Connection Fault & Upload Speed

[#1]

Hi there,
I was wondering if there would be a possibility of checking my line for any faults. As over the last month or so I have noticed that my connection will drop in the early hours of the morning (without warning). The ADSL link is still stable but the internet connection is lost and can take anywhere from a few minutes to a good hour (without interference) to reconnect by itself. This can be particularly annoying when playing a game online or watching Netflix on my Xbox.
It could just be that it's something I'll have to live with, which I'm not too concerned about. But thought I would ask if there was a possible line fault.
Also I was wondering if my upload speed could be increased. I have been told that some ISP cap upload speed unless asked, which would be useful as I do upload videos to youtube on a regular basis and they can take a while. However, I thought this was dependant on the maximum speed a line could handle and not just due to capping so I don't know.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks.

[#2]

Hi,
What modem / router do you have?  Are you ADSL or fibre?  Does this happen at the same time or different times of he day?
What you describe sounds like the loss of the PPP session, which can be caused by maintenance activity.  I have seen issues with some modem / routers where the PPP session dies, but the status is not correctly detected and thus recovered from.  Next time this happens, log into the router and check the ADSL and Internet connectivity state.  A manual disconnect and reconnect should get you back on line more predictably and also helps inform further the characteristics of the problem.
Following this guide will also be helpful - http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,96155.0.html

[#3]

Hi there,
I've posted a graph of your connection:
<img src="http://ccgi.psmith12.plus.com/visradius/generated/image13705995137124.png"/>
Does your phone line have any interference or crackling that you can hear? I've done an initial check over your connection and can't see any obvious issues.

[#4]

I'm not sure if there is any interference or crackling over the phone line as I don't use the phone line other than for broadband access. I am using a D-Link router which worked perfectly fine at my old address with plusnet and gave me stable speeds and connection.
I have also recently noticed a drop of speed on the connection from a steady 6Mbps to around 3Mbps. My ping has also rocketed from 35ms to around 74ms. Which gives me a distinct disadvantage for some online games.
I guess I will have to dig out my old landline phone and see if there is anything noticeable eh?

[#5]

Definitely worth it, please let us know whether it makes a difference either way?

[#6]

Ahem, took me a while but I've managed to check the line and resolve the issue somewhat.
The line itself doesn't have any noticeable interference or crackling, but I've moved the router and plugged it into what is "actually" the first socket into the property and not what I was initially told was the "master" socket. This has reduced the amount of times the connection drops and it can stay steady for weeks.
Another problem has cropped up as of the last week or so though, the connection will be running fine at around 5 - 6Mbps and then all of a sudden it will drop to almost dial-up speeds. Hovering around the 0.56Mbps range. It usually happens when I've been streaming Netflix or YouTube and all of a sudden it will buffer and eventually drop the video. At this time I'll do a quick speed test and get the low speeds. To resolve this I have to go into my router and reboot the connection. Is there any reason this could be happening?

[#7]

Hi there,
Sorry to hear you're still having issues. I can see that the connection is fairly stable so I'd not worry about that, tests don't show any obvious issues either.
Is the issue affecting you at any particular time of day?
Adam

[#8]

It does seem to be at fairly random times, so no idea what could be causing it. I'll just be happily streaming away and all of a sudden I'll be dropped to "dial-up" speeds.
Can be fairly irritating.

[#9]

Looks like there have been a few drops:
<img src="http://community.plus.net/visualradius/generated/image13760398871285.png"/>
Your line has also been banded between 3328 and 6656 though we can remove this if your router syncs at the top limit of the banding for a couple of days, unfortunately it doesn't look like it is doing at the moment. If you get the drops/slowdowns a lot (on a wired connection to the router rather than wireless) then it'd definitely be worth raising a dropping connection fault at http://faults.plus.net - we'll be able to get on it for you then and get things sorted.

[#10]

Well after having raised a fault, it appears there was a fault on the line that has now been cleared. I haven't been having any issues with it dropping since then.
I'd be interested in seeing if there are any little problems that I'm not seeing though. Although, I have been tempted to just switch to fibre optic - that would give me a vastly superior upload speed right? It's a nightmare uploading anything to my youtube channel, makes keeping to a schedule a little laborious.
Thanks for the help all.

[#11]

Your line is certainly looking better.
Fibre would give you an increased upload speed which would reduce the time it's taking you to upload to YouTube.
You can check your estimated speeds here.

[#12]

Well, apparently the fix only lasted a month. I'm getting drops in speed from upwards of 8Mb/s to 0.5Mb/s. I find it happens pretty frequently after I've been downloading something from Steam or Origin. Or even when I've been watching a lot of YouTube.
Is it likely a fault has developed again? The BT engineer changed the telephone sockets in the house and spent a lot of time outside, so I can't imagine it really is the case.

[#13]

Hi there,
I can see some disconnections logged on our side of things again which may relate to the issue. Are these anything you're aware of?
<img src="http://community.plus.net/visualradius/generated/image13799280007231.png"/>
Adam

[#14]

I've not noticed any complete disconnections on my end, and I just tend to struggle through until the speed resolves itself.

[#15]

Hi, I can see you raised a fault a few weeks back and some work was done on the line. I'm afraid the only thing we can really suggest if the line is still dropping is to raise another fault - assuming of course the line still drops with the router in the master socket and all phones etc unplugged.