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Broadband down ( rain?)

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monabri
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Broadband down ( rain?)

#424683

Postby monabri » July 4th, 2021, 2:28 pm

I've noticed that our broadband "goes down" when we get heavy rain. Is there any explanation for this?

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Re: Broadband down ( rain?)

#424684

Postby AleisterCrowley » July 4th, 2021, 2:38 pm

Only if part of the transmission chain is radio

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Re: Broadband down ( rain?)

#424686

Postby ReformedCharacter » July 4th, 2021, 2:44 pm

monabri wrote:I've noticed that our broadband "goes down" when we get heavy rain. Is there any explanation for this?

Rain ingress to the 'phone line is a possibility. If your neighbours suffer the same problem then it's likely 'upstream' from your house, otherwise it might be a junction outside your house. Do you notice any line crackles or interference on the 'phone when this occurs?

RC

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Re: Broadband down ( rain?)

#424691

Postby mc2fool » July 4th, 2021, 2:55 pm

monabri wrote:I've noticed that our broadband "goes down" when we get heavy rain. Is there any explanation for this?

There's many. :D

Water and electricity generally don't mix very well, and it could be that there's some water ingress into some joint or another between you and the exchange (and/or cabinet).

OTOH it could also be that, if you have your connection strung up from telegraph poles, even if there's no actual water ingress, heavy rain is weighing down the wires and causing them to jiggle some poor joint or another (if so, I'd expect high wind to do the same).

OTOH it could also be that, if your connection is underground, heavy rain is flooding the trench, again causing jiggling or possibly changes of between-wire capacitance/impedance if the cable is poorly pressurised.

OTOH it could be that some neighbour or shop near the line between you and the cabinet and/or exchange has a dodgy pump that turns on whenever there's heavy rain and what you are actually suffering from is REIN.. or maybe even SHINE! :D

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Re: Broadband down ( rain?)

#424700

Postby stewamax » July 4th, 2021, 3:48 pm

ReformedCharacter wrote:Do you notice any line crackles or interference on the 'phone when this occurs?

This would be worth following up: when things are crackly, dial 17070 and select option 2 'quiet line test' and preferably put your hand over the mouthpiece to eliminate noise from the room (or mute the phone if you have a mute button)
Then if the line remains crackly, call BT faults on 0800 800154 (or whoever you get your phone voice service from) and, without mentioning broadband, ask them to check the line.

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Re: Broadband down ( rain?)

#424706

Postby pje16 » July 4th, 2021, 4:18 pm

monabri wrote:I've noticed that our broadband "goes down" when we get heavy rain. Is there any explanation for this?

Who is your provider?
If it's via satellite then yes rain will hamper it
Other providers : Very heavy rain can work it's way into the cabinets and cause issues

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Re: Broadband down ( rain?)

#424709

Postby monabri » July 4th, 2021, 4:28 pm

pje16 wrote:
monabri wrote:I've noticed that our broadband "goes down" when we get heavy rain. Is there any explanation for this?

Who is your provider?
If it's via satellite then yes rain will hamper it
Other providers : Very heavy rain can work it's way into the cabinets and cause issues


Plusnet.

I reported the problem to them on 1st June. They ran line checks and then said to give it a week to see if the persisted. Of course, the weather picked up and we haven't had heavy rain until today. I've been in touch with Plusnet ( just) and they've booked an engineer for next Tuesday. Like you, I suspect rain ingress into one of the outside connections.

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Re: Broadband down ( rain?)

#424710

Postby mc2fool » July 4th, 2021, 4:34 pm

stewamax wrote:... when things are crackly, dial 17070 and select option 2 'quiet line test' ...

If you're not with BT as your provider you may find that calling 17070 only gets you the line identification, i.e. it telling you your phone number and then just hanging up, and not offering any other options.

If you're with TalkTalk then to get the "full" 17070 options you call 020 8759 9036 instead. For other providers have a google, or ask in the providers community forum, if there is one. If all else fails just open the line and dial "0" and listen for crackles etc. (Although I'd imagine that with PlusNet the normal 17070 works....)

BTW: "clear down" is phone engineer speak for hang up. ;)

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Re: Broadband down ( rain?)

#424713

Postby monabri » July 4th, 2021, 4:42 pm

mc2fool wrote:
stewamax wrote:... when things are crackly, dial 17070 and select option 2 'quiet line test' ...

If you're not with BT as your provider you may find that calling 17070 only gets you the line identification, i.e. it telling you your phone number and then just hanging up, and not offering any other options.

If you're with TalkTalk then to get the "full" 17070 options you call 020 8759 9036 instead. For other providers have a google, or ask in the providers community forum, if there is one. If all else fails just open the line and dial "0" and listen for crackles etc. (Although I'd imagine that with PlusNet the normal 17070 works....)

BTW: "clear down" is phone engineer speak for hang up. ;)


I tried the 17070 and did the quiet line test. It was quiet.

Having re-reported the problem again, the Plusnet helpline ran a line check and could see line drop outs throughout the day.

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Re: Broadband down ( rain?)

#424717

Postby pje16 » July 4th, 2021, 5:01 pm

monabri wrote:
pje16 wrote:
monabri wrote:I've noticed that our broadband "goes down" when we get heavy rain. Is there any explanation for this?

Who is your provider?
If it's via satellite then yes rain will hamper it
Other providers : Very heavy rain can work it's way into the cabinets and cause issues


Plusnet.

I reported the problem to them on 1st June. They ran line checks and then said to give it a week to see if the persisted. Of course, the weather picked up and we haven't had heavy rain until today. I've been in touch with Plusnet ( just) and they've booked an engineer for next Tuesday. Like you, I suspect rain ingress into one of the outside connections.


I'm with Plusnet as well and had issues over several months with dropouts, the first of which was rain related.
The cabinet in my road isn't far from my house, but ALL of my issues were BT Open Reach related not Plusnet
Your ISP is the middleman so as mad as feel you might feel, taking it out out them is not advisable
I think I had about 3 engineer visits, a new main socket (done by an engineer who went out of his way to help)
I was still getting the odd dropouts (even after a long dry period weatherwise)
In the end Plusnet said the would doing "something" to stabilise the line and since then it has been fine
I felt like saying WTF didn't you do that six months ago, but kept my calm as you never know when you might need to call them again
BTW all my started when I changed from Fibre to Fibre Extra, no idea why that should be a problem but I hadn't had an issue for years until I switched
If any Telco bod on here can shed some light on that - thank you in advance

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Re: Broadband down ( rain?)

#424746

Postby UncleEbenezer » July 4th, 2021, 6:09 pm

Is it on the same wires as a landline phone, and/or any other service?

If yes, is it just the broadband, or everything?

Anecdote from when I was with Plusnet (interesting to note how different things were in 2009 - mobile data still slow, expensive, and much more patchy than today - and lots of phone shops on our streets):

Yesterday late morning, I suddenly found myself unable to connect to the ‘net. This was sudden death: I’d been on earlier, and just had a break of maybe 15 minutes. After a couple of tests for “usual suspects”, I logged in to the router, and found it had indeed lost the connection.

I have the ‘phone number for my ISP, so I tried it. But the ‘phone wasn’t working either: it wouldn’t even give me a dialtone. That’ll no doubt be another symptom of the same underlying problem.

But how to contact BT to complain? My mobile phone is working fine, but doesn’t give me the standard operator numbers I’m accustomed to: 150 is invalid on it, and 100 gives me O2’s operator, who has no idea how to contact BT’s. Neither can I look it up without ‘net access. The joys of a single point-of-failure!

Trying to think who I can ask to borrow a BT line, and is likely to be around at this hour, I wander down into town. There in the centre is still an old-fashioned red call-box. Miraculously it’s working, and doesn’t even stink of smoke – how things have changed since those phoneboxes were something we had to use regularly! I successfully phoned BT: not a human, but a long series of menus that actually worked(!)

The system promised a next-day response, so I just had to hope it would happen in time not to miss a couple of meetings, including crucially the ASF board and new-member elections (online voting, and online access required for research prior to voting). The board election was interesting, with a much higher number of (strong) candidates than ever before. I was back online in time to vote for the board, but not to research the new member candidates, so I confined myself to voting for nominees with whom I’m already familiar.

The worst thing about this little episode wasn’t so much the sudden and unexpected loss of contact, but the uncertainty over it. First having to figure out how to contact BT, then just hoping they’d fix it in a reasonable time. I think they’re not bad at that these days, but when you rely as much as I do on it, it’s always a worry.

So whilst in town I also went in to Carphone Warehouse and asked about contracts for mobile broadband connectivity. The man there recommended that since I have a mobile phone on monthly contract, I should ask my provider to upgrade that. Which means, slightly painfully, having to use the phone as a modem anytime I want to use the connection to get online from a computer. There’s still no deal available that gives me connectivity both from the phone and from a USB stick for a single subscription :(

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Re: Broadband down ( rain?)

#424751

Postby monabri » July 4th, 2021, 6:23 pm

UncleEbenezer wrote:Is it on the same wires as a landline phone, and/or any other service?

If yes, is it just the broadband, or everything?



I think it is just the broadband, to be honest I rarely use the landline other than to block those calls from nuisance calls from 001 international numbers.

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Re: Broadband down ( rain?)

#424754

Postby monabri » July 4th, 2021, 6:28 pm

pje16 wrote:I'm with Plusnet as well and had issues over several months with dropouts, the first of which was rain related.
The cabinet in my road isn't far from my house, but ALL of my issues were BT Open Reach related not Plusnet
Your ISP is the middleman so as mad as feel you might feel, taking it out out them is not advisable
I think I had about 3 engineer visits, a new main socket (done by an engineer who went out of his way to help)
I was still getting the odd dropouts (even after a long dry period weatherwise)
In the end Plusnet said the would doing "something" to stabilise the line and since then it has been fine
I felt like saying WTF didn't you do that six months ago, but kept my calm as you never know when you might need to call them again
BTW all my started when I changed from Fibre to Fibre Extra, no idea why that should be a problem but I hadn't had an issue for years until I switched
If any Telco bod on here can shed some light on that - thank you in advance



Plusnet today were more helpful than in June and didn't threaten a call out fee if the fault was found to be related to my setup (I've been with Plusnet for about 20 years...and the line was ok until this problem started). The helpline admitted that they had other incidences of broadband drop out during heavy rain.

I believe I have one of the latest routers (sent to me 6 months ago as a replacement) and the connection plugs into the master socket (no filter) which is about 1metre away from the router.

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Re: Broadband down ( rain?)

#424755

Postby pje16 » July 4th, 2021, 6:40 pm

Heavy rain is one of the main culprits
Glad to hear Plusnet were on your side, I have always found their suppoprt staff very helful friendly (have even swapped recommedations on what to watch on Prime with one of them!)
Hope your issue gets sorted oout soon, it is very tiresome when it drops out (from one who knows!)

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Re: Broadband down ( rain?)

#424778

Postby monabri » July 4th, 2021, 8:04 pm

pje16 wrote:Heavy rain is one of the main culprits
Glad to hear Plusnet were on your side, I have always found their suppoprt staff very helful friendly (have even swapped recommedations on what to watch on Prime with one of them!)
Hope your issue gets sorted oout soon, it is very tiresome when it drops out (from one who knows!)



Thanks. It started raining hard again about 10 mins ago - my BB dropped again but has now reconnected, it's get to a point that I could tell if it was raining outside by looking at my router flashing orange!

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Re: Broadband down ( rain?)

#424947

Postby 88V8 » July 5th, 2021, 12:49 pm

Had this exact problem.
Also made the landline - which we do use - quite crackly.
Our ISP - Zen - called a BT engineer out who found faults on our telegraph pole, and 'multiple faults' in the local cabinet some of which his supervisors allowed him to fix and some not.
Also found mouse-related problems in our house.
Anyway, since then no issues.

V8


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