THG3000 daily disconnections of 8 minutes duration

[UEFI]

New Vodafone service FTTC installed 2nd February.  Speed as expected, but connectivity not reliable.

Connection via openreach Master Socket 5C newly installed by openreach - no legacy extension wiring.

First week any disturbances were put down to bedding in.

Second week started looking at each outage in detail.

Symptoms - all internet services lost, phone gives on/off dial tone, THG3000 Internet LED is red.

Duration usually just under 8 minutes loss of service.

Checking the router syslog shows "Line 0: xDSL link down" at the outage start, then around 7 minutes 40 seconds later, the router will log "Line 0: XDSL G.994 training" and begin to bring up the service and connections can be made when this is complete - usually 25 seconds after the G994 message.

Most days, this happens between 13:00 and 15:00 UK time, but have seen it once at 17:43 to 17:51.

Followed the 'Troubleshooting' advice on the website, but no improvement.

Unable to engage with Chat on website - nothing happens when the icon is clicked.

Can anyone connect me to someone who can help sort this out please ?

[Jayach]

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@BenjyBoo wrote:

Again I'm going through 1st line tech, router has been set to defaults, and I'm told not to use the wifi and just use one wired connection to check it is nothing my end for the next 24hours. 

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Seriously, who can do that?

And if it doesn't happen in those 24 hours, what does it prove?

It sounds like the router is rebooting occasionally, have you observed what the LEDs on the router are doing during those 8 minutes.?

The only thing I can think of is the router is trying to update its firmware and failing.

What firmware do you have, the latest for the THG3000 (AFAIK) is 19.4.0551-3261103.

[CrimsonLiar]

One little tip, with this type of issue it's often useful to talk to your neighbours and see if they have the same issue - 9 out of 10 people will just grin and bare it!

[BenjyBoo]

Thanks for your prompt reply.

Yes it did it overnight with nothing connected to it at all and the WIFI off.

Critical message in log with Modem Hangup, failed to create socked, xDSL link down, WAN down, failed to connect to server, Nb of retries 11 and APP_TRACE: bad address 'vfcc.publicacs.vodafone.co.uk'. Before reconnecting. I wasn't able to see the lights on the router during the outage. But in the past all the green lights remain on during the outages on the ONT box. Router lights are so hidden and dim it's hard to notice them.

I'm expecting the Vodafone call anytime now for the 24hours with everything and the WIFI disconnected. 

[BenjyBoo]

Firmware-Version:           19.4.0551-3261103

Yes firmware is upto date. They did this remotely some weeks ago when I first complained about the drop outs.

[BenjyBoo]

Another 1 hour 40 minutes getting nowhere on the phone with 2nd line technical support.

With it proved that the problem is not caused by my devices after the 24 hour switch off of my wifi and not having any wired devices connected either and the drops still happening twice during that period, they still try to baffle you with BS.

The "technical support agent" then went on to tell me I have too many wifi devices (18) for the router! (even though the drop outs happened with no devices connected and the wifi off)

After I argued the above, he then said you should expect some drops on the line!

I said it was not good enough, and being disabled my smart devices do not work when the service drops out and my phone goes as well, I want to cancel the contract. He connected me to cancellation department who said he had marked the fault as corrected, in her words "he'd been a bit sneaky" so I would now have to pay a £274 termination fee. (This is after 2 months of helping them try to find the fault, resetting many times, factory default reset twice, 24 hours not using the service and hours on the phone) 😠

[Jayach]

Raise an official complaint.

Complaints Code of Practice | Vodafone UK

They are really the only team who can waive the early termination fee.

[UEFI]

Sorry - didn't see that this thread had been resurrected.

To answer the question, since Openreach attended in February things have been more stable and there have been no more 8 minute outages.

In the week after that there were a couple of brief outages which I put down to 'bedding in' of the new provision (I'd been connected to a different port).  In the 4 months since then, I've had three further brief outages in the early hours.  Also had to reboot the THG3000 once.  The log was completely full of

"System Error [poll] Failed to add scanned frame object" messages.

The rapid repeat of these messages meant the log rolled over after a couple of hours.  I could not find any explanation for them but since the re-boot they haven't re-occurred.