Hi,
Really hoping someone can help with an issue I'm having with my broadband, where the connection frequently drops out, perhaps only for a few seconds, but is happening every few minutes continuously throughout the day.
The issue first started on Wednesday 23rd June where my wife and I (who both work from home currently) were seeing connection errors with our work laptops. Both are connected to the router (hub 3) via ethernet using a powerline adaptor. Initially we put this down to a problem with the work network, as it often struggles at points during the day, and thought no more about it.
However, over the course of Thursday and Friday, the drop outs became worse and for longer which made the connection virtually unusable. We also noticed that the drop outs affected ALL devices. We have Sky, a Smart TV and two laptops connected via ethernet, and a host of other devices (phone, tablet etc.) on wi-fi, and the drop outs affected all of them at the same time.
Worth mentioning at this point that we've had Virgin Fibre for 3 years since we moved into the house (it was a new-build with Virgin as the sole supplier of fibre in the area) and have never had a problem. We've also had the same setup (i.e. where the router is located and the devices attached) for most of this time, with the only addition being the powerline adaptor which I added 15 months ago when we first started working from home - again no problems whatsoever until Wednesday. We've not changed anything, nor added any new equipment to the house that may be causing interference.
After following the procedures for rebooting and pin-hole resetting (numerous times) I called Virgin Customer Services, and after a number of calls they arranged for an engineer to attend. He attended on Monday 28th and found a small issue with cable in the street cabinet which he fixed, did all of the tests and was confident the issue was resolved. He also added an attenuator to the cable (don't know what rating).
Unfortunately the issue wasn't fixed and the drop outs continued. I called Virgin again and eventually got them to arrange another engineer (although they refused on the grounds that their systems said everything was fine!). He attended on Wednesday 30th and replaced the router, and fitted a different attenuator. He also did all of the cable tests which he said all passed as expected. To be fair, this does seem to have reduced the severity of the drop outs slightly (i.e. they don't last as long) but, again, they still occur continuously through the day.
I've tried calling VCS back but from the tests they carry out remotely everything looks fine and aren't convinced when I explain that I'm looking at my laptop, phone and ipad as a drop out is happening at the time. The hub never shows any error lights.
I've set up a BQM - I've no idea how to interpret this but I've added it below - to me it looks way too choppy, too much blue and yellow, and there's a number of red points across the top which I assume are the drop outs? I've also added below the logs from the router, which I notice from other posts is something always asked for by the experts on here.
Running the online tests via the Virgin website, some of them pass, some of them fail, with the failed tests telling me to reboot/do pin-hole reset - neither of these make any difference.
Hoping this gives you all the info you need to help me resolve this issue. I really need it fixing as soon as possible as working from home is now really difficult - more so now as work has reduced the number of people allowed in the office due to the delta variant, so I'm now full-time at home!
Thanks.
