Disconnects are "normal"

[#1]

I just want to run this one past the community as a whole rather than just accept what PN are telling me as it seems really wrong based on past experiences.  I'm not sure as the Full back story is relevent but the abridged version is as follows

We signed up with plusnet about a year ago then after being with plusnet for a few months (maybe 2 at most) we started getting random daily disconnects, some times one a day, some time 5 a day, some times for 2 min's other times for 10 mins (the less said about the 7 hour one last week the better!) we opened a ticket last year and had between 10-12 openreach visits where nothing was detected, nothing was fixed, on occasions things seemed to get worse.  the problem went away around January, the last thing on plusnet records was a D-Side change (done on the 5th of dec so doubt that this was related to the disconnects stopping over a month later) well the problem started back up again in Feb and now PN are telling me that it is normal to get 1 disconnect every day for the line to do system updates, profile changes etc.

Now to the crux of the matter are these disconnect normal for all PN or indeed all fibre internet users regardless of the supplier?  I've spoken to BT, Sky and TalkTalk and they all seem to think that these things should happen no more than once a month and never be down for more than 30 seconds.  I was even feeling cheeky and spoke to plusnet new customers people and they told me that these disconnects shouldnt happen this often.  Does anyone else have these disconnects on a daily basis? as in all my years of having broadband to a house then, fibre to the house the only time we ever had disconnects like this was on dial up

[#2]

well mine never disconnects  , so its not normal !!

which router are you using ?  as i don't use the Plusnet supplied one

[#3]

It could be worth asking one of the helpful CS people on here for a look at a Radius connection graph to see if there is a pattern to the drops.

[#4]

I think it depends on the length of your line. If you are close enough to your cabinet that you can easily get the full speed, then I suppose you wouldn't be likely to have many disconnects.

If your line length is long enough so that you can't get the full speed, you're more likely to get a few disconnections. The longer your line is, the weaker the signal is when it reaches you, so it'll be easier for some blip of noise to knock out the connection.

"system updates, profile changes" was nonsense.

However, one disconnect per day probably wouldn't be accepted as a fault.

[#5]

Thanks for the quick replies

We are on our second plusnet router, not sure about spending money on buying another router but at this point might give it a go.

We've had numerous radius graphs done and there is no firm patten, for a while it looked like it would come in 2-3 hour windows around 9am, mid day and 7pm, but there was also plenty of random ones at verious hours of the day and night

We are about 1km from our cabinet and get a good 32-35mb down and 2mb up (darn you cap!)  they do say that one a day isnt a fault, but i dont know if it is acceptable when there own sales people tell me it should be one a month at most, more likely never.  also that it is random is higly annoying with my partner working from home as an online tutor its costing her business

[#6]

Have you seen the very long thread about uploading causing disconnections?

https://community.plus.net/t5/Fibre-Broadband/Plusnet-fibre-broadband-does-not-cope-with-uploads-and...

You may have had the fix applied recently.

[#7]

I've had a quick read of the first few and last few pages on that thread.  We are using a PN router, the homehub 5a type if i remember correctly.  I'm not sure as that could be at fault, the problem stopped mid january and started again mid/late february and our internet usage has not altered before, during or after that period but i will check our router logs again to see what it says as the disconnect cause.  as it stands the disconnects are ongoing, happened agian this morning.

[#8]

Hi,

Sorry to hear about the problems on your line. I've had a quick look and below is graph for your connection over the last 14 days.

 

I can confirm this is not related to the upload disconnections as mentioned by @ejs.

As also mentioned by @ejs, this cannot also be put down to system updates or profile changes. Profile updates do occur, but these are mainly when a change has occurred to your speed profile or something similar and wont be this frequent.

Now is the bad news I'm afraid. While I can appreciate these disconnections can be annoying, the number that you are experiencing would not be classed as a fault and so we would not be able to raise this with our wholesale suppliers for investigation. Again as mentioned by @ejs, due to the length of the line, it is possible that some infrequent interference or build up of errors (although I did not see any on the test I ran on your line) is causing the connection to be dropped off, although (apart from the 14th which Im sure was something different) it does appear to reconnect straight away within a minute or two.

I hope this helps.

[#9]

It doesnt really help overly much,  the tech team tell me that 1 fault is 24 hours is "normal", but you can see im repeatedly getting 2 or 3.  goodness knows what caused the 7 hour drop on Tuesday.

4 days if you include the 7 hour outage in 14 days had more than 1 fault or an excessivly long outage so roughtly 1 day in 3 on this graph my line would be considered faulty.  build up of errors might be a fault, but you cant detect any (not has anyone else previously plusnet or openreach).   Speaking to my neighbours on other providers they are not having any issues and i would assume that they are all coming from the same cabinet.

Not to mention the issue went away 100% through january / february.  out internet usage didnt change, our line length certainly didnt change.  but something somwhere did to stop the issues, and now is changed back to have them start again.

with numerous other suppliers telling me that there should be no disconnects, and plusnets own sales staff telling me there should be no disconnects im rapidly getting to the point of cancelling and having the argument about if i should pay cancelation fee's  im wondering if i should only pay a third of my bill right now given the lines are faulty a third of the time and not giving me the service i am supposed to be paying for

[#10]

Don't you think that the other ISPs will have the same differences of opinion between their sales and faults teams as Plusnet's do?

[#11]

When your not getting what your sold is it really a differance of opinions?  add to that next door being on the equivelant BT package and not getting any disconnects you really cant help but wonder whats going on and why your putting up with it

[#12]

I don't think any ISP is actually going to offer a guarantee that your FTTC service will not disconnect more than once per month. Their sales teams may well be describing what most people can generally get, but there will probably be a minority of people who get more frequent disconnections.

Personally I'd get myself a different modem/router, which, if it didn't reduce the frequency of disconnections, could at least provide a lot more information on what's happening.

Of course, if you switch ISP, you'd get a new router from your new ISP.

[#13]

Hi, Id like to try and answer your questions below :

It doesnt really help overly much,  the tech team tell me that 1 fault is 24 hours is "normal", but you can see im repeatedly getting 2 or 3.  goodness knows what caused the 7 hour drop on Tuesday.

I understand it can be frustrating but we would not class the amount of disconnections you are having as a fault, and neither I suspect would the majority of ISPs. The connection is re-connecting within a minute or two at most, and an engineer investigating this type of connection most likely would not find the cause of the disconnections unless they occurred more frequently at exactly the time he was testing the line.

4 days if you include the 7 hour outage in 14 days had more than 1 fault or an excessivly long outage so roughtly 1 day in 3 on this graph my line would be considered faulty.  build up of errors might be a fault, but you cant detect any (not has anyone else previously plusnet or openreach).   Speaking to my neighbours on other providers they are not having any issues and i would assume that they are all coming from the same cabinet.

We would not consider 1 day in 3 faulty as apart from the possible 6 minutes of lost connectivity, the connection was stable for the rest of these days (apart from the 7 hours, which I think can agree was something different, possibly work by our suppliers locally as it was overnight).  I appreciate you speaking to your neighbours as its always good to check locally, however with the frequency and small timescales of these drops, it may be they haven't noticed any drops in connection.

Not to mention the issue went away 100% through january / february.  out internet usage didnt change, our line length certainly didnt change.  but something somwhere did to stop the issues, and now is changed back to have them start again.

You mention the issue went away 100% in January and February, however below is a graph of your connection in those months and we still see some drops. It is probable that again due to the low frequency and timescales, you just did not notice these :

with numerous other suppliers telling me that there should be no disconnects, and plusnets own sales staff telling me there should be no disconnects im rapidly getting to the point of cancelling and having the argument about if i should pay cancelation fee's  im wondering if i should only pay a third of my bill right now given the lines are faulty a third of the time and not giving me the service i am supposed to be paying for

Again, as @ejs has advised, there can be difference of opinions, and until we have a circuit we cannot really tell how the broadband is to perform.  No ISP will ever be able to guarantee 100% stability on a broadband line given the current technology, but we will always try and minimise any impact for our customers. As I have said above, the line is not faulty a third of the time as apart from the possible 6 minutes of disconnections it is stable.

I am very sorry you are thinking about cancelling, but if this is a physical problem outside your property, in all probability this would follow you to a new ISP.