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Broadband dropping out frequently for 20-30 seconds (Pro Ultrafast 500)

stuartpattullo
2: Seeker
2: Seeker

Wonder if anyone else has seen this, and can suggest alternative courses of action.

 

Had Vodafone FTTP Pro Ultrafast 500 installed a few weeks ago - with Openreach coming round to install the fibre.  Speed have been pretty fast, but there's been a persistent issue with the bandwidth simply reducing to zero for about 20-30 seconds at a time on a regular basis - enough to interrupt a Teams call, TV/radio stream or VoWifi call.

 

The wireless signal is stable when this happens, and the lights on the router and Openreach modem don't seem to indicate anything has gone wrong.  It rights itself again afterwards.

 

(There has been a parallel issue with the booster pairing, which has since been resolved.)

 

The Wifi Xperts have been helpful, and are offering to replace the modem, but are suggesting that it could be a problem with one of the devices.  To figure out which, that would involve using just one device for a period of 24 hours - which is nigh on impossible with 2 people working from home, and being in a mobile signal blackspot.

 

Are there any avenues I can investigate separately?

9 REPLIES 9

Cynric
16: Advanced member
16: Advanced member

Did you find anything in the router logs?

A load of dropped requests from blacklisted IPs:

 

 

[ 449.651592] DROP wan in: IN=pppoe-wan OUT= MAC= src=185.156.73.125 DST=<my IP> LEN=40 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=246 ID=61926 PROTO=TCP SPT=49431 DPT=38417 WINDOW=1024 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 MARK=0x8000000

 

Followed by several messages along these lines:

 

failed to send packet: Network is unreachable
Failed to send DHCPV6 message to ff02::1:2 (Permission denied)

which coincide with there being no downstream traffic (upstream and internal traffic seems fine).

 

The "network is unreachable" looks interesting. I'm afraid that you will have to ask the helpdesk to have a look.

On my 8th call already :Smiling:

 

Today, the agent "changed some settings" and asked me to wait 24 hours.  So we'll see.

Fingers crossed then. Eighth call already doesn't fill me with joy.

Still no joy, despite multiple attempts.

 

Best progress was when someone found the replacement router hadn't been properly provisioned, but the same issue restarted a few hours later.

 

I've now had umpteen factory resets, each one with its own issue (Super Wifi unavailable, VoIP unavailable), each requiring the booster to have a factory reset and for me to reinstall the app.  Getting beyond a little tiresome now, as I constantly have video and audio calls interrupted, as well as the television.  Not to mention the hours I've spent on chat with Vodafone, restarting and resetting.

 

Once thing I did spot on the last occurrence, though, it was the booster dropping - it went to flashing alternate white and red, and eventually repaired itself a few minutes later.

Hey @stuartpattullo I hope you're well! I'm sorry to hear that this issue is still ongoing. As we have a dedicated team for our Broadband Pro packages, please give them a call on 0808 040 8408 or drop them a message online here

I appreciate that you have already spoke to them several times, however they are the team that have the necessary system access to run testing on your broadband and help get this all resolved.

Guys, @stuartpattullo

I have a fibre but copper the last hundred years service so different to the full fibre service above. However, until recently it all sort-of worked until I had an unscheduled firmware upgrade on my router. I didn't really notice this other than the connection, specifically the WiFi became very erratic. My laptop would routinely loose connection and then on re-scanning I couldn't find my primary WiFi. Similarly for other devices but then it would appear.

Fortunately I have wired repeaters which kept me going. Checking my router not only was it a bit different but I also had lost manual setting for the WiFi channel, the upgrade had set it to AUTO. Given my busy local WiFi environment I had found a nice little quiet gap which is why it worked OK for me.

With the WiFi channel, I guess bouncing around to avoid other carriers, my kit couldn't keep up. The bad news was the lemons on making it 'better' had removed the manual setting from the web interface. Fortunately their App still allowed access to set the WiFi channel to a fixed channel.

So now, with my WiFi channel fixed my WiFi doesn't drop out any more. I did also check the router logs for error reports but had found nothing. Actually these reports were not as extensive as previous routers I've had. If anything they're a bit pants as are the diagnostics.

 

So. try setting the WiFi channel to FIXED. Also check with a WiFi scanner App to find a suitable slot in your local WiFi environment.

I am not sure instead of resetting the router try resetting the passive optical network aka G.PON. Witch is the optical network terminal