Right, I'm on the case now with Orange as my BB connection is totally goosed.

Since I hooked up my Livebox instead of my Netgear router it has been off for hours at a time. I have always known that it has external factors as it goes down in the evening until late and always around 8 in the morning.

My Netgear router ALWAYS worked in the main BT socket, but my Livebox, while more reliable, does not always stay connected when in the main socket.

I have monitored the situation and I am getting HEC and CRC errors by the hundreds. A couple of times, it has been connected for about 10 seconds and still shown massive numbers of these errors as well as a lot of Link Retrain notifications.

I can give you the numbers later, but we are talking A LOT, and clearly there is an external problem, but to be forewarned is to be forearmed and therefore, can anyone give me any thoughts before I take Orange to task tomorrow? It has been going on for months and months but now that the Livebox is unreliable in the main socket, I can finally put the ball in their court.

Is it the common known AR7 issue.

From what I can gather, the Livebox does not have the AR7

Tonight, I haven't got in during the busier time of the evening but it has been off since around 7pm but I hooked it up to the main socket at 10.30 and it has stayed connected. I'm going to leave it overnight and see what happens when it normally drops out in the morning.

Regardless of what it does much of the time, there has been a problem with it plugged in the main socket and so I am going to tell Orange. I'm not taking any cr@p from them.

Also, regardless of what negative influence my own internal wiring has, it is clearly badly affected by outside influences and I have had enough.

Last night's 10 second connection- HEC errors- 215 CRC errors 514. Last night's 20 second connection HEC errors- 324 CRC errors 717. This morning at 7.27 connected for 8hrs 7mins HEC errors 242 CRC errors 384.

More errors in 20 seconds during the evening than in 8 hours overnight.

This is ADSL?

What's the phone line like? When you're having trouble, listen to the line. Dial 17070 and select option 2 for "quiet line test". Are there any crackles? If there are, you need to get the line fixed. That's easier said than done - I've been trying for over 10 years and BT simply couldn't give a shi...

Thanks, JJW009. It doesn't appear to be crackling, but it's nice to know.

I'm keeping a log of the errors as noted and here's the time-up results for the last three mornings-

07.35 up for 8hrs 17mins
07.27 up for 8hrs 7mins
07.29 up for 8hrs 6mins

So, on Mon, Tue and Wed night, the problem has stopped at around 11.18pm, 11.20 and 11.23. Now, you can't tell me that this kind of consistency is down to anything in my house- I've already ruled out anything which is timed- and if it was something like this in my house, then it would be exactly the same time over three days, surely!

I don't know what time it starts in the evening, but it will go off again any time now, so I'm keeping an eye on it this morning.

Oh, to get through to Orange and speak to someone who knows what they are talking about without using a script

I understand that you should not connect an ADSL modem using an extension cable. I have (and always have in this house) connected my modem in my study using a hard-wired extension- without problems.

She is saying that I should not use an extension and does not seem to differentiate. I actually HAVE used a plug in extension and it has worked fine during the periods when there is not a problem.

She is saying that I should have a filter on each line.

I don't need a filter on the line that the router is connected on, because there is no telephone equipment connected BUT, I have used a filter in the past- I disconnected it in case their was a problem.

She is saying that all my lines should be filtered and the router plugged into the main outlet plate. Well, if the line itself is not filtered and (as I have sometimes done) there is nothing plugged into the sockets at all, then WTF?

I can't get through to them that while I admit that the problem is influenced by my internal system- it is much more reliable in the main line with everything else disconnected- the times that it disconnects completely is clearly the fault of the wider system.

Today, I am going to get one of those main line filters and completely filter the two extensions that do have phones on them. Then, IF the problem persists I am going to disconnect the study extension and plug the router into the main outlet plate.

Then, if the problem persists, I am going to ask to speak to someone who appears to know what the hell they are talking about.

I don't want to dismiss the knowledge that these individuals have, but at the end of the day, they are almost certainly only reading from a list of options in front of them. Most of them probably don't know what a HEC error is (I am still not sure )

Those of you who have followed this story from the CPC site will know that it has been going on far too long. I am going to get something done in the next week or someone's going to get it in the neck.

have a look at this it fixed a similar problem that i had

disconnecting the bell wire from the phone socket …
http://www.jarviser.co.uk/jarviser/bell ... shell.html

Is the Orange live box based on a Thomson Speedtouch router of some sort?

Is there any way for you to check if Interleving is turned on on your phone line? I used to use a Speedtouch 585v7 and got a lot of the errors you describe (but not many disconnects) and it turns out that the errors are down to interleaving being turned on on the line.
Interleaving is likely to be turned on if you have a long line or are prone to a lot of disconnects as I think it increases the lines reliability.

Are you able to connect the router directly to the telephone master socket? I realise this is a pain in the bum but you need to do it to eliminate any problems with your houses internal wiring. Some routers are more sensitive than others. That is why the Orange bod keeps banging on about it (even if it is from a script).
I found the best solution was to connect to the master socket and use HomePlug networking to connect up to my computer. I found clickey to be very good.

Another thing to check, are you trying to access the BBC iPlayer? There was a problem with Thomson based products and the iPlayer but IIRC it should have been resolved. It was something to do with the way iPlayer streamed the video causing the router to spontaneously restart.

Suffice to say, the problems I had with the SpeedTouch has put me off Thomson products somewhat, especially when their technical support is so poor and requires you to register as a reseller just to download any firmware updates.

Sorry for not catching up sooner, guys.

I was working on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, but on Thursday night, it cut off around 7pm and the router spent the rest of the night on the window ledge plugged into the main socket happily flashing away showing no ADSL signal.

I wondered if my old Netgear router was flakey and if my Livebox might improve things, but alas, the Livebox is worse than the Netgear, but while the Netgear would at least stay connected in the main socket, the Livebox won't- proving that this is an external problem.

There are times when the router shows that it is connected but nothing much is happening. My Netgear showed an upload and download speed of 0 despite saying that it was connected. The Livebox just doesn't appear to want to play ball- which is good because it has proved the point I've been trying to make for months.

On Thursday night, as soon as I'd shifted the Livebox to the main socket, I rang Orange and they carried out a line test and told me that it showed nothing wrong. Then she told me that I was showing a happy, healthy 512KB connection, which is interesting as I am supposed to have (and do have, when it works) a 1MB connection.

The problem has now been passed to the Escalation dept and that will take 5 days and I will have to ring THEM again to request another line test (I'm not sure what that one is supposed to do) and that won't be until next Thursday.

It was better last night- not disconnecting much but incredibly slow at times. I guess we all know from using the forums that Friday is a slow night on the Internet, but it was on and off all morning today.

It now shows connected since around 11am but has recorded 2422 HEC errors, 9570 CRC errors and 138 LinkRetrains. I'm guessing (because I can't find out) that LinkRetrain is when the connection is re-established and the record for this one is- 219 in 9 minutes.

What are your noise margins in dB? Lower than 10dB is really bad. Lower than 3dB is fail.

What's the attenuation? Mine is 15dB and today is a seriously bad day. I've lost the link about 30 times.

It's on the "statistics" pop-up.

it also maybe worth checking the MTU setting within the router set up page
for a BT line using any ISP the MTU setting is 1458 the default MTU setting is 1500 …

As you can imagine, it isn't easy to keep up to speed on this when your Internet connection is down most of the evening.

I have looked at the Downstream Noise Margin and it was around 33dB last night when the connection was bad and 54dB when it came back up.It's 61dB and things are fine. Last night, once, just once- I access the Livebox settings and it said -66. I know that you can get minus dB numbers, but it was only less that 33 once.

I can't play around with the basic ADSL connection settings as it is an Orange product and as far as I can make out is set to whatever it needs to be.

Whoah.

I'm still here and according to my Livebox, It's been up since around 18.10 (it dropped off at 17.55) and between 20.03 and 21.43, I haven't had a SINGLE Linkretrain.

Also, in that time, the number of HEC errors has only gone up by 63 and the CRC errors by 11.

Downstream noise margin is 64dB and basically, nothing is wrong.

I wonder if someone else complained to BT and a fault has been found and fixed, because AFAIK, Orange were not going to take this any further until after Thursday.

The service has now been up for 21hrs and HEC and CRC errors are only 44 and 58, Linkretrains 3.

What are FEC errors? I can't say that I really understood Wiki (far too complicated) but in those 21 hrs I've had 1,178,398 FEC errors where there were none before.