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EsatBTBT in Ireland provides a range of adsl packages to domestic and business users.
The thread "BT 3Mb - Dropping connections" has not received any replies for a month. It has been automatically closed as a result. You may start a new thread on the topic if the information in this thread is not sufficient.
I’d appreciate it if anyone has any suggestions regarding the best router/modem to get at a reasonable price. Also as I only use a desktop PC I don’t necessarily need a wireless unit.
Indeeden I do. I have used Netgear's Super-ADSL Router. Scrapped that due to massive connection droppings (the router just halted consistently). I then went for the BT Wireless ZyXEL and that was ok for a time and then it started to reboot consistently. At this point I was getting angry! I had no clues as to whether it was my hardware or the eircom line. I decided that it was most likely the routers' faults as per my first premonition.
However, I have had nothing but bliss since May this year. This is because I had purchased a Linksys WGKPC354G (also can be seen as WAG354G). I paid €65 for it in PC World in Limerick. With it you'll get a Laptop PCMCIA Wireless Adapter. I know you don't need all that Howfast, but it's the router/modem itself that's attractive. It doesn't drop connections nor does it halt. The only thing you should do if you decide to purchase it would be to update the firmware. As I said, it's a brilliant piece of hardware and has saved my broadband.
The problem is though, PC World's Irish site prices it at €99. Now, that's still a bargain considering the reliability you'll be getting, but I reckon instore it'll be cheaper. Their website's prices are a complete disgrace in terms of being updated etc. But if it's €65 or €99, I'd buy it again regardless simply because it has done me nothing but good.
Ellardm, see above. It's wireless but it will still serve the wired purpose as it comes with 4 ethernet ports as standard, as per most routers. I myself use it in its wired capacity.
Does anyone have a problem with login in to certain sites. I have just got BT 3MB but can't login to hotmail / msn have tried ping but just get request timed out. It seems to happen with some random other sites too, any ideas?
Ellardm, see above. It's wireless but it will still serve the wired purpose as it comes with 4 ethernet ports as standard, as per most routers. I myself use it in its wired capacity.
Seifer.
Thank you for your reply. Shall try and pick up one and see if it helps with the BB. Have sent three emails to Bt without reply.
I got my new shiny Linksys WGKPC354G-UK today. I found it here at Elara online for only €55 + pp. This Irish online shop is great [thanks for the headsup to Irish Ecommerce Directory - Online Shopping in Ireland Blacknight]. I ordered the product before 9am Tuesday and had the goods in my hand 9am Thursday – now that’s service!!!!
I connected the Linksys, setup was simple and I’ll report back when I know if the disconnection problem has gone for good or not.
Please do!!
, im in limerick on esat 3mb and im having a similar problem to those outlined above. Im using the zyxel 660HW-61 as supplied by Esat . I'd love to know if the above posters got a consistant improvement buy going over to a different modem.
I was full of expectation when the shiny new Linksys WAG354G arrived but it did not last long. I didn’t see any immediate improvement, I was still getting multiple disconnections every day, but I did notice that the length of each last login duration had increased from 1 - 2 minutes to over 20. However, I was still getting the same 2.57Mbps D/L speed as before notwithstanding that the Linksys was reporting the noise margin on my phoneline at 10dB compared with the 27dB I got on the ZyXel.
I was at a loss for a solution until I remembered that old engineers saying ‘when all else fails read the manual’. Guess what, I found the following under the heading – My DSL service’s PPPoE is always disconnecting PPPoE is not actually a dedicated or always-on connection. The DSL ISP can disconnect the service after a period of inactivity, just like a normal phone dial-up connection to the Internet.
Was this the answer to my disconnection problems I wondered as I noticed that the BT setup instructions indicated selection of the ‘connect on demand’ option. Further, I saw the max idle time was specified in seconds on the ZxYel and in minutes on the Linksys. No coincidence I thought seeing my login durations were coming out at 1 minute and 20 minutes respectively, precisely the default max idle settings in each case.
I then said to myself what the heck if BT [or really Eircon who operate the Bitstream product] want to disconnect me so they can reallocate the ip address, I’ll fix their wagon and select the ‘keep alive’ option on the Linksys. Hurray my disconnections are back down to one per day.
The only cloud on that silver lining is that I was able to achieve the same result using the Zxyel router so I didn’t need to buy the Linksys and I can’t return it either as it is not faulty. I also now see other forum members have also found that getting a new modem didn’t help.
I guess I‘ll have to justify the unnecessary cost of the Linksys on the basis that I now have wireless access meaning all surfers in the house can be online at the same time now.
Finally, they do say it is an ill wind that blows no good and in reading the Linksys manual I noticed that the default setup instructions were for the BT BB service in the United Kingdom. Apparently BT use the PPPoA protocol and not PPPoE across the water, so I’m thinking what the heck the Linksys can only fail to connect to network.
Wrong – it connected and what’s more my D/L speed has jumped from 2.57Mbps to 2.65Mbps, not great you might say but in real money I’m getting an extra 15KBps which might not seem like much but really shows up on those big downloads.
So, in actual fact you really were being disconnected due to inactivity? Most Routers have the option to keep the connection alive, and one of the first things I did when I used the old Netgear, and then the ZyXEL was to make sure my connection was alive.
You may see the Linksys as being only a small improvement, but I assure you it's worth the money. If not now, the ZyXEL may let you down. If anything, having a second Router handy is a good thing; in case the worst should happen to any of them. You need only connect the other one up and within 5 minutes you're up and running without the hassle of legging it to the store and buying the first s*** product on the shelf for €19.99.
The one thing you'll find with most self-bought Routers is that they would be set-up for the UK connections. Just make sure that you grab the Irish settings (multiplexing, DNS, etc.) from Esat's support section and change it over to PPPoE. All self-bought Routers allow for these changes. Also, if you're using Wireless, lower the MTU down to 1492. If you're not Wireless and you're experiencing disconnections, trying lowering it down to 1492 anyhow and see if there's an improvement.
One last thing to you new Linksys owners. Make sure to update your firmware to 1.01.05. You can do so here. You'll notice that it has only one update since its release, which compared to most devices is quite fantastic.
That's it I suppose. Howfast, I hope your connection holds out for you. Let us know if it doesn't.
Seifer.
Last edited by oneill.dav; 13th November 2006 at 12:27 AM.
Reason: Mistake correction
As I have posted in other place havinf bought a new modem and installed it yesterday. It has made no difference to the speeds at all. I believe that either the phone lines cannot take the extra load or some one is playing silly b....s.
What has been surprising it that the system started failing with me in May. Up to that it was fine. It seems that one weekend someone pulled the plug and has not put it back properly ince. Ts have no idea what is happening and I have never yet received any response to emails.
When your problem is external, and not the fault of internal wiring or your own equipment it can often be tough to get any resolution. Even if you were with eircom, you'd find that they would fob you off by doing half-assed line tests that show no problems, or even not bothering to test the line at all and just telling you they did for the sake of shutting you up.
Quite often, and it's not just in Ireland, phone companies rarely pull out all the stops to help you out. Just recently, I had a guy in the UK (Glasgow) on to me and I tried to help him get to the bottom of his problems. I had him check his internal phone boxes, and cables. I also had access to his Router via Remote Assistance. With all that, I couldn't find out anything. That led me to believe that it was his line that was at fault. He had spent hours of talk-time with BT's support in the UK to find that they were just merely fobbing him off. It wasn't until just this week his line seemed to perform again as normal (4-5mbits instead of 200-300kbits down), which was prompted by a call to BT. They must have got sick of his complaining and finally done something. Apparently he was in the same boat as many of his neighbors on the same exchange in Glasgow.
What these companies are counting on, and this includes eircom, is that we don't know how things are done. They're right; we don't. They have, and will continue to take advantage of this. As long as you're paying your bill, what do they care? They receive money from Esat BT, UTV, and other ADSL ISPs that resell through them, and of course they have their own broadband customers. In the UK, and even more so in Ireland, there's very little alternative. Most of Ireland is probably not covered by Cable, and there's plenty of the UK that would be in the same boat. So, what are you going to do? Not many would consider going back to dial-up. Most people are still trying to figure out what they can do, and while doing so, eircon are still raking in the mula. FACT: Companies like eircom and BT in the UK have specialist equipment that they can use to detect your problem and sort it. The only problem is, they tend to store it away and not use it.
The only way for you folks with line problems to get around this is to annoy the living crap outta your ISP's technical support or eircom themselves. Just keep calling. Forget emails. They're easily ignored and backpiled. Call them up and don't show weakness. If you come across as knowing a thing or two, they might take you seriously after a decent amount of complaint calls. They sold you broadband, and if your line is not capable of it, then you should not have ever been able avail of it. This means that they will have to fix it, and to be honest, it should be done free of charge! Push for it and you might get it. Just make sure your voice is heard, and not read. Ring, ring, and ring again. Don't stop until they've fixed the problem and your connection is working to satisfaction.
Hi,
That was a good rant. I cannot agree with you more. My only problem is that I am not around at 0900hours to try to get though to Ts. As you say emails are not replied to.
Being honest, I'm one of the lucky ones. I haven't had cause to ring TS often, and certainly not over line difficulties. But I do know people in your situation. In fact, I volunteer at a community radio station in my town, and their 2mbit eircom package is outta breath and running at about 300kbits down. Explain how that's possible when the exchange building is right next door? I have a feeling I'm going to be getting involved fairly soon, so wish me luck on that. I just have a few things to check out internally before I can fully justify blaming eircom, as I'm still uncertain as to whether the internal wiring in the building or the phone box itself (rigged up by the station manager) is not at fault. If it isn't, I'll be ringing and ringing.
Ellardm. As far as I'm aware, Esat BT's TS is open until 9pm. It doesn't matter so much when you ring, as long as you ring. One call a day or every few days is better than nothing, and at that, it's also better than 1,000 emails. Find a time suitable and just get onto them. Me, being a lazy 23 year old, I tend to grab the home phone and hook it up beside the PC and place it on speaker. So, I surf while waiting in their long queues. Again, luckily I don't need to do it often. But buddy, you do. I'd be very surprised if; shocked even, if your line's problem gets repaired without any of these measures being taken. Just do what you can, and hope that the sound of your angry voice will make a difference for you.
So, in actual fact you really were being disconnected due to inactivity? Most Routers have the option to keep the connection alive, and one of the first things I did when I used the old Netgear, and then the ZyXEL was to make sure my connection was alive.
You might ask why I did not think of this first off when I noticed the problem. The answer is simple I had been running the ZyXel for approx 16 months with the ‘connect on demand’ option selected and I was not getting disconnected. Thus I had no reason to suspect that this was the source of my problem.
Why then did the disconnections start to happen? Did it coincide with an increase in BB users on my local exchange? Is the DSLAM equipment overloaded? Are Eircon favouring i.p. address allocation for their own subscribers over those with Bitstream resellers? Finally why do BT not advise their customers to select the ‘keep alive’ option on the ZyXel router?
I suppose we'll never get proper answers to these questions but in the meantime I hope the conclusions I’ve reached and the advice received from others who took the time to contibute in this thread helps others with similar problems.
Quote:
Originally Posted by seifer
One last thing to you new Linksys owners. Make sure to update your firmware to 1.01.05. You can do so here. You'll notice that it has only one update since its release, which compared to most devices is quite fantastic.
BTW new Linksys users should check if they have the newer WAG354G v2 which uses firmware 1.01.54 available here.
Yes I found the same solution, PPPoA is your man!! I did the same and got the same result!! Maybe someone should tell them in customer care...only it's not worth the bother trying to speak to them its a nightmare!!!
My speeds are 2.65 down 256 - 360k up constantly and I only pay 63 a month including line rental and all calls within Irl and Eng!! Was previously with the wireless jokers to me at best it was a browsing service nothing more.
Cheers
I was at a loss for a solution until I remembered that old engineers saying ‘when all else fails read the manual’. Guess what, I found the following under the heading – My DSL service’s PPPoE is always disconnecting PPPoE is not actually a dedicated or always-on connection. The DSL ISP can disconnect the service after a period of inactivity, just like a normal phone dial-up connection to the Internet.
Was this the answer to my disconnection problems I wondered as I noticed that the BT setup instructions indicated selection of the ‘connect on demand’ option. Further, I saw the max idle time was specified in seconds on the ZxYel and in minutes on the Linksys. No coincidence I thought seeing my login durations were coming out at 1 minute and 20 minutes respectively, precisely the default max idle settings in each case.
I then said to myself what the heck if BT [or really Eircon who operate the Bitstream product] want to disconnect me so they can reallocate the ip address, I’ll fix their wagon and select the ‘keep alive’ option on the Linksys. Hurray my disconnections are back down to one per day.
Finally, they do say it is an ill wind that blows no good and in reading the Linksys manual I noticed that the default setup instructions were for the BT BB service in the United Kingdom. Apparently BT use the PPPoA protocol and not PPPoE across the water, so I’m thinking what the heck the Linksys can only fail to connect to network.
Wrong – it connected and what’s more my D/L speed has jumped from 2.57Mbps to 2.65Mbps, not great you might say but in real money I’m getting an extra 15KBps which might not seem like much but really shows up on those big downloads.
Howfast [/quote]
Hi Howfast,
I've been having trouble with my connection now for a while, after 1.5 years of intermittent dropped connection, sometimes for long periods, but then recently it got much worse. Anyway, I've been back and forth with BT, was told it was because I was using an extension phone line, so I got a Mac wireless router (base station). Still having dropping problems, and tonight by accident found this site and this thread. Delighted to find I'm not the only one out there having these problems.
Anyhoo, I have gone into ZyXel Set up wizard, and changed setting to Nailed Down Connection, and then also changed it to PPPoA, I have been running speed checks after each change. The interesting thing to me is, before I actually registered to the site (so couldn't save my test results) I got a speed of 2.11 Mbps, then it has dropped since changing to nailed down connection and then went up again a bit after changing to PPPoA, then down again dramatically, so I changed back to PPPoE, after which it went back up a bit. Then I read something about the speed not staying constant, so I gave PPPoA another try, disastrous speed test 773 kbps and upload speed has dropped too
Irish Isp Test Results - rachaelworld - 14/11/2006 20:41:30 UTC
Summary Last 10 Results:
2006-11-14 20:37:57, 754 kbps (94KB/s), 191 kbps (24 KB/s), 23%, 15 ms, 1040 ms
2006-11-14 20:22:00,1544 kbps (193KB/s),315 kbps (39 KB/s),21%,14 ms,463 ms
2006-11-14 20:19:19,1275 kbps (159KB/s),311 kbps (39 KB/s),21%,16 ms,660 ms
2006-11-14 20:16:52,1913 kbps (239KB/s),313 kbps (39 KB/s),43%,14 ms,656 ms
2006-11-14 20:15:47,1612 kbps (201KB/s),313 kbps (39 KB/s),45%,14 ms,386 ms
2006-11-14 20:14:50,970 kbps (121KB/s),308 kbps (39 KB/s),48%,13 ms,725 ms
2006-11-14 20:06:17,2012 kbps (252KB/s),311 kbps (39 KB/s),73%,17 ms,254 ms
2006-11-14 19:28:50,1822 kbps (228KB/s),305 kbps (38 KB/s),70%,24 ms,126 ms
2006-11-14 19:25:33,1420 kbps (178KB/s),103 kbps (13 KB/s),77%,19 ms,54 ms
2006-11-14 19:24:03,1690 kbps (211KB/s),115 kbps (14 KB/s),74%,19 ms,132 ms
Total Averages:, 1501 kbps (188 KB/s),258kbps (32KB/s),50 %, 17 ms, 450 ms
So, what do you reckon? Are you still having no problems with you speed and connection? Do you think the difference is a Mac thing ( I can't remember who here said they were a Mac user, but if you're reading this please chime in)?
Thanks,
Rachael
PS I'm on BT 3Mb package too
The thread "BT 3Mb - Dropping connections" has not received any replies for a month. It has been automatically closed as a result. You may start a new thread on the topic if the information in this thread is not sufficient.
Linksys WGKPC354G-UK 
Was previously with the wireless jokers to me at best it was a browsing service nothing more.
Linear Mode
