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Sudden drop in sync and no dial tone

Mav
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Registered: ‎06-04-2007

Sudden drop in sync and no dial tone

Had yet another connection drop around 23:30 last night then a second one 20 minutes later. After the second drop the router stats had changed dramatically:
Sync speed had dropped to less than 2000 (from around 5000) and Attenuation jumped from 48 to 53.5dB! SN Margin was still at 9dB. Also, the connection had changed from ITU-T G.992.5 to ITU-T G.992.3.
I rebooted the router with a small gain in sync but still around 2000. As I was in bed I decided not much I can do till this morning.
I rebooted at around 08:30:

Uptime: 0 days, 0:11:51
DSL Type: ITU-T G.992.3
Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 576 / 2.066
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [kB/MB]: 865,95 / 1,85
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 12,7 / 0,0
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 33,9 / 53,5
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 6,0 / 9,0
Decided to ring Support and that's when I found I have no dial tone. Not sure whether to raise a new fault or add to the existing ticket. Sadly I don't have a decent enough signal on my mobile to be able to call support from that so, hopefully, someone can pick this up tomorrow.

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28 REPLIES 28
picbits
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Registered: ‎18-01-2013

Re: Sudden drop in sync and no dial tone

Sounds like a broken wire out of the pair Sad
Not a lot you can do if your test socket has no dialtone.
Mav
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Re: Sudden drop in sync and no dial tone

Just found out that anyone calling my landline does get a ringing tone then eventually goes to voicemail. Certainly doesn't ring here.

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Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear - Mark Twain
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picbits
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Re: Sudden drop in sync and no dial tone

That does smack of a broken cable (the same effect as unplugging your phone).
Jaggies
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Registered: ‎29-06-2010

Re: Sudden drop in sync and no dial tone

As this is a telephone fault, it should be reported to your PSTN service provider.
If it's Plusnet - you should be able to raise it via http://faults.plus.net/.
If it's BT - http://www.bt.com/faults/
If your with another provider, your on your own...  Cool
Mav
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Re: Sudden drop in sync and no dial tone

It's with PN.
I already have a ticket still open from a fault (deemed, initially, to be a phone fault, then a broadband fault, then a 'we don't really know what's wrong, keep an eye on it fault) reported last month.
Unsure whether it's wise to raise a new fault at this time.
Not sure if it's relevant but we had a power cut a few days ago and SWMBO noticed that a man was doing something (repair?) while up one of the two poles in the foreground opposite our house.as in the photo. She's not actually sure, though, which pole he was up. Could just be a coincidence Undecided
Edit: Finally managed to get a decent enough signal on my wife's mobile and rang PN. Their tests came back with a fault at the exchange which has been logged but, unfortunately, they can't give an estimated repair time.

Forum Moderator and Customer
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear - Mark Twain
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Jaggies
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Registered: ‎29-06-2010

Re: Sudden drop in sync and no dial tone

Hopefully when the fault is fixed your broadband should start working at full speed again...
Mav
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Re: Sudden drop in sync and no dial tone

One hopes Wink
The latest ticket opened says the estimated repair date is 27th. I hope it will be before then Roll_eyes

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Terranova667
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Re: Sudden drop in sync and no dial tone

it depends on what the issue at the exchange is i had one exchange fault that took less than a hour to fix,  but then one that took 3 days to fix. 
Mav
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Re: Sudden drop in sync and no dial tone

I can understand a tricky fault may take a while to solve but why is the estimated repair date 4 days away. Is there anything that can be done to expedite this?

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Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear - Mark Twain
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Mav
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Re: Sudden drop in sync and no dial tone

Three days without phone and no clearer picture as to what the issue is.
Internet use is sluggish to say the least - ping graph below.
I also dislike not having any means to contact my 86-year-old mother or her to contact me.
Is there a way to quicken the process to get the fault(s) rectified, please?

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Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear - Mark Twain
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Pettitto
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
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Registered: ‎26-11-2011

Re: Sudden drop in sync and no dial tone

There isn't I'm afraid, repair times are a little extended at the moment due to MBORC's (Matters Beyond Our Reasonable Control) being declared across the country.
I can tell you though that an engineer has been assigned to resolve this issue today for you, so we would expect the work to have been carried out by the end of the day.
Mav
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Re: Sudden drop in sync and no dial tone

Appreciate the update, Chris. Thanks.

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Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear - Mark Twain
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Mav
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Re: Sudden drop in sync and no dial tone

An update....
Between just before 11:00 and 13:00 internet dropped 5 times with a final drop just after 13:00. OR engineer arrived around 13:30 and connected a piece of equipment then went off to the exchange for half an hour so he said. Almost 4 hours later he returned saying that he needs to reconnect everything back at the pole and all should be OK. 10 minutes later he rang and all does seem OK. Apparently his equipment indicated the fault to be 800m from the exhange but he actually found it 1300m away. One of a pair of cables had broken and he said he pulled a new cable from the exchange to that point.
So, phone back as is internet. He indicated that the faulty cable could have been causing the irregular dropouts until it finally broke early Sunday morning.
What I have noticed is that instead of the Attenuation returning from 53.5 back to 48 as it was before the phone went dead it is now 44.5. So, hopefully, things will now be stable.
Recently the SNR was increased from 6 to 9dB (because of all the dropouts) with a resulting drop of sync speed from a little under 6Mbps to around 5Mbps. Is it now worth resetting the SNR back to 6dB to see if we can sync higher than the 6Mbps we used to get and it remains stable at that level?
Edit: I have updated ticket #81741221
Edit 2: I notice I'm still connected as ITU-T G.992.3 - should that not return to ITU-T G.992.5 as it was prior to the phone going down?
[quote=Stats:]Uptime: 0 days, 0:34:02
DSL Type: ITU-T G.992.3
Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 888 / 4.953
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [MB/MB]: 10,89 / 333,93
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 12,7 / 0,0
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 25,2 / 44,5
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 6,6 / 8,6
System Vendor ID (Local/Remote): TMMB / ----
Chipset Vendor ID (Local/Remote): BDCM / IFTN
Loss of Framing (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Signal (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Power (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Link (Remote): -
Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
FEC Errors (Up/Down): 318 / 115
CRC Errors (Up/Down): 4 / 0
HEC Errors (Up/Down): 10 / 0
Edit :3: Had to ring faults team anyway so they have reset PH profile to 4.9 which should soon match BT's at 4.37.
The agent said that if the connection appears to be stable between now and the morning he will reset the SNR to 6 and we'll monitor how things go.

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Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear - Mark Twain
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Pettitto
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Posts: 6,346
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Registered: ‎26-11-2011

Re: Sudden drop in sync and no dial tone

Great - let us know if there is anything we can do to help, if required.