Any internet geeks out there please.

[Alder]

On a good day I apparently have 4G service here. Today I have a prolonged period of no services .
The 4G service is what I was assured was available when an Openreach engineer visited the premesis. Openreach also say that there are frequent drop downs, they acknowledge 80 in one three day period.
My question is this,
When the service drops does accessing the web merely become slower or are there some parts which can lo longer be accessed.
I ask the question as at times I have only limited access to the Internet even when I resort to connecting the computer to the web via the Ethernet cable.
Thank you ,
Russell.

 

[porker]

Do you mean 4G? This is a mobile technology. Or do you mean broadband internet service down your telephone line? If it is the latter then changes in line conditions can cause total dropout (no internet connectivity) or intermittent connectivity and slower speeds. I know a lot of people who have had this for years. The best thing to do is to find out by elimination whether it is the line supplied to you or your equipment. Problem is its quite technical but your router can usually tell you what the signal is like and also log drops if you know what you are doing.

 

[Alder]

Thank you.
Yes I do mean broadband internet service down the line. The term 4G was the one used by Openreach engineer.
I posted my question some minutes ago via my iPad, to acknowledge your answer I had to go to settings as their was no connection.
Russell

 

[morfa]

When you say 4G do you mean on your phone?

Or do you mean a standard broadband connection?

If the service is disconnected, so yes you won't be able to access the internet at all.

If it's just a 'drop down' that probably means slower than normal, so that's just means it slower to access the internet. Doesn't mean any parts of the internet are unavailable. Unless you're trying to get to say youtube on the equivalent to a 56k modem.

 

[morfa]

No idea why the Openreach engineer was saying 4G. As that's not the case.

Plenty of thing which could be wrong here.

Any how to answer your question if the connection is going slow, then you'll still be able to access all of the web. But practically, it might be so slow as to be unusable.

 

[RogerS]

"I ask the question as at times I have only limited access to the Internet even when I resort to connecting the computer to the web via the Ethernet cable.
Thank you ,"

That sounds like you are using wi-fi and at times it goes flakey.

 

[Tortion-Stephen]

As above "4G" is a mobile carrier technology. Unless he mean equivalent speeds, ADSL (through your phone line) doesn't use the same carrier technology as 4G (also called "LTE")

In general if you connect to your modem(BT Home Hub) either by Wireless or Ethernet cable, you should be able to log in to the management console (there is usually a pull out card with the default username and password on).

Log in with an Internet Browser (Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Safari etc) by putting in the IP address of the hub, and you should be able to see links for a "Status" page. (FYI IP address should be something like 192.168.1.254 or 192.168.1.1 just type that into the address window of the browser and if the IP is right, you should get a pop-up asking for user/pass per the pull out card).

Look for ADSL/WAN Status and it should tell you the state of your line they usually have red/green indicators and a line speed indicator.

There is some help here: https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j ... 0528,d.d24


If your hub is connected to your phone line, do you have the microfilters connected? (usually a small white box that plugs in between the wall socket and the modem/router/BT Home Hub)

 

[CHJ]

If you are using Wi-Fi to connect to your Router Hub then you may be getting interference from other devices such as wireless phones, Wi-Fi printers etc. in your property, so many variables as to age of equipment frequencies its hard to be definitive.

As far as Land Lines to your local exchange then you may well have poor connection somewhere down the line, faulty crimp, spade terminal, moisture, corrosion, water etc. that degrades your DSL connection.

It has taken Open Reach and BT Retail 5 months to find a fault on my lines, Six different open reach personnel before one just yesterday went further than his little box readings and went searching local connection pits and nearest main cabinet on the basis that if it doesn't work then there must be a fault.

Having proved all local wiring back to primary cabinet he swapped my main cabinet to exchange pair out to a pair in a different primary bundle and guess what the wet string now connects without dropout and we can now communicate with a decent skype upload stream.

Assuming all is well during the BT retail line monitoring phase all that remains is the compensation payment into my bank for none supply of services.

If you are more than 3-4 miles away from your exchange you obviously will not get the full speeds of any package that you are on but you should see these sort of figures on your router WAN log as a reasonable minimum even at those distances.

 

[tomatwark]

I would do a speed test.

Go onto a site like this http://www.speedtest.net/

We were having problems last week at home and it showed the broadband was running at between 0.2 Mbps and 2 Mbps instead of the 20-22 Mbps it normally runs at home.

Was really impressed by BT, rang from work at 7.45am, engineer rang at 9.15am to say he was on his way to the house, fixed by 12.00pm.

In our case the insulation on the line was starting to break down and while it was fine for telephone, it was not for the broadband.

 

[Alder]

Thank you for the answers. The way the question was asked was based on myself not understanding correctly the information given by a particular Openreach engineer. I have nearly always been well served by Openreach engineers, the company itself is not always so great.
I asked the question in another place and got the answer I was seeking which was that strength of signal for routine email and simple attachments only alters the speed at which they are downloaded.
There is also an app. Wifi analyser which can give a reading at any particular time and assist with evidencing your case when dealing with Openreach.
Russell

 

[RogerS]

I'm out of here. From an IT technical standpoint, this thread is getting more surreal by the moment !

 

[Fatboy]

I had simialr problems which turned out to be the HomeHub5 that BT supplied; I changed to a TP LInk Archer vr900 and now getting great wifi signal around the house and into the garage without having to use wifi extenders; using a sppedtest app I found I was getting more bandwidth than the HH5 ever gave me.