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TalkTalk Fibre router replacement

I will be very disappointed if this router doesn't have a cape.

Salerio said:
Cheap routers don't support the protocol (VDSL2)
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Out of interest, do you know why that actually is? Obviously including ADSL and VDSL would be more expensive, but given that a house is only ever likely to have one at a time, why aren't there cheap VDSL routers around that don't bother with ADSL or anything else?
 
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Salerio said:
Here's how it works in the UK, through BT Open Reach. With Fiber to the Cabinet (FTTC) you get your internet access through one of the Big Green boxes out on the road rather than a copper connection going all the way back to your exchange. So the copper part of the circuit should only be a couple of hundred metres or so (depending where you live) and the connection back to the exchange is run through fibre (hence FTTC).
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Perhaps the copper part is the problem here. It sounds like The Don could be some distance from the green box.

I my experience, the terminations are often the problem. I was wondering if these have been physically checked.
 
a_unique_person said:
Perhaps the copper part is the problem here. It sounds like The Don could be some distance from the green box.

I my experience, the terminations are often the problem. I was wondering if these have been physically checked.
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In terms of the problems I was experiencing, the copper cable seems to have been nothing to do with it. The new router has been up and running for a little over 2 days now and my laptop has not dropped connection in all that time and all devices in all rooms in the house can connect to the wireless network. Incidentally broadband speed increased from 1.8 to 2.4 mbps but I note that it is decreasing daily and I expect it to be back to 1.8 mbps in a few days.

The poor state of the copper network is however responsible for our perennial lack of bandwidth. We are about 2.3 km from the green box. Then again our next door neighbour is 2.2 km away and gets 13 mbps and the neighbours on the other side who are 2.6 km away get 8 mbps. The Operreach engineers have suggested that in an bunch of wires there'll be a couple of good ones (which my neighbours have) and a lot of OK ones (which we have). Ideally the whole lot would be replaced and maybe even a more direct route could be taken to the cabinet (which in a straight line is a little over 1 km away.

Every winter we lose our telephone service for a few hours or even a couple of days as damp gets into the various splices and joints in the cable and again in the spring as things warm up. The infrastructure is shoddy but there are very few customers out here and I'm sure it makes more sense for BT to spend several thousand pounds getting a couple of housing estates online than increasing the bandwidth for a handful of yokels. If there were more of us we could probably pool grant money to get some work done (like they have in some local villages) but our population density is too low.
 
A quick update.......

Suddenly and for no specific reason my broadband speed has risen to 5.5 Mbps. This created the opportunity to actually be able to stream TV. We have a Youview box - a PVR with some installed on-demand TV apps - in the music room upstairs that I use as my personal recording device (for all the BBC4 documentaries that Mrs. Don has no interest in) and when I found out about our suddenly increased bandwidth I rushed upstairs to see how big a difference it made.

The Youview box is connected to the router using a pair of Solwise plugs which allow ethernet over the mains power supply. The results of trying to watch on demand were disappointing to say the least, lots of buffering to the point of unwatchability. I tested the speed with my laptop and found it to be well under 1Mbps. I was about to harrumph off and complain to TalkTalk about their stupid router restricting bandwidth to the player but then I thought to check it in another power socket in another room - 5.5Mbps !

Turns out that the double socket I was using was the only one I tried where the bandwidth was low - go figure :D I'm now in a position to watch on-demand TV whenever I want - at least until the bandwidth drops again.
 
Ours was about 1.4 till last month, when, for some reason it cranked up to 5+Mb/sec.
A speed checker gives 5.8MB/Sec.
Yesterday, I downloaded an Ubuntu ISO file - 970MB in 23 minutes, which is pretty much on the money at 5.6Mb/sec.
This is Talk Talk ADSL2+.
I'm also rural and there's no cable in the village, but the BT exchange is only 100 metres away as the crow flies. The line is buried, so could be substantially longer.
 
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! :D

Obviously when it starts raining again speeds will drop through the floor.
 
Didn't even need to start raining :(

The day I got a flier from talktalk telling me about the 7 Sky channels to which I have online access is the day that the speed dropped to 2.8Mbps.
 
We are still on 5.5-5.8Mb/sec.
I dunno if they swapped some boards in the X, but something certainly changed.

As I said before, a mate of mine in a similar geographical situation to you (ie at the end of a long Welsh lane) has similar problems and gets similar excuses. Have you considered climbing a pole by night and swapping your line for your neighbour's?
 
Well looks like I squeaked too early-ly and that the 2.8Mbps was an outlier. Speed has been reliably around the same as yours (5.5 - 5.8 Mbps) as measured by the Talktalk speed checker and as high as 7.99Mbps as measured by broadbandspeedchecker.

Something has definitely changed, we've even watched a couple of Sky shows (comes bundled otherwise I wouldn't give the Dirty Digger by money) without any buffering.
 
I'm finding it's perfectly adequate for what I do, but my demands are not great. I don't stream video or audio. Some Youtube vids lock up , and downloading something the size of that Ubuntu ISO takes time, but hey- I still have a 14.4 modem somewhere.
 
Well after six months of excellent service and 6Mbps broadband speeds which has encouraged me to subscribe to Netflix, this afternoon we lost the lot, no phone and hence no broadband and because we live rurally, no mobile service either. :mad:

I've been given a time to diagnose of several days and no indication of time to fix. Makes working from home very tricky. At the moment I'm reduced to using the broadband in my local pub.
 
I've got Sky Fibre, it uses a similar setup with the router & vdsl modem - I can d/l a 1GB file in about 5 to 7 mins, the green box supplying my house is about 300 metres away.
Before I switched to fibre I was only getting about 2MB/s connection speed, now it's about 36MB/s.


YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!
 
....which I will not get until 25 February at the earliest.

Which both sucks and blows

I swear it's like living in a 3rd world country at times. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that I cannot get a mobile signal at home.

IMO the issue is to do with the model. Talktalk (the ISP) exerts no pressure on BT Openreach (the network provider) so they just throw their hands in the air and say "there's nothing we can do".
 
So now I find that the next update date will be 27 February.

Not that the issue will be fixed on that date - we will have been without any phone or broadband for more than 2 weeks - but that there will be some kind of update. That update could be "we have no idea when we plan to try to restore your serice".

The industry structure is pathetic. Our supplier Talktalk is apologetic but has no influence over their supplier BT Openreach who are the national monopoly infrastructure provider. Our local MP who sits on various telecom committees can talk directly to the MD of BT but apparently has no influence over BT Openreach.

There also appears to be no structure of penalties if no service is in place - this contrasts with other utility suppliers (electricity, gas, water, sewage) who would be incurring swingeing fines under similar circumstances.

Reportedly the issue is affecting up to 150 people but I'm reminded of Brendan Behan's comment about whether Irish had an equivalent to the Spanish mañana - his response was there was nothing with the same sense of urgency. Whatever the Irish language provides would seem to be far too abrupt to describe BT Openreach and their (lack of) activities.
 
Still waiting................

I'm going to be in the newspaper tomorrow complaining about the situation.

Still no date when we might expect a phone service :mad:
 
The Don said:
Still waiting................

I'm going to be in the newspaper tomorrow complaining about the situation.

Still no date when we might expect a phone service :mad:
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It's no comfort to you, but this is precisely why I go with the IS supplied by the infrastructure provider even if it's not the best overall deal on offer; they can't bat you back+forth like this.

Good luck!
 
GlennB said:
It's no comfort to you, but this is precisely why I go with the IS supplied by the infrastructure provider even if it's not the best overall deal on offer; they can't bat you back+forth like this.

Good luck!
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It wouldn't make any difference, a neighbour is in exactly the same boat and is a BT customer (several houses locally are affected by the same fault). I guess it's more accurate to say that no-one can get an IS deal offered by the infrastructure provider because BT Openreach own and manage the infrastructure and are operated at arms length by BT.

The issue is that BT Openreach appears not to be answerable to anyone including the parent company.
 
Ah! Fair enough, not quite 'after my time' with BT, but nothing I noticed at the time. Hmmmm, now I'm less smug about sticking to the IS provided by the Greek phone provider :(
 
I'm furious. It turns out that BT Openreach have been flat-out lying for two weeks. They claimed that the reason why they haven't fixed the problem is because they hadn't got permission from the county council to set up some traffic lights. I contacted the council and they said:

I can confirm that we have had no such request from BT to carry out these works. Any works which are considered urgent (such as loss of supply) can be started immediately, with notification given to ourselves up to two hours after works have started, regardless of the type of traffic management used. The minimum notice period for works which are not deemed as urgent is 3 working days. Again, the use of temporary traffic lights would not be refused unless they conflicted with any other works already scheduled/going on in the area.

I have actually received similar queries from other BT customers and have now passed the information on to BT to investigate.
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So it looks like they've been lying to a lot of people :mad:
 
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