Sure Signal not transmitting a 3G signal

[Petervdb]

Hi 

I need some help with my Sure Signal.  It is about a month since we got it and it has been working well up to last night.  Last night I noticed none of our phones had signal.  I forced them onto 3G and still nothing, even though that usually worked in the past.  

I reset the phones.  Not working.

I reset the Sure signal.  No change.  In fact I have no confidence that the reset actually did anything.  The instructions elsewhere on this forum state press reset for 5 seconds and then a reset will occur and could take from 20 mins to 6 hours.  Each time it is less than 5 mins - looks more like an off/on activity rather than a reset.  Anyway - still no joy.

I work for home and the coverage at home is really bad to useless, so I cannot phone 191 to have it resolved.  

What else can I do?

regards

Peter

[Petervdb]

Thank you - that seems to be working.

What is causing this regular occurance?  Why is the device not able to re-establish connectivity without manual intervention?

cheers

Peter

[ChazzD]

@Petervdb

Glad to hear that's worked for you.

Unfortunately we're unable to see why the connection dropped again, simply that it hadn't updated in a few days. 

Let us know if you do have any further problems.

[Petervdb]

Ok keeping this thread alive as it is a good tracker of issues.

Yesterday the voice quality became almost unworkable.  We can hear the other end fine,  but they can hardly hear us,  through a lot of scratching/crackling.  

Can someone help please?

Update@ 17:00....   this affects all the phones in the house.  Most phones can now not make outgoing calls.  We keep getting call failed.

regards

Peter

[Retired-Wayne]

@Petervdb

That sounds like a bandwidth issue.

Please perform a few speed tests at various points of the day and post the results here.

If possible, have someone do a speed test, when you’re on a call and experiencing the issue.

[Petervdb]

Hi

Thanks for the reply.  First test at 20:15 1st April.

Ping - 31ms

Download 72.04 Mbps

Upload 17.05Mbps

[bruceread]

V3

[Retired-Charles]

@bruceread - The last contact we had with your Sure Signal was at 12.13am today.

I've resynchronised it so leave it connected for 24 hours to allow for updates.

[bruceread]

ok - it is still not working, so lets hope tommorow is ok

[Landshark2007]

Sorry, I'm a bit late to this party.

This sounds like you have an overnight bandwidth issue affecting your broadband. Are you on a business or residential broadband service? Also, I can see that you are fibre-based so are you on BT's FttP or FttC service?

If this works during daylight hours, but not after say 18:00, then you need to run a speedtest to verify this. Now on fibre you would be forgiven for doubting me, but please bear with me here. The speedtest on its own is not enough. You need to run this from BT's site before they will even consider looking at an issue. You can find this here:

http://speedtest.btwholesale.com

Run the test and take screen shots BEFORE going to the second site as you will not be able to get the result going back. 

You may need to keep this up for a few days/nights but if you can establish a pattern, you are half way there. Can you also verify whether you are using other services on your broadband such as video streaming. 

Sure Signals can work with low bandwidth, but if another app is taking out the bandwidth (such as TV or gaming) then it will not matter how fast tour speed is, you are losing it to the app making the SS the loser. Once the SS loses the up or down bandwidth, they frequently need to be rebooted to work, and that is not really a failing of the device. 

[Petervdb]

Hi thanks for the detailed response.  We are on BT Infinity (Business) fibre to the cabinet which is 20 yards across from my house.  I have attached a test from the link you sent me.

I am interested in what you are saying about bandwidth.  What bandwidth does the Sure signal require?  Knowing what 3G needs for its codecs plus overheads I struggle to make it add up to even 10Mbps......

I generally run random speed tests and I have never had anything below 65 Mbps down or 15 Mbps up.  I often pick more distant servers rather than take the closest.  When I run a BT specific test I always get closer to 80 down and 20 up which is what I pay for.

I have some experience in designing and deploying IP networks so I am finding it difficult to understand your bandwidth comments when there is so much bandwidth available.  

However if the SS box cannot cope with a short term bandwidth restriction without having to have itself manually reset, then that in my view is very much a short coming of the box.  Furthermore, while we are on the subject of the box,  there are no indications to me that it needs to be reset,  other than it suddenly providing very poor or non-existant service.  I then spend a couple of days trying to get someone to help resolve the issues.  The help is usually very good but it takes days to get it done.  The forum is littered with complaints about the performance of the box and as you can see with this thread I am continuing to experience issues.  When it works, it is great.  When it doesn't it is not only frustrating but affects my ability to do my job.  Local Vodafone coverage is poor to say the least despite the so called upgrades done some time ago.  

So what else can this issue be?  It still has not resolved itself,  so if you can let me know how to correctly reset the box,  then I can at least perform that action as a first step before posting on here again.  That would be very useful, especially if it helps resolve an issue.

Kind regards

Pete