Annoying intermittent loss of internet connection..

[rafletcher]

..but not, according to the lights on my router, ADSL (well at least at the times I was awake). If that's possible. PlusNet looked at my connection log - the images below are what it showed (yes, I should be able to manage a single image but I can't...  ). 

They saw the regular 3am drop-out and deduced (wrongly) that it was an "Avast HNS" issue. We don't have Avast or any other AV running. We have an iPad, 2 iPhones, a MacBook and an iMac (the latter generally running W10 for my wife's use) connected to a Fritzbox 3390 (I think) router, which I have done nothing that I know to cause this issue.

Any speculation as to possible causes?

[Kim]

If the line's staying in sync, then it's the PPP session disconnecting.  That'll be ultimately down to your router and/or PlusNet's LNS, possibly in response to packet loss on the connection between them, or because they're being restarted, or something.

What it isn't is anything to do with your computer.  Unless perhaps it's generating enough traffic to saturate the link and causing packet loss.

[Kim]

If the line's staying in sync

....but that's a big 'if'.

I assume "Mean Time Between Retrains" refers to the ADSL re-syncing, which suggests it's doing it on average once a day (and you're just not watching the blinkenlights intently enough at 3am).  That's an issue between your modem and the DSLAM in the exchange, and generally pertains to some physical issue with the line.

Either it's flapping about trying to settle on a stable rate, or something's causing it to stop working at 3am every night - a burst of interference from....I don't know?

You don't have the data here to discriminate loss of PPP due to loss of sync from loss of PPP for some other reason, so not all those events may be due to the same cause.

[rafletcher]

Thanks for the opinion Kim, although it's pretty much gibberish to me, it may prove useful with PlusNet if they get no further on their own. I've not been watching the lights at 3am - I did have a look the other morning when it was "off" around 06:30 and the ADSL light was on.

There may well be issues on the line - we're in a linear village with one green box at the start followed by a copper string. But why the 3am drop-out - who knows.

[fuaran]

Have you checked the logs on your router? That should tell you if the router is restarting, or if its losing the connection for some other reason.

[rafletcher]

Thanks fuaran, I'll try and do that too.

Edit:  I've logged in remotely and it's saying "connected since 03:06" so I guess the router is seeing the drop-out too. However on checking "DSL" it's saying "DSL active since 2 days 6 hours 59 minutes"

DSL log shows no sync error in last 24 hours though, despite the drop-out at 3am.

[bryn]

Some years ago I had a regular drop-out in the night time.  It turned out to be due to an automatic BT line check which should have been disabled when ADSL was installed, but hadn't been.   I would have thought by now that this would no longer happen, ADSL being almost ubiquitous, but you never know........

Bryn

[rafletcher]

We've had the line and BB >10 years. We did occasionally get random night-time ringing of the 'phone but that was intermittent. And it's not just a 03:00, the log shows one day where it happened at 14:00. 17:00. and four times between 20:00 and 22:00. That's unusual though.

[Kim]

Some years ago I had a regular drop-out in the night time.  It turned out to be due to an automatic BT line check which should have been disabled when ADSL was installed, but hadn't been.   I would have thought by now that this would no longer happen, ADSL being almost ubiquitous, but you never know........

BT would occasionally reverse the polarity on our line for no apparent reason (usually this precedes a packet of CID data, before the phone rings for an incoming call, which would cause Asterisk to log an error), but it never affected ADSL.

[Kim]

Edit:  I've logged in remotely and it's saying "connected since 03:06" so I guess the router is seeing the drop-out too. However on checking "DSL" it's saying "DSL active since 2 days 6 hours 59 minutes"

DSL log shows no sync error in last 24 hours though, despite the drop-out at 3am.

There you go.  The last 3am disconnect (again, can't vouch for the others) was only the PPP session, with no loss of sync - so not a physical issue with your line.

The question is, what caused it to terminate the session.  Anything in the log about LCP timeouts?


(It might be something like Plusnet kicking customers off an LNS in order to upgrade firmware or better balance the load.  Whether the support person knows about this will depend on the arse & elbow factor.)

[rafletcher]

Duly edited and posted to Plusnet