Forums Forums Enthusiast Forums A - Z Gadgets & Tech Bad Lumpy Broadband - Top Tip Cure

Here is a solution if you have really lumpy broadband. It is my personal finding and it worked for me. It is in the form of a long (snore) story and gets a little bit technical here and there.

I was recently upgraded to 8meg broadband (after years of being told my line could only cope with 2meg despite BT measurements saying a minimum of 5.5meg), I happened to be at home watching my router going through the "training" and "retraining" for the ISP to find the maximum continuos rate. Each time it trained it locked on at 8meg, brilliant I thought, I have 8meg broadband. I made fine use of this during the day, fantastic speed everywhere I went. Then that evening it went wrong, very lumpy and then sudden drop outs for long periods (2 or 3 mins). Next day everything was great and again that evening it went even worse.
I culd see exactly what was happening, as everyone went on broadband in the evening, this induced more noise in my broadband connection, as soon as the noise figure dropped below 12db, it would pack in.
I thought of a solution, if I "retrained" my broadband when it was dropping out, my modem would drop to a lower speed and then it would work better when th line was noisier.
I did this by reseting my modem (the easiest way is to switch the modem off for a few seconds then on again), with a bit of playing at the worst time in the evening I got it to drop to 6.5meg connection - this is where it has stayed ever since and I NEVER have any long drop outs (long - more than a couple of seonds) any longer.

In reality it means I never get 8meg transfers any longer, but I found there are very few sites that can supply data this fast anyway. 6.5meg is an excellent compromise.

Note that some modems offer a disconnect and reconnect - this is only in data terms (virtually login and password) between the ISP and the modem, to resync/retrain you have to drop the signal altogether, a total reset of the modem, switch off and on, or possibly disconnecting from telehone line for a while may work (haven't tried the last one.

That was my guide to Smooth Broadband instead of lumpy frustration.

I did exactly this last night, The 2 laptops would connect to the router but it kept bringing up an error page, not the normal "webpage cannot be displayed" page, but a setup page for the router, with a message saying "Internet connection not currently available. please try again in a few minutes" 1st time Ive ever seen this page. so I did the usual; unplug the router, leave powerless for 30secs, plug back in a watch the blinking lights, 1st couple of times gave a connection error with an orange light but then it gave a green light and all was honky dorey, seems a little slower on downloads but general surfing seems to have less hang ups and hiccups.

Thanks for your post, I now understand what has happened with mine.

Glad that was of help - why they don't let you select max speed on modem I don't know.