Forum Discussion

Refixed's avatar
Refixed
Joining in
21 days ago

Intermittent service after multiple engineer visits

I'm writing here as I feel I have exhausted any possible avenues through customer services over the past 6 months or so, and I'm currently stuck in an endless loop. After my most recent call today I have a logged yet another complaint, but it seems that the only resolution suggested is to send a third engineer from the same team. For context, I'm running my Hub 5 in modem mode with a third party router, but I've confirmed the issue is still present when using the Hub 5 as a router.

To summarise the current situation:

  • At random intervals (this can happen multiple times in a day, or not at all for days) my connection will drop. This typically shows as T3 timeouts (often on all consecutive channels) in the network logs. There is no pattern that I have been able to ascertain.
  • The connection will resume after a minute or so without any action needed, but obviously the the loss of connection will impact on anything I am currently doing (work calls, typically).
  • The quality of my service other than this is fine, and I have no issues with speed or network quality outside of this particular issue.

I can't put my finger on when the issue first started occurring, but there have been no changes to equipment or in the house since the connection was originally installed. After doing the usual troubleshooting and confirming there were no apparent issues on my end, the first engineer was sent out. The first engineer rebalanced the signals, as some of the power levels were out of spec. A check was also done on all of the equipment internally and externally. The problem still occurred despite this.

After waiting a month or so, I escalated again and a second engineer was sent. The second engineer confirmed the quality of all of the cables and connections, and that there were no apparent issues with my equipment according to their tests. They did check the cabinet and informed me that one of the connections in there was loose (not even finger tight) and that they had rectified that. Unfortunately, the problem has persisted.

Ahead of posting this, I set up Broadband Quality Monitoring and waited for the issue to reoccur. This morning it has happened twice, which I believe is reflected there. I've attached images from today of an example of the issue in the logs, as well as the information from the router, the BQM and the results from SamKnows. Removed all IPs and MAC addresses in the images.

Any help would be greatly appreciated as customer services have essentially told me there is no issue that they can see.

 

Broadband
complaint
Connection
Hub 5
Network

5 Replies

  • Refixed's avatar
    Refixed
    Joining in
    21 days ago

    It's also apparent that identical issues are happening elsewhere so this does not appear to be an isolated issue. The user in the thread below is experiencing almost identical issues to what I am experiencing.

    https://community.virginmedia.com/discussions/Wireless/16-consecutive-t3-timeouts-issue-for-over-a-year/5678778

     

    • Matthew_ML's avatar
      Matthew_ML
      Icon for Forum Team rankForum Team
      19 days ago

      Hey Refixed,  thank you for reaching out and we are sorry to hear about your connection issues, also a warm welcome to the community.

      We do not guarantee a fault free service sorry, we would expect for the odd drop out.

      However we can see you've spoke to the team since this post, did they manage to help?

  • Refixed's avatar
    Refixed
    Joining in
    18 days ago

    Appreciate you getting back to me. I was offered another engineer visit but it was explained that this would be someone from the same team who would perform the same checks as the previous two, and that there is no route for escalation elsewhere, hence my posting here. I'll continue to monitor my connection for now; coincidentally it's not happened at all in the past few days despite being a regular occurrence for months prior to this.

    Whilst I can understand that there may be the odd drop out, this forum is flooded with posts regarding similar issues for users with a Hub 5 (just search for 16 consecutive T3 timeouts), none of which seem to have a confirmed solution. The recent thread I referenced at least had an acknowledgement of an issue where it was passed to a Field Manager for investigation. 

    I think people would be a lot less frustrated if there was some explanation for, or even just an acknowledgement of the issue, whereas what tends to happen is we're told that there doesn't seem to be a problem on your end.

    If what you're telling me is that this is going to be the case and there's nothing that can be done to change it, at least I know where I stand.

    • Carley_S's avatar
      Carley_S
      Icon for Forum Team rankForum Team
      15 days ago

      Glad to hear this hasn't happened again in the last few days. Checking the systems, we aren't able to see any issues that might be the cause of what you're experiencing. 
      We are also unable to support any third-party networking within your home network, so any tests and checks we can do are limited until our hub is in router mode, with only our installed equipment in the setup at home.
      Please do keep us posted and let us know if this starts to occur again. 

    • fizz's avatar
      fizz
      Fibre optic
      14 days ago

      keep perssevering.. eventually you will get an engineer who is senior and understands networks. I had this for about 18 months a couple of years ago and it too two cable repulls and 12 engineers to finally sort it out...