Router/service can’t authenticate

[#1]

I have been using my own Netgear router and modem successfully for two years without issue until Tuesday.

For no apparent reason, we’ve had no internet since Tuesday lunchtime. I restarted the router, reset the router, to no avail.

I then reverted back the the Hub One and still nothing. I’ve also reset the Hub One.

However, on my phone and desktop I’m getting the message I have to sign-in to authenticate. Tried that, more times than I can remember, still nothing.

On the advice of the Plusnet staff over the phone, I’ve reset my password, they’ve reset my password... nothing.

The staff over the telephone claim they can’t see any issues or faults on the line so we’re all at a loss.

Does anyone have any ideas please? I’ve read on the forum you can reset accounts or similar but, when I mentioned it over the telephone, they weren’t familiar with the process.

Plusnet have Openreach coming out to us tomorrow but, in between time, my wife and I have no working heating or access to our video doorbell, which gives us a little added security, as we feel a bit vulnerable, both being physically disabled.

Once this is sorted, we really do need to determine how we use Hive manually as it is quite cold this morning but, we’ve been blessed and never had an issue before. Plusnet’s service has been very reliable.

[#2]

Hi @Woogy, sorry to hear you're having broadband issues.

I have looked at your connection and I can see that your connection has been stable for 16 days with no disconnections. The only disconnection is the one from this morning where I manually reset your connection from this end. You mentioned that you swapped routers and also done a reset, I was wondering when that was done as it would have shown the disconnections but as you can see below there has been no disconnections in the last 16 days.

In terms of the authentication request you are getting on your phone and desktop? Is that to connect to the wireless connection? What page are you getting? Is it possible to put a screenshot of it on this thread? Is your desktop on a wired or wireless connection?

[#3]

Thank you @Beyhive for your reply.

I suspected there is no issue with the line and that’s why I’m reaching out to the community as we don’t want to have an engineer here, if it’s a waste of his time and someone else genuinely needs them.

Having said that, it is rather frustrating to resolve this.

As per the instruction of your Plusnet colleagues over the telephone, we tried both routers yesterday.

I’ve set the Hub One up again this morning, in anticipation of the engineers visit. The Hub One is in its vanilla state, I’ve changed nothing other than trying to confirm my login details.

I’ve attached two photos of the messages I’m being presented with via my mobile. They’re almost identical to what I see on the desktop, which is hard wired.

I’m afraid it doesn’t matter how many times I confirm my details on the router dashboard, the routers lights are in a cycle of orange strip light solid, flashing, smaller secondary orange light under the strip light, sometimes briefly blue and then repeat.

Incidentally, how have you access to my account? I’m just curious.

[#4]

Thanks for getting back to us @Woogy I'm sorry to see you're experiencing connection problems. I think @Beyhive may have been looking at the wrong account. I've given him a prod/heads up for future reference. 

When you created your forum account, we asked you to enter your "Plusnet Username" which is what my colleague went from. Unfortunately this isn't your account username, I've found your account from searching your e-mail address (That's attached to your forum account) in our accounts system database and cross referencing it against your name.

I can see your connection is physically dropping sync with the cabinet (The green box in the road), so I agree with the steps we've taken so far as arranging an engineer to investigate further is definitely the next step. 

Could you let us know how it goes tomorrow morning once the engineer has been?

[#5]

@Gandalf Ah man, thank you so much.

If nothing else, at least my wife can’t blame me for this.

We shall sit tight and await the engineer. I shall report back tomorrow.

Thanks to @Gandalf and @Beyhive for your replies.

PS is there a way to edit my username? I apologise for adding to the confusion.

[#6]

Not a problem @Woogy 

If nothing else, at least my wife can’t blame me for this

That's always a good thing! 

We shall sit tight and await the engineer. I shall report back tomorrow.

Sounds good.

PS is there a way to edit my username? I apologise for adding to the confusion.

That's cool, it's easily done and I'm afraid I don't think there is a way to edit it. I've had a look at my own profile and there's no option to edit a "Plusnet Username" there. No worries though, I've added a reference for your account into the notes section of our internal (Lithium/Khoros) system we use when responding to community posts.

[#7]

@Woogy 

Once this is sorted, we really do need to determine how we use Hive manually as it is quite cold this morning

It was my understanding that the Hive system would continue to operate it's current schedule without any internet connection. If not, you should be able to use the thermostat to change the set temperature. If that fails then you can always override everything by pressing the on button on the hive boiler control unit.

[#8]

Thanks for your reply @MisterW . I'm quite certain you're right and there must be a manual override for the Hive. I know how to boost the heating now, nothing more.

Not too concerned with the hot water as that and the lights via Hive plugs are on timers associated with sunset/sunrise and work regardless but, having a working video doorbell again is just priceless.

I shall read up on the Hive as thankfully @Gandalf and @Beyhive we're now back online.

It would appear there is nothing wrong with any of our set-up, it was something to do with the cabinet, although the engineer didn't return after he'd sorted it to explain, which wasn't necessary. He did ring though to confirm it was all working.

The engineer claims the Huawei Openreach modem we are using with the Netgear X4S R7800 is no longer supported and advised us to consider changing it. Is anyone able to confirm if this is true?

And I assume that we should wait for the line to speed test and settle again, maybe in ten days, before reverting back to the Netgear router as opposed to the Hub One; would I be right in thinking that please or am I OK to swap immediately?

[#9]

@Woogy 

The engineer claims the Huawei Openreach modem we are using with the Netgear X4S R7800 is no longer supported and advised us to consider changing it. Is anyone able to confirm if this is true?

He's right, BT stopped supplying and replacing them a few years ago. Given that you have a Hub one for backup should the modem fail I  wouldn't panic! You can still pick up the modems used on ebay quite easily so I'd suggest starting there if you really want a backup for it

[#10]

Thank you again @MisterW .

I'm not going to tempt fate then and shall keep the hardware we have as is as it has all worked very well for us. And as you say, we've the hub One to fall back on.

I'm also pleased to report none of this was Plusnet's fault. Their service has been impeccable from start to finish.

Have a good weekend.

[#11]

Thanks for getting back to us @Woogy I'm glad to see you're back online following the engineer visiting.  I've checked the brief notes we've received and they just mention they've fixed the problem inside the cabinet.

Feel free to let us know if there's ever anything else we'd be able to help with.

[#12]

@Gandalf  No, thank you and everyone that's replied.

I certainly can't fault Plusnet for their expedient service and assistance from the community.

Can I just ask though, if you have the time, would you please be kind enough to check the both the speeds and quality we're getting? And should we wait for these to settle over ten days before reverting back to our own Netgear X4S R7800?

I ask because both the TV and the PlayStation, which are both hard wired, have reported either poor quality or unstable internet when confirming they've firmware updates available but, have been unsuccessful in their attempts to download.

And we're about 15mb shy in download speeds of what we're used to enjoying.

[#13]

@Woogy Cheers for the kind words, always happy to help. I've checked your connection log and apart from the fault you've had last week, your connection seems to be stable since then:

I've also tested your line and it's probably easier if I post up the test results for you and explain what they'd mean:

Test Outcome	Pass
Test Outcome Code	GTC_FTTC_SERVICE_0000
Description	GEA service test completed and no fault found .
Main Fault Location	OK
Sync Status	In Sync
Downstream Speed	57.2 Mbps
Upstream Speed	15.0 Mbps
Appointment Required	N
Fault Report Advised	N
NTE Power Status	PowerOn
Voice Line Test Result	Pass
Bridge Tap	Not Detected
Radio Frequency Ingress	Not Detected
Repetitive Electrical Impulse Noise	Not Detected
Cross Talk	Not Detected
Estimated Line Length In Metres	544.4
Upstream Rate Assessment	Reasonable
Downstream Rate Assessment	Reasonable
Interference Pattern	Not Detected
Service Impact	No Impact Observed
Home Wiring Problem	Not Detected
Downstream Policing Discard Rate	0.0
Customer Traffic Level	Upstream and Downstream Traffic Detected
Technology	VDSL
Current 15Min Bin Retrains	0
Last 15Min Bin Retrains	0
DP Type	External
Profile Name	0.128M-80M Downstream, Interleaving High - 0.128M-20M Upstream, Interleaving On
Time Stamp	2019-10-11T12:45:00

Parameters	MIN	MAX	AVG
Down Stream Line Rate	57.1 Mbps	62.6 Mbps	57.5 Mbps
Up Stream Line Rate	13.2 Mbps	15.8 Mbps	15.3 Mbps
Up Time	351.0 Sec	900.0 Sec	896.1 Sec
Retrains	0.0	1.0	0.0

Current and Last 15 Minute Bin Performance
Parameters	Last Traffic Count(Upto 15 mins)	Current Traffic Count(Upto 15 mins)
Start Time Stamp	2019-10-14T13:37:59Z	2019-10-14T13:52:59Z
Ingress Code Violation	0	0
Egress Code Violation	0	0
Errored Seconds	0	0
Severely Errored Seconds	0	0
Unavailable Seconds	0	0

There's no issues detected, with your download line speed at 57mbps. From looking at another system showing a 14 day view of your speeds, I can see your speeds were previously around 77mbps before the fault started:

I suspect that interleaving being enabled on a high mode is going to be cause for that or at least partially. Interleaving is a form of error correction that's automatically applied to try to make a line more stable at the expense of speed.

As your speeds are still within our suppliers expectations for your line of between 49mbps and 70mbps, I'd doubt we'd be able to encourage them to investigate further, so I think it may be a waiting game for the dynamic line management(DLM) software at the exchange to apply the right settings on the line to try to boost your speeds back to the way they were.

At this stage, if you want to go back to your Openreach modem and Netgear router, it should be perfectly fine to do that anytime just as long as you don't cause multiple disconnections in a short space of time. One or two drops should be OK.

Hope this helps.

[#14]

Thank you for your rapid response @Gandalf .

This is typical of the results I'm getting on my desktop, also hard wired - https://beta.speedtest.net/result/8673253662 

The upload is actually a little higher than before.

As low as the download speeds are (just within the acceptable tolerance), your explanation is as I expected; we have to wait for the dynamic line management to settle.

I think I shall leave the set-up as is until the middle of next week and then revert back to the Netgear.

Thank you once again.

[#15]

Not a problem @Woogy 

Let me know how it goes