Router cannot authenticate and broadband intermittent

[#1]

Hi everyone,

One been having problems with our broadband, which it would be great to have your help with!

For the last two weeks our internet has been intermittently disconnected. It happens three or four times a day and usually lasts an hour or two. The timing seems random.

The internet is completely disconnected, but we can normally still connect to the router over WiFi. Sometimes we can't access the router admin pages at all, other times it won't accept my login details. When we do get into it, I've tried disconnecting and reconnecting to the broadband. At the suggestion of tech support, I have rentered our authentication details. Sometimes it seems to accept our authentication details but the internet remains broken. Other times, it says it has failed to authenticate. Sometimes it also says 'Connection could not be established, could not bring up link' or 'disconnected due to idle time out' or 'disconnected by user.'

On one or two occasions this has also been followed by the WiFi network disappearing from the list.

The only thing that sometimes helps is restarting the router, but often this still doesnt fix it. We have also tried resetting our router, suggested by tech support, to no avail.

It's a technicolour tg582n supplied by plusnet, about 2 years old. I used it in a previous address and moved it with me, along with my plus net account.

Does anyone have any suggestions for things we can try? Very grateful for any help!

[#2]

If using Windows,  go into SETTINGS (see pic) and delete the existing known connection; then start afresh with new by clicking wireless icon in bottom right corner of screen.

Assume you've tried altering router wireless channel/s?

If you use the free inSSIDer PROGRAMME, check what channels other neighbours are using and

adjust yours well away from their channel numbers.

[#3]

Thanks Gel,  have started afresh with the windows network entry - and have done the same with our other devices. I have also checked our channel and it looks like we're as clear from our neighbours as we can be.

As the problem seems to be across devices it might not be their local settings.  I will recheck the neighbours wireless channels later this evening (on reflection, it does seem to be worse in the evenings) and see if there is any issue with them then.

[#4]

I've looked at my event log. And it seems that the PPP link is down, despite the DSL connection being fine. I think I need switch to ppoe - how would I go about doing this?

[#5 · Accepted solution]

Hello there @edwardnickell and welcome to the forums

Your connection is certainly intermittent:

This usually indicates a physical fault somewhere. I'd suggest following our broadband troubleshooter at http://faults.plus.net where you can raise this to our faults team for further investigation if you need to.

Hope this helps

[#6]

Hi Anoush,

Many thanks for that graph last time, it was really helpful.  We reported the fault and it was dealt with within 48 hours which is great - and our internet worked well for several weeks after that.  Over the last two weeks, we've gone back to an intermittent connection.  It might just be me, but I swear that this gets worse in the evening!

I wondered is there yet another fault? If there is, this would make it the third time in a year we've had a physical fault!  Would switching to the plusnet fibre option mitigate against this?

Many thanks again,

Edward

[#7]

No problem, Edward. Looking into your account now, I can see that your intermittency has returned.

You are also on a 3db profile, which can cause issues:

Profile Info:

WBC 160K - 24M No delay (INP 0) 3dB Downstream, UC No delay (INP 0) 6dB Upstream (ADSL2+)

I'll reset your line now, however testing your phone line I've found an external fault:

Unbalanced Cable

I've raised this to Openreach now and they have advised us of a response time of by 01/08/16 23:59:59.

[Edit]

@edwardnickell Our suppliers would like to arrange an engineer appointment with yourself to further progress your fault. I've updated your ticket on your account.

To answer your question about whether fibre would resolve these issues, it depends where the fault lies - if it lies on the copper line between your house and the cabinet, the fault will likely exists even if you upgrade to fibre.