Failed calls problem identified as BT fault - May be some help to you

[iselinger]

Hope this is of some use to someone

I recently returned from holiday to find that my Sure Signal wouldn't work at all. Classic problem all three lights on but no calls in or out. Tech support sorted it out and it started working --- well sort of!

However over half the time I just got a beep when trying to make a call and never received incoming calls. Anyway after a lot of investigations I noticed that 'Ping' (latency) on the line was absoloutely awful. It didnt affect browsing too much but clearly the SS is very susceptible to lost packets and long ping times.

Spoke with BT Tech Experts who asked me to monitor and report back to them.

I found a piece of software that automates the ping testing called surprise surprise Ping Tester see   www  pingtester.net You can run it in eval mode.

I set it to ping Google every hour for 1000 seconds and found that about 8% of the pings were getting lost and that a considerable amount of the time the ping was over 200ms.

Monitoring started on a Saturday but I didnt start recording the info till Sunday. Then miraculously on Monday morning some time after 9.17 am on Monday the problem went away. (8% lost to zero) I suspect that a BT engineer reset something but have no proof of this.

Anyway the problem has gone away for now. See below for actual results. The records for 10 am - 1.00 pm are missing because I left the spreadsheet open and ping tester couldnt write to the file.

Start Time	To	Sent	Received	Lost	Loss Rate	Min Time	Max Time	Avg Time
19/01/2014 17:34	19/01/2014 17:35	128	118	10	7.81%	34 ms	271 ms	41 ms
19/01/2014 18:00	19/01/2014 18:08	500	464	36	7.20%	34 ms	191 ms	39 ms
19/01/2014 19:00	19/01/2014 19:09	500	458	42	8.40%	34 ms	132 ms	39 ms
19/01/2014 20:00	19/01/2014 20:08	500	465	35	7.00%	34 ms	130 ms	38 ms
19/01/2014 21:00	19/01/2014 21:08	500	468	32	6.40%	34 ms	188 ms	39 ms
19/01/2014 22:00	19/01/2014 22:08	500	461	39	7.80%	34 ms	155 ms	39 ms
19/01/2014 23:00	19/01/2014 23:17	1000	918	82	8.20%	34 ms	343 ms	39 ms
20/01/2014 00:00	20/01/2014 00:17	1000	911	89	8.90%	34 ms	214 ms	39 ms
20/01/2014 01:00	20/01/2014 01:17	1000	922	78	7.80%	34 ms	238 ms	38 ms
20/01/2014 02:00	20/01/2014 02:17	1000	920	80	8.00%	34 ms	131 ms	38 ms
20/01/2014 03:00	20/01/2014 03:17	1000	930	70	7.00%	34 ms	154 ms	39 ms
20/01/2014 04:00	20/01/2014 04:17	1000	920	80	8.00%	34 ms	143 ms	38 ms
20/01/2014 05:00	20/01/2014 05:17	1000	940	60	6.00%	34 ms	160 ms	39 ms
20/01/2014 06:00	20/01/2014 06:17	1000	929	71	7.10%	34 ms	153 ms	38 ms
20/01/2014 07:00	20/01/2014 07:17	1000	946	54	5.40%	34 ms	129 ms	37 ms
20/01/2014 09:00	20/01/2014 09:17	1000	913	87	8.70%	34 ms	322 ms	40 ms
20/01/2014 14:00	20/01/2014 14:17	1000	1000	0	0.00%	33 ms	76 ms	35 ms
20/01/2014 15:00	20/01/2014 15:17	1000	1000	0	0.00%	32 ms	94 ms	34 ms
20/01/2014 17:00	20/01/2014 17:17	1000	1000	0	0.00%	33 ms	828 ms	39 ms
20/01/2014 18:00	20/01/2014 18:17	1000	999	1	0.10%	33 ms	879 ms	47 ms
20/01/2014 19:00	20/01/2014 19:17	1000	1000	0	0.00%	33 ms	119 ms	35 ms
21/01/2014 00:00	21/01/2014 00:17	1000	1000	0	0.00%	33 ms	83 ms	35 ms
21/01/2014 01:00	21/01/2014 01:17	1000	1000	0	0.00%	33 ms	72 ms	35 ms
21/01/2014 02:00	21/01/2014 02:17	1000	1000	0	0.00%	33 ms	66 ms	35 ms
21/01/2014 03:00	21/01/2014 03:17	1000	1000	0	0.00%	32 ms	91 ms	34 ms
21/01/2014 04:00	21/01/2014 04:17	1000	1000	0	0.00%	33 ms	73 ms	35 ms
21/01/2014 05:00	21/01/2014 05:17	1000	1000	0	0.00%	33 ms	75 ms	35 ms
21/01/2014 06:00	21/01/2014 06:17	1000	1000	0	0.00%	33 ms	88 ms	35 ms
21/01/2014 07:00	21/01/2014 07:17	1000	1000	0	0.00%	34 ms	733 ms	36 ms
21/01/2014 08:00	21/01/2014 08:17	1000	1000	0	0.00%	33 ms	378 ms	38 ms
21/01/2014 11:00	21/01/2014 11:17	1000	1000	0	0.00%	32 ms	404 ms	36 ms
21/01/2014 12:00	21/01/2014 12:17	1000	1000	0	0.00%	33 ms	220 ms	35 ms

[DaveCD]

Hi iselinger

Thank you for that as this may be really helpful to others experiencing issues.

The Sure Signal can be temperamental when things change, although often it sorts itself there are occasions when a little help in the form of a reset is needed.

DaveCD