New Sure Signal - poor signal strength

[sbailey]

Hi. The signal strength shown on our phones is mostly at full strength when not making a call. However, when a call is in progress the number of bars frequently falls, often to one or zero, and the call quality becomes so bad that neither side can hear the other. It occurs even when we are in the same room as the SS.

It doesn't occur every time, but happens very frequently. It happens with all three of our phones.

The SS is not near the router. The light on the SS comes on as it should when a call is in progress.

Thanks.

[chrise]

---

@sbailey wrote:
>Is that similar to the situation if the SS is unplugged ? No, if the SS is unplugged, the signal is always low and less variable. >Does this always happen right at the start of the call, or somewhere random during the call ? Somewhere random during the call. A lot of the time it's OK for the whole call. Thanks.

---

Hi - thanks.  I think my orig question wasn't worded all that well, sorry.

I'd wanted to ask if, when the signal drops during a call, does it end up at a level similar to if the SS is unplugged.  I'm assuming the answer is "yes".  Is that right ?

Does the phone have a 3G indicator that disappears at the same time ?

[Retired-Dave]

Hi sbailey,

I get what chrise is saying - compare the signal without the Sure Signal to the signal you have when the call drops - are they the same? That's a good question, and gives us a more complete picture of what’s happening.

I'll be absolutely honest regarding the traceroute - although it's reaching our servers with no real lag on the steps which are detailed, I'm not sure of the significance of the lack of details on steps 2-4. I'll pass that to one of my more technically minded colleagues to cast an eye over it.

In the meantime, just to rule out anything simple, I’ve resynched the Sure Signal at this end, so can you perform a reset for me?

• Hold down the reset button until all the lights show (about 30 seconds)
• Keeping the reset button held down, remove then re-insert the power lead.
• Once all lights display release the reset button.
• The Sure Signal will come online in around 1 hour.

Also, can you just check on your router that the MTU is set to 1500 (or if not possible, the highest allowed)? This will prevent large data packets being rejected.

Dave

[sbailey]

Thanks Dave and chrise. The situation got worse about three days ago and I now realise that my phone and one of my wife’s weren’t linking with the SS at all. The third phone did link (ie the SS connected light went on). Prior to that my phone almost always had a full 3G signal. I have reset the SS today as requested, but the situation seems the same. I had previously changed the MTU to 1500 about 10 days ago following an earlier request but it didn’t seem to make any appreciable difference. I should point out that we have had the SS for six months and it was fine for the first few months. Many thanks. Stephen

[Retired-Dave]

Hi sbailey,

I've checked as promised and whilst the traceroute does appear to be getting to the end, indicating things are OK, we would just like to try to fill in the missing data to get the full picture.

Can you run this again using the following steps on your PC:

• Click on Start  and select Run
• Type CMD into the Run box and press enter/click ok
• A black box will appear.
• In this box type tracert 212.183.133.177    press Enter
• Paste the output of this command into your reply.

Dave

[sbailey]

Hi Dave,

Tracert attached as requested.

Many thanks.

Stephen

[sbailey]

Hi Dave. Following another very poor quality call, I did another tracert, if this helps. Stephen

Tracing route to 212.183.133.177 over a maximum of 30 hops

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  Vigor.router [192.168.1.1]
  2     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  3     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  4     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  5   119 ms   103 ms   108 ms  LNDGW2.arcor-ip.net [195.66.224.124]
  6    97 ms    70 ms    93 ms  85.205.116.10
  7     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  8     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  9     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 10     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 11     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 12     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 13     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 14     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 15     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 16     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 17     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 18     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 19     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 20     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 21     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 22     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 23     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 24     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 25     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 26     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 27     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 28     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 29     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 30     *        *        *     Request timed out.

Trace complete.

[Retired-James]

Hi Stephen,

Thanks for the update and for running the traceroute again.

To be honest everything looks OK and the time outs on the traceroute will probably be down to protection on the server that it is travelling to and as a result it can’t be pinged.

As it is reaching our server and I can see that it updated at our end last night it would appear that the Sure Signal is working fine without any issues.

However as you are still getting poor audio and connection issues it would be interesting to see exactly what router you are using and the firmware that it is running.

Also how old are the SIMS?

On a side note, are you able to try this at a different location to see if this continues to happen as this will definitely rule out a Sure Signal equipment fault.

James

[sbailey]

Hi James,

I am using a Vigor 2820Vn router with Firmware Version: 3.3.7_232201. However, I do have a different one I will try.

Trying the SS at a different location would not be easy, particularly as the problem is not always immediately reproducible. Would it take minutes or hours to get itself working again if I tried it at a new location?

One SIMM is about four years’ old and the other two are about six months. However the SS was working originally, so it is unlikely to be all the SIMMs.

"As it is reaching our server and I can see that it updated at our end last night it would appear that the Sure Signal is working fine without any issues."

Presumably that wouldn't check if it had a fault interfacing with our phones.

Thanks.

Stephen

[DaveCD]

Hi sbailey

Thank you for this information and if you can keep us updated once you have tried the alternative router that would be great for the investigation..:smileyhappy:

 When you set up the Sure Signal at another location it can depend on the connection before being ready, for example we have seen it ready after 10 minutes and we have also seen it take up to 24 hours.

We can only see when the devices have connected but not any issues during that period.

Many Thanks

DaveCD

eForum Team

[sbailey]

Hi DaveCD,

Using a different router (Thomson TG585 Bebox) seems to have helped a lot.

However, this has highlighted another problem, namely that all our three phones like to hang on to the poor external signal rather than switching over to the SS signal. This typically happens when we return home for example, or sometimes it occurs with all our phones when the SS appears to have dropped its signal briefly. It occurs when the phones are not in use.

This isn’t too bad on my Nokia E51, which has a “UMTS only” button which gets the phone back on the SS. But with my wife’s Galaxy Mini and Galaxy ACE there is no such setting and it is often very difficult to get them to transfer to the SS signal. The phones can be only a few feet from the SS but they still prefer the weak mast signal.

Is this a common problem or is it something to do with our SS?

Another point that may or may not be relevant is that I have noticed that occasionally the phone light on the SS comes on for a while, even when we are not making or receiving any calls.

Thanks,

Stephen