Connection intermittently dropping (Orange Light of Death)

[#1]

I've been with PlusNet for almost a year now and have had no issues until recently.

On 6th August my connection went down, with the router's power light solid orange and broadband light flashing red. I went over all the troubleshooting options, phoned support etc. and we couldn't work out what was wrong. Eventually I bought a landline phone to see if I had a dial tone, which interestingly I didn't, so I unscrewed the socket from the wall and tightened up the connections of some of the wires (didn't really notice any problems), rebooted the router and the connection was back, and I had a dial tone.

However, a few days later at 7:45am (according to the logs.. I was asleep at the time) it went down again (same symptoms, orange power light, flashing red broadband icon.) This time I did have a dial tone. I tried all the troubleshooting options again, nothing worked. Then 5 days later, at 3:30am, the connection magically came back.

Then 4 days later, at some point during Sunday night (31st August), it went down again and has been down ever since. Does anyone have any idea what's going on? Could the router be defective? Is my flat haunted? There is no one else living in my flat and I doubt it's anything I've done as I've been asleep when most of these fluctuations have occured.

One other thing to note - the test results performed by the staff indicated that there is a bridge tap - could that be the issue?

Thanks in advance for any help!

To any PlusNet staff - I have a on open question for this on my account, ID is 204750092.

[#2]

Hi George,

A warm welcome to the forums.

A bridge tap is not usually helpful - did the agent indicate where the bridge tap appeared to be?  Poor internal phone wiring can give rise to bridge taps.  Do you only have the one master phone socket with no extension sockets and / or extension wires?

Broadband is not going to work well if the "phone" line is not working properly.

Please perform a quiet line test - dial 17070 select option 2 using a corded phone plugged into the test socket behind the face plate of the master socket. It should be silent. A noisy phone line (or no dial tone) will have a marked adverse impact on the performance of broadband.

If the line is noisy or there is no dial tone, then a PHONE LINE fault needs to be raised with your phone provider. If this is PlusNet, you can report a fault on line using the button below.  From the Q&A list, choose the one which matches the problem, 'open' the 'section' and click the trouble-shooter link.  NB: If you receive a failure message (rather than a log-in prompt) then log-in to the user portal in a different browser tab and attempt to use the trouble-shooter again.

• Phone Faults

[#3]

Thanks @Townman. I was able to make calls and the line sounded clear to me, would the quiet line test be any different? (I returned that landline phone so I would need to find another one to perform the test)

And yes I'm only using the one master socket with no extensions. The report didn't say where the bridge tap was, it just says "Bridge Tap(BTAP) Issue indicated. Review home wiring set up".