After finally getting my broadband activated and managing to get Sky to set a reasonable IP profile on my account rather then them keep on testing my line and putting a lower profile on it I have noticed a shitload of dropouts of the connection.

Before complaining to Sky about the issue (I assumed it was an issue with the phoneline) I decided to log the issue myself.

I made a bash script to login to the router admin page, fetch the download sync speed and echo it to a log. The script also tells the router to reboot when the sync speed is below a certain threshold. I've also made a webpage that I can access the log with. I made a cronjob to run the script every minute.

Here's some results


and

and

And guess what is causing the problem? The bathroom fucking lights.

The first bit of the log was this morning when I was in the bathroom.
The second bit of the log was yesterday when I went for a shit.
The third bit was yesterday morning when I was in the bathroom.

There's other examples where similar happens. I did another quick test this morning and the lights definitely caused the connection to drop

Fairly sure the telephone line runs across the gap above the bathroom ceiling where the transformers for the lights are (12V spots).

Clearly Sky or BT can't even attempt to sort this, and I'm really glad I didn't contact them because it'd no doubt result in downtime and no fix since they can't fix the problem.

Going to check today whether other lights cause a dropout but the bathroom lights definitely do.

:@ :@ :@ :@

You need to learn how to aim in the dark, or just sit down. HTH.

Night vision goggles?

Don't be ridiculous, I wouldn't have the patience to put them on when I have to go.

You don't really think they've stopped do you?

Give them a few months and they'll peg it at a lower limit again (for your benefit you understand) and again, and again...

I complained on 5 separate occasions in the last 3 years. Every time they upped the cap, and every time they knocked it back down a few months later.

I've just cancelled with Sky and signed up with Virginmedia. they may be just as bad, but at least the broadband will be 10 times faster.

Edit: also, I'm 90% certain that your droputs are Sky waiting until you're out of the room and then sending your router a kill signal.

Any idea who routed the cable in the first place?

 

At our work the old odd-job/maintenance guy did most of the wiring, taking UTP cables right over mains cables at practically every oppourtunity. (fail)

 

I wonder if he did your flat too?

>>I've just cancelled with Sky and signed up with Virginmedia. they may be just as bad, but at least the broadband will be 10 times faster.

 

Don't count on it. Once you've downloaded a coupla gig or so they'll throttle your connection back. Can't remember the figures they quote, but say if you're on a 30Mb line they'll cut you back to 10Mb. Great, you think. 10Mb is still plenty. Except either because their network is so oversubscribed or they do more throttling than they admit to, you'll find your self dreaming about 56k modem days.

VM speeds are highly dependant on how many people you're sharing with, and whether they're your average home user or leeching students like Kos. I've never had any serious issues in about two years of service now, aside from slightly abnormal signal levels which they sent an engineer to correct (signal was too strong, would you believe it..). The caps are pretty generous too, and they don't kill you, they just throttle to a point where it still ends up faster than most people's ADSL anyway.

 

Edit: here ya go http://help.virginmedia.com/system/selfservice.controller?CMD=VIEW_ARTICLE&ARTICLE_ID=2781&CURRENT_CMD=SEARCH&CONFIGURATION=1002&PARTITION_ID=1&USERTYPE=1&LANGUAGE=en&COUNTY=us&VM_CUSTOMER_TYPE=Cable

I don't leech students!

I have just moved from BT to virgin and gone from 6.7mb to a max of 105mb with an increase to 120 by feb, the lowest i have had with virgin is 88.4mb
Very happy with the servece up tilll now

No idea at all.

 

Still need to pop out the bathroom spots and check if I can actually see the telephone cable up there.

Is that speed test or actual real world result?

 

I always found that when websites etc. were slowing to a crawl, I'd still magically get 95% of my rated speed on speedtest.net.

What did torrents get in them periods?

What's a torrent? I've never heard of such a thing :C

 

(practically nothing, <1k/s.)

I'm not having a go (nj). I was with them for a couple of years and I know all about their little habits. It's just swings and roundabouts - Sky happen to have pissed me off to the point where I fancy a change, and Virgin are offering better broadband service for less money at the moment. It's not just about broadband anyway - every pay-TV customer except long-term Sky customers gets a HD service. I looked at my monthly bill and saw that I could get more for less somewhere else.

Virgin were on Watchdog this week.

 

Here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006mg74/features/virgin-media-1

 

And here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00zlk4z

mix of the 2, 105 is via speedtest.net and the lowest download speed ive had from various servers (microsoft, torrents, cnet)

 

i know there has been a lot of slowness with virgin and what i have seen on the net its a dns problem, so i use google dns (8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4)

OK.

Less than one week in, and I have to eat if not humble pie, then at leat some humble on toast.

Broadband is spotless for us. 45 Megabit wireless (802.11n) around the house. Wired, I seldom get under 65 Megabits and as we aren't even close to the traffic limit, that's no problem.

Television is another issue. The engineer turned up 10 minutes from the end of the booked time slot. He was in a foul mood which he shared with me quite openly. I spent a fair bit of the next hour calming him down. After he'd gone I realised he'd installed a 1TB Tivo box instead of the 500GB we were expecting.

That was the last good experience of Virginmedia television.

Sound dropouts, video freezes and dropouts, complete picture loss for a few seconds at a time (grey screen and static) all evening.

So I organised an engineer call. He turned up while I was away. according to my daughter, he spent about 3 minutes looking at the television, diagnosed loose connections, tightened the plugs, and left.

That did fuck all. The problems were just as bad, so I organised another engineer call. This one actually bothered to check the line. 'Too strong' he announced, and fitted an attenuator.  Then he ripped out our 1TB Tivo box and fitted a 500GB one. Bye bye all our recordings, favourites etc.  Bye bye our brief possession of a 1TB box.

So far I have to report his visit has done fuck all - apart from really really piss me off.