my fault report until I get a technician out to disconnect the sky and the alarm (and pay them €69 a go for the privilege). Methinks that if this problem doesn't resolve itself soon I'll be making enquiries with Irish Broadband.
 
Sherpa said:
Eircom won't escalate my fault report until I get a technician out to disconnect the sky and the alarm (and pay them €69 a go for the privilege).
Click to expand...
Some ISPs specify in their terms and conditions that they will not support certain setups involving phone connected house alarms and possibly other gadgets. Check yours in case this is the case.
Methinks that if this problem doesn't resolve itself soon I'll be making enquiries with Irish Broadband.
Click to expand...
Good luck if you think that IBB will be any sort of improvement based on my experience!
 
Just unplug your sky box from the phone line - you only need them connected for when you are ordering stuff from their box office anyway.

See if its possible for you to disconnect your phoneline from the alarm also, if thats too much hastle just tell them you have both disconnected and get them to escalate it to the networks people.

My brother had a problem recently and rang me, i got him to do a few tests which indicated there was no sync and it was a problem on their side yet the technician insited he factory reset the router first even though they knew there was a fault in the area. I had to reconfigure the router when I was down home the next time as 1 of the pc's wouldn't accept the wireless key which I had to disable- secured by mac address anyway as the keys can be easily cracked
 
If you ever have problems with the router it can be useful to check the router's web based configuration interface for any diagnostic or log support that might shed some light on the problem.
 
Thanks ClubMan and paddyc for the helpful suggestions.

I've tried 'rebooting' the modem and I've checked the Netopia diagnostic page.

I'll see if I can disconnect the Sky box. The only problem is that it's "hard-wired" into the phone socket and I'm not sure I'm qualified to go messing with it. Not sure about the alarm, but I'll take a look.

It seems to me to be a very strange fault. We seem to get periods where the DSL sync works fine and then periods when it won't work at all. Given that the hardware and software are a constant, logic suggests to me that there must be some problem with the line. Is that too simplistic?
 
You don't have one of those TV transmitters that beam the TV signal frrom one to another? We installed one of these at the weekend and Mrs. TP's laptop wi-fi capabilities were neutered. Turning off the tv digisender rectified the matter.
 
Sherpa said:
We've had broadband (from eircom) for over a year now and it has always worked fine. Now, out of the blue, we're having problems (no connection).

As far as I can make out, it seems to be a DSL problem - the "DSL sync" light isn't lit up any more, and when I run the Netopia diagnostic utility it says that the DSL sync has failed.

I'm not a techie, but that suggests to me that there's a problem with the phone line. Can anyone shed any light on this?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

I have just run into the very same problem. Have had Eircom BB for about a year and a half with no problems whatsoever.
Then went tried to connect to internet on saturday with no success. Same problem, no DSL sync. But unlike 'Gailey', when i called the helpline i didnt find them to be very helpful at all. I was told it may be 5 to 10 working days before the problem is fixed. Even though they could not identify said problem. 5 to 10 working days????!!!!

BTW i dont have sky+ or a monitored alarm or one of those tv transmitters.

question to the OP... has your problem been sorted? did they say what it was that was causing the fault?
 
tallpaul said:
You don't have one of those TV transmitters that beam the TV signal frrom one to another? We installed one of these at the weekend and Mrs. TP's laptop wi-fi capabilities were neutered. Turning off the tv digisender rectified the matter.
Click to expand...
I've posted about this before if you want to search for relevant posts. It is possible to mitigate the interference between 2.4GHz TV "digisenders" by choosing, for example, channel 1 on your WiFi router and channel D on your digisenders to put as much distance between the two. However check the specs of your digisenders to see what frequencies the different channels (usually 4 - A, B, C and D) cover and then choose a suitable digisender and WiFi channel. I do this at home and the interference between the two is minimal. Of course if your neigbours also have WiFi or 2.4GHz devices (including microwave ovens used regularly) then you will also want to avoid these. NetStumbler is useful for checking for neighbouring WiFi devices but to check more general 2.4GHz devices would probably need a spectrum analyzer so you probably have to make do with deducing their presence from secondary evidence such as WiFi LAN degradation.
 
Sherpa said:
We've had broadband (from eircom) for over a year now and it has always worked fine. Now, out of the blue, we're having problems (no connection).

As far as I can make out, it seems to be a DSL problem - the "DSL sync" light isn't lit up any more, and when I run the Netopia diagnostic utility it says that the DSL sync has failed.

I'm not a techie, but that suggests to me that there's a problem with the phone line. Can anyone shed any light on this?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Sherpa this happened to me, I have Imagine BB. I went outside and gently shook the actual phone-line itself, seemed to do the the trick.
The idiot eircom technician left it in the gutter and when the rain came it filled with water covering the phoneline and i guess some water seeped in and interfered. anyway the DSL light comes on now.
Hope This helps:):)
 
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