The last week or so has seen my internet connection go down periodically. My Home Hub status lights suggest I have internet access yet various devices struggle to get onto websites. I’ve reset the router a few times and today it’s been mostly OK, but last Friday it was up and down most of the afternoon. Wireless connectivity fine. DNS problem?

find something with a known IP address you can ping at the time of failure.

Ping via the IP, ping via the name, check results, will confirm/eliminate a DNS issue.

Resetting the router is likely to make things worse.

^why Flaperon?

Because you’ll wipe any connection specific settings from its rom and put it back to factory defaults.
You should only ever power down and restart routers unless you want to wipe them.

I did but only because I realised I’m being changed over tomorrow instead of today. Oops.

Step 1 of BT’s advice on dealing with a poor connection:

Turn off your Hub, computer, and any devices you are trying to connect for five minutes before restarting. If you have a white Openreach modem as well as a Hub, make sure the Openreach modem is the first thing you turn back on

I’ve habitually restarted routers as a first port of call (pun intended) when having connection issues and it’s not previously wiped any settings (e.g. port forwarding). Is this something unique to BT?

I’ve never known ANY device that keeps settings in flash be wiped by a power cycle (unless it’s faulty!). Power cycling routers will probably lead to line re-synching, which may cause the connection to slow down even more temporarily, but if it’s stuffed then that’s maybe not so much of an issue. If you have to keep doing it, then you should get BT to investigate further though.

Ours went to shit about a week ago.

Phoned them up, they claimed they found “Some blockages on the line” and that they would “have to clear it their end”.

IMO total bollocks, Im not sure the person on the other end of the phone knows a thing about networking, but who am I to argue. I might be wrong, and they might all be L2 managed line whizkids.

Anyway, they said in two days it would be back to normal. In two days it was back to normal.

Suggestion: Phone BT.

Because you’ll wipe any connection specific settings from its rom and put it back to factory defaults.
You should only ever power down and restart routers unless you want to wipe them.

You can reset without “factory resetting”. To factory reset a BT router you need to go into the firmware interface and do it from there. The reset button on the rear just cycles the power, pretty much.

In fact the first thing BT told me to do was unplug it all for 80 seconds or so. Didn’t fix it, mind.

There are some…interesting things going on with both BT’s DNS, and the dynamic line management (DLM) kit they used up until recently.

Re DNS: I can’t speculate further, other than to note the recent wholesale (I think Europe-wide?) blocking on torrent sites.

Woody2000 is right- because of the dlm element, frequent router reboots is not a great idea.

stilltortoise, resetting is not the same as restarting. Just wanted to make sure what you were doing.

If you’re just turning it off thats fine.

The reason you don’t want to restart your router any more often than you can avoid is because the DLM in the green box which looks after the connection is a bit twitchy.

Multiple resets are equivalent to multiple line drops and the DLM applies restrictions to the line to try to compensate. (In theory it’s supposed to disconnect gracefully in the event of a power cut. That’s theory though).

I don’t think you will have issues by restarting the router

Restarting the modem is another matter though and I think that would cause DLM issues , not 100% sure though so its probably safer to leave both alone

Anyway my home hub 3 suffers random drop outs all the time on WiFi and when watching BT HD TV channels

I’ve just swapped to a BT business hub 3 and it’s stable so I simply had a faulty router

Simple test is plug your PC/laptop straight into the modem as below

https://community.bt.com/t5/BT-Infinity-Speed-Connection/Openreach-How-I-can-connect-my-PC-directly-into-Openreach-white/td-p/716632

I had exactly the same problems.
Blue light on hub, intermittent connection to WAN.
I found I could only occasionally connect to BT home hub 4 on 192.168.1.254 randomly, which should never happen.
Problems on WAN shouldn’t affect LAN. BT send out replacement HH4, same problems.
I put my own D-Link 850 router in place of the HH4 (just set to PPPoE with default BT username and BT as password), working fine now.
Finally got to speak to level 2 support at BT, after the usual have you reset the router bollocks 5 times he suggested I could buy a HH5 from them to sort their problem out.

Shocking company. You have to speak to someone at Martlesham before you come across anyone who knows anything about networks.

Basically they’ve done something at the DLE which the HH4 doesn’t like and have made their own router incompatible with their own half arsed broadband product.

Anyway, they said in two days it would be back to normal. In two days it was back to normal.

Suggestion: Phone BT.

We had the same last week.

Ring BT and push them to report a line fault… it’s not a line fault, but it will get diagnosed and fixed then by people who aren’t call centre staff. Took normal 48 hours for ours to be sorted.

Thanks for all the help. The cynic in me does wonder if it’s a way for BT to persuade me to upgrade my Home Hub to one of the newer ones. Shame, since until the last week or so I’d been very impressed with the reliability and uptime of my internet connection.

Ours wasn’t anything to do with the hardware in the house. Back to normal now BT have sorted whatever they’ve sorted.