At 00:08 today I was using my Facebook account when I noticed that my PC had gone offline. Bringing up the Thomson 585v7 router homepage showed that my DSL connection was still active but the fault log showed an error message "Disconnected Because Idle Timeout Reached" which is not an accurate statement because I most definitely was using my connection so how could it be construed as idle? Every attempt to reconnect resulted in an error message effectively saying that no connection was available so I tried a PC reboot but this made no difference. I kept trying intermittently for an hour or so but each time the result was the same, so shutdown the PC and resolved to check again in the morning.
Well, as you can see I am now up and running again but this isn't the first time that I have encountered the idle timeout message recently and so I am wondering if there is maybe a fault on my router, or is it someone putting a spanner in the works at the Boston exchange? It also transpired that the DSL connection had dropped briefly at around 00:20 which is what makes me wonder if there had been some work done at the exchange. By the way I should perhaps say that I am still connected (since Decemebr 7th 2010) via the main test socket as this continues to deliver a very reliable connection.
This problem has also highlighted an interesting side issue because whilst I was investigating the problem last night, one of the ideas that sprung to mind was to check the wireless network connection. This showed that whilst I was getting a 'fair' signal from my wireless-G router downstairs my Edimax wireless receiver was also 'seeing' a 'good' connection from no fewer than five neighbours all of which appeared to come from wireless-N devices. How is this possible, given that I live in a detached house and the furthest away online neighbour is probably a good 50 yards away? I realise that there is a vast difference between the G and N standards but surely a G router in the same house should give a stronger signal than an N router up the road?
Any advice/input would be greatly appreciated.
