NBN HFC Drop outs

[stevemartin87]

So this issue has been going on for about a month now. Our NBN connection seemed quite good to start with nice speed, stable service however after about a month we started getting drop outs quite frequently.

The issue seems to be the connectio drops out probably 2-3 times a day and takes 1-10min to come back.
For example today its happened @ 10:26 (6min drop out)  07:24 (5 min drop out) 05:34 (2 min drop out) 03:58 (1min drop out). Its not constant but it seems to happen during peak usage and when your waiting 5 mins 3 times a night to finish something your doing it has go to the point where I am pretty frustrated.

So far I have been back and forth mostly on email. First tech I spoke to said yeh there is some drop outs but line looks fine see if it still happens. It did. So I followed up email chain with ticket. And was promised a call back in 24hrs

After almost a week of waiting for a call and a few follow up emails. I finally get a call from a tech, this unfortunately coincided with a period of 36hrs with no drop outs. (Was also a period of very cool days, probably coincidence)  I was at work and the tech basically said:
- Its probably a wifi drop out (no its wired and wireless and I can login to router and see the PPP errors)
- oh but your not home to do anything,
- its been up for a day
- call back if there is any issues when youre at home.

Does anyone have any suggestions where to go from here?
I have adjusted my Archer log to error level so I can actually track drop outs, so I know how long and when they are happening. But I'm not keen to spend time constantly making phone calls trying to get something to happen unless there is actually a solution.
Has anyone had a similar issue "Fixed"?
I'm tempted to just go back to my 4G connection as while it was slower I was never stuck there waiting for the internet to come back up.

Steve

[BasilDV]

Hi @stevemartin87,

Welcome to TPG Community!
 

I've run a remote test and was not able to detect any fault within the NBN network. The NBN NTD (Arris) box also showing a stable connection for almost 2 days now. However, there are noticeable dropouts with your session last Sunday (03/03).

Was it a hot day last Sunday or was it a cold day? I'd like to analyze if the weather can be a factor of the dropouts as you said in your post that the session of your modem is stable when you received the call from our Tech team before and it was a cold day.

Also, when you lost the internet connection, did you notice the lights on the NBN NTD box if they were flashing or Off? The lights on the NTD box should stay solid.

Kind regards,

BasilDV

[stevemartin87]

Yes during drop outs the NBN NTD lights always stay solid. Checked this multiple times.
Resetting the router also always brings back the connection almost immediately. 

Yes Sunday was the warmest day we have had but all the drop outs occurred in the morning while we were at home using the internet.

And yeh I checked lastnight again and it had been up for almost 2 full days. (Of course as soon as someone is looking at it again!).

My guess is it is a modem issue likely due to load and temperature. Not sure why that would cause this type of failure as I would assume the normal ethernet would go down as well, as the NBN box is really the modem.

What do you think about wrapping it in a towel and hammering the connection for a few hours.....? To see if I can reproduce drop outs?

[BasilDV]

Hi @stevemartin87,

I agree with the experiment that you are thinking to perform with the modem.

Let's see if the modem will reproduce the dropouts that you've experienced before.

Keep us posted with the result.

Kind regards,

BasilDV

[stevemartin87]

So I wasn't able to produce any drop outs with high load and temperature. Which rules out that idea. Was stable for the the whole time I tried it on the night of the 5th.

There was still two drop outs on the 5th but these seemed to both last < 1min from the logs. Was another ~5min outage yesterday.

Seems to be completely random. Will see what router logs have to say to me tonight when I get home.

[Ahra_G]

Sure thing, @stevemartin87! 

Please do let us know how it goes. 

Cheers! 

[stevemartin87]

Few days of nothing notable. Few very short drop outs but today 3 for 5+ minutes while partner was working from home.

Sigh. Its the randomness of it that is most frustrating!

[Will]

Hi @stevemartin87

It seems like the connection is now stable for almost 22 hours.

Can you clarify the following so we can narrow down the possible cause of the dropouts:

1. Did someone reboot the NBN NTD 22 hours ago when the connection was refreshed?
2. What's the status of the lights of the modem during those times when the connection drops?
3. How are your devices connected to the modem? WIFI only or do you have devices connected via Ethernet? If WIFI only, please try connecting a computer via ethernet when the connection drops to determine if this is WIFI-related issues only.

Regards,

[stevemartin87]

1. No just router after drop outs and I saw one more in the logs around 2pm. I don't think there has been any power outages either.
2. I was not home yesterday but typically they stay solid. (See previous posts)
3. Both and I can access the Router during the drop out and see the internet status as disconnected.

[Will]

Hi @stevemartin87

If the modem was the only one that was rebooted the last time, then the dropout you experience the last time was due to the NBN box losing the connection itself. We were able to test the NBN box and the current up time is just 1 day 2hours which matches the same up time of  the modem to our server. This means that the NBN box lost the connection causing the modem to lose the internet service.

If you haven't done it yet, I suggest that you perform a reset on the NBN box. The reset button is located at the back. Once you're done with the reset, monitor the connection and let us know if the issue still persists.

Regards,