DSL disconnects sporadically

[speed2011]

Hi. My DSL connections always had this problem since 2007, but only a few times a month for the last few years. 

Recently, it's unbearable. I've been having 6 to 7 disconnects a day for the last month. EVERYDAY.

It disconnects whenever it wants to while i'm using it. It could be in the morning, afternoon, evening or late night. My browser would stop and the red light blinks on my 2WIRE modem. It takes about 3 to 5 minutes, and I'm back on again.

I only have one landline phone in the house, and it has a filter on it. My condo here was built in 2007, and I had an ATT tech here to install the jack when I moved in. So, I don't suspect it's the inside wires in my house.

Help!!!

[gardnerds]

I wish I could help but I had the same problem. You didn't indicate, but my phone service goes out, too just for a few minutes. I called the phone company and they came out and checked the big box (not connection at my house) down the road. It helped for a while but it is back doing it periodically ( less than once every couple of weeks). I had a technician that was very sympathentic and willing to look around. He said something about me being the end of the line and something about "reflectivity". Maybe that will help.

[speed2011]

Thanks for sharing your experience. When the red lights start blinking, my landline phone still has dial tone. I contacted ATT to come out and check it out. I'm leaning into switching to Comcast. This on and off of service really drives me crazy.

[kwfrench]

I've had the same problem for months.  Have had 7 tech visits but no fix.  You might want to be smarter than I've been, and give ATT 2 or 3 or 4 chances to fix the problem, then change service providers.

[speed2011]

The Tech came out today. Connect my phone wire to his device for about 5 minutes, and tells me everything on the line is perfect. He said he couldn't find any problems and suggest that my 2Wire modem router maybe the problem. He didn't look like he's going to do anything else today accept telling me the line is perfect.......so I went to BestBuy and bought a new modem router. 30 minutes into the internet.....web page stops loading, and the DSL light starts to blink on my new modem router. SAME PROBLEM.

I'm not a tech guy by any means. I'm just using a little logic here. The connection as stated disconnects sporadically at any given time. How can the tech guy tests anything with 5 minutes and confirms that the line is perfect. So basically, every time that I'm able to connect....of course, it's perfect. Until it disconnects.

What a waste of time. AT&T, if you're reading this, You need to revise your protocols and procedures. I'm pretty sure I'm not tthe only one with these kinds of in-house tech support. Can you imagine how much money you can save for your share holders if the tech are really supporting the customers efficiently.

[bean116]

I've had the same problems now for months. We had 3 different tech come out to the house and tell us the samething, I have check the wires outside of the house and at the main junction box at the road and everything is fine. At least thats what they tells us. We have switched routers and still no fix. They told us to unplug the router from the surge protector and plug it into the wall outlet no fix. Lets try changing the plugs no fix. Talked with the engineers that handle the ports in the office and they switch what line we was connected to no fix. It sucks having to close down your browser and start over everytime AT&T internet wants to drop. We are totally fed up. So now I have a router that I paid $100 from AT&T that I have to return. And still having internet dropping. Would love to have this problem fix. Really hate paying for a service that is crappy.

[ahoverson]

I just posted this in another thread, but if you guys feel savvy enough, there's a simple test to see another side of the health of your internet connection.

In Windows, load up your command prompt (usually from the start menu, or you can type cmd in Run) and type in

pathping www.google.com    or     pathping www.yahoo.com

and the process will run for a few minutes.  It will tell you the length in seconds.  What you're going to see is the number of hops between you and the website, the latency in milliseconds (ms) and the percentage of packet loss.  The thing you want to look for is packet loss (a number not 0 beside the /100) at hops 3, 4, and 5.  Those are your connective nodes to your isp.  Check it out, I'd be curious to know because I'm trying to get AT&T to fix my internet service and I think that my 50 to 80% loss is my problem.  No one with a functioning connection should ever see above 10%, and even that's spotty.

[speed2011]

ahoverson -Thanks for the info. I ran the pathping google. I'm not sure how to read them. Does this look right to you?

Hop 3 = 100/100 =100%     100/100 =100%

                                                 0/100 =0%

Hop 4 = 100/100 = 100%     100/100 =100%

                                                 0/100 =0%

Hop 5 = 100/100 = 100%     100/100 =100%

                                                 0/100 =0%

[ninja.smurf]

Ahahahaha... I ran the pathping earlier today to the google website.  The process didn't make it past 4 hops.  I have had some latency issues with Uverse previously, but this week has been horriffic.  Seems to me that in this day and age with the quality of technology, AT&T has to be performing this badly on purpose. Appears to be quite the effort to push customers away.

I wonder if I need to make the call to Cox Communications, or will AT&T make the appointment for me?

[Jessica1973]

as bad as it sounds Im glad its not just us.  Im guessing from what Ive read here and other websites it happens to a good portion of at&t's internet customers. You would think they would fix it...

[Luke_7]

I am a new customer to At&t for only two months now. I use my internet mostly at nights after work and have noticed my internet will go out at least three of four times every night. This is only for a few minutes, and then it comes back on. Its really annoying if you are trying to watch a video. I am usually on an hour or two. It was unfortunate to see that when I came to this forum that others were having the same problem and AT&T has done nothing about it. I just paid all the startup fees and bought the router as a previous poster had indicated. Its a shame I have to think about switching providers after two months.

[tyrober]

My Wife and I are having the SAME exact problem. It will typically go down AT LEAST 5-6 times a day for around a minute. I have to exit my browser and start everything over. A new router did nothing. It is a HUGE pain {word filter evasion}

[glittman]

I have had the exact same experience over the past two years of living at my current home. Previously had AT&T HSI DSL at my last home less than 5 mi away and never had this problem. Initially the techs blamed it on the fact that I had moved my original AT&T provisioned modem and self-purchased router. They wanted me to replace both, but I only replaced the router since it was in fact an older Linksys that I also needed to upgrade for WiFi connectivity issues. WiFi issues were improved, but DSL connectivity and speed were still intermittant. After putting up with it and going having service techs out at the house every 4-6 months I finally broke down and let them replace my old Siemens modem with a new Westell and then over Black Friday I bought a new Apple Airport Extreme router (they were pushing the 2Wire; no thanks). So far I really can't tell if either change has made any difference at all. I am getting super fed up with AT&T and their half hearted effort on providing a reliable service. The only problem is that the alternative is Time Warner cable.....the devil you know for the devil you don't.

[Frustrated-with…]

My AT&T DSL used to be nearly flawless, but earlier in 2011, it began disconnecting at random times.  Now it's disconnecting many times per day, sometimes every few minutes.  It seems that AT&T's standard protocol for dealing with this issue is nothing but a waste of time for the customer as well as the technician.   No technician in the world can make a crappy DSL service any less crappy.  Think about it... how many posts have you read in this forum where someone who shared our same problem later posted, "A technician came out, fixed the problem, and now our DSL is working great again"?  It is my opinion that AT&T DSL has deteriorated to the point of being unusable.  I am shopping around for another provider.

[nortishere]

Always nice reading all these stories that all share a common theme.. DSL lost sync/drop issues... But the response is ALWAYS that the problem has to be the customer. The lines are fine and they find nothing wrong with their equipment.....
I think the common denominator here is AT&T but yet they are able to continue selling crappy service that they are not able to provide satisfactory.

[hypersonic3118]

I had the same problem. After a month on tech support I finally got someone who know what to do. That is if you are using a 2wire router? Some of the settings need changed. Are you using a 2wire?

[barkleydave]

Drops and slow service have been the standard of excellence for AT&T.  I have been dealing with this issue since 2005.

All the excuses are the same with the same results.

For the past year service has been acceptable with speed close to 1.2 mbps with a modem restart once in awhile.

Find it very odd that it worked well for over a year now we are too far on the line?

The past 2 months the nightmare began all over.

 Hours on line and on phone with support extremely frustrating and no solutions. Speeds dropped to 300 kbps and dropping out 5-10 times per day and slow at night.

ATT: You  need a new modem.  99 bucks

Result no improvement.

2 More time on phone etc. Finally got a work order for tech to look into the issue.

Nice fellows been out many times (almost family now LOL) The tech I have been dealing with recently has been great and gone out of his way to try and help resolve this issue. He has followed up without forcing me to jump through all the hoops to get a work order submitted.   I have been told many times I am at the end of the line and too far out for great service.. 

They turned  service back to 768 which will be more stable and here is another modem to help correct this ongoing issue.

Nope! Modem failed to link after 5 hrs and speeds were 460 tops.  Replaced that modem... Nope! Same issue.

On my 4th modem with same results.  The Netgear seems to be the most stable, but it sensitive and drops speeds down with even a little glitch and does not come back up. (You have to reset and hope for the best.)

So the question and result is.

Tech on line and on phone:  No resolution just added Expense

Lost my 1.5 service which at least I got part of the time but used to get all the time.

Now slow service and will not bump me back up so at least I might get 1.2 once in awhile.

Now the reality:  Options:  Cable (NONE HERE) SAT.DSL( Available but very limited use allowed then they drop to 125kbps and 129 bucks per month!)  Dial UP: (you must be joking right?

ATT has FAILED invest in the required infrastructure for reliable fast DSL service.  We pay the price of limited internet service when everything including TV sets are now connected to the internet. 

That is life in the ATT slow lane

[gpd]

Yes, I suffer from sporadic disconnects and we have a 6-year-old 2Wire. Is there a fix? Otherwise we're going to have to jump ship. Thanks for any help you can give!

[ephemeral]

Same experience here. Worked great for two years and then about 4 weeks ago disconnects sporadically, some times as often as 3-4 times per hour. Interestingly, about a week ago it stopped this behavoir for 3 days straight, stayed up the entire time. Now its back to dropping often.

I have replaced every cable, filter, power strip, and device from the outside of the house inward. I have re-routed and/or disabled every powered device anywhere near the DSL modem and cables just in case it might be EMI related. grrrrrrrrr

[dano65]

I have called At&T and had a tech scheduled to come out and he never showed up! I called back a week later which was just last friday, and they hung up on me! But, Im hearing that it has to do with Windows 7! It seems about 4 weeks ago or so, windows installed a upgrade to Windows 7 and now we need an ajustment in the 2wire box! Good Luck with that! Im just going else were myself!

[dano65]

And when the red light comes on, it is actully rebooting!

[aglennon]

We have the Basic speed DSL service. For nearly one month now, while browsing (Firefox or IE) the pages time out to the point where it says "No Internet Connection". We have to keep clicking Reload. The connection just keeps timing out. We have four different PCs, wired and wireless, and it happens on each of them. (Only use one at a time because we're aware of slow speed). There are no malware issues. ATT tech came out two weeks ago. As with the Phone tech support, he ran tests and said there was nothing wrong. Even on his laptop tests, the only minute thing he could find was some sort of internal electrical interference, but said that wasn't an issue. He had me remove the old Speedstream 4100 and replaced it with a 2Wire 2701HG. I went through all of the settings just as I did when we used the Linksys Wireless router WRT54GS. Setup is the same. Same problem - keep losing internet - it's literally worse than dialup was back in the day. Reboot everything, same routine - no difference. Our connection is so sporadic that it's even messing with the DirecTV HR21 DVR apps & searches. No Netflix or anything here. Periodically it'll say "No Internet Detected". So when the connection is so bad now that the satellite box is complaining, what exactly is going on? I've even disconnected the Directv box thinking it may be sucking more bandwidth for no apparent reason - same problems. Each tech support person says all tests are good. I see nothing but the usual green lights on 2Wire (just as all green on the old Speedstream). I did learn from high-level ATT tech that there was a nationwide issue about a week ago that affected DNS direct, but this connection problem is nearly a month old. We've had the Basic speed for years and never a problem until now. After several calls and a tech visit, it's pointless to call anymore. Are others having a sudden connection problem lately, too? Several people I know with much higher speed packages have noticed some sort of issue, as well.

[bheiskl]

Here is a copy paste from my post in dslreports.com (which has no replies and no answers for weeks)

---

Start 2/13/2012

Whenever my downloads get loaded up with more than roughly 5 connections and full bandwidth used, it starts randomly dropping and coming back around 3-6 seconds later. Downloads at max for 5-10 seconds, then back down. Rinse and repeat.

I done some screen capture with CamStudio while this issue was happening. This is what it does. Every time you see the pings timeout and the green bar drops on the DD-WRT monitor, I have "no internet". Youtube: AT&T Internet Sucks

Hardware: (underline, currently using)
SpeedStream 4100, and Motorolla 2210
Buffalo WNR-G300N (DD-WRT) (as of 3/72012), Netgear WNDR3700 (with DD-WRT), Cisco E2500

And trying both PPPoE locations on router and modem with different combinations still doesn't solve anything.

I thought my router was the cause at first so I purchased a Brand New Cisco E2500 and tested it with that. Still exact same issue. So replaced back with WNDR3700 since that wasn't the issue and the router is much more expensive/better.

Then I tried replacing the modem. So I did. Swapping out my Motorolla 2210 with a SpeedStream 4100 still experienced the same issue.

All lights act the way they should. The DSL light always stays on green.

So not a hardware issue.

Called Tech Support and got a Technician out to my house on the 16th.

Start 2/16

The Technician done everything he could. I showed him the exact cause of the issue and was able to replicate it every time. He had no idea on what was causing it. He called his iirc Tier 2 support and tried figuring out what to do.

He ended up swapping out the cards down at the Hub which didn't fix it. "Rebuilt the connection". No fix. Then they done something like changing my VPI/VCI I think it was. And still didn't fix it.

I gave up. Internet still not working.

Start 2/22

Took my old (still newer) Motorolla out to my phone box with my Laptop and wired it directly out there. Was able to replicate the same results outside directly connected to the phone lines coming into the house.

Now, here I am asking for help for anyone that would be able to help me. I should be able to reply quite frequently.

Modem Statistics as far as connection
To Modem To Internet
Max Allowed Speed (kbps) 1536 384
SN Margin (dB) 29.0 22.0
Line Attenuation (dB) 32.0 9.0
Loss of signal 0 0
Loss of frame 0 0
CRC Errors 0 1

---

Anyway, this issue nonetheless is still continuing. Although I'm finally picking up some abnormalties when the internet just randomly drops off completely and resetting modem isn't fixing it, and I have to reset the router as well.

But it'll be working fine from anywhere between 6-36 hours then just all of the sudden just die, and I have to reset everything just to be back up and running. And when this connection is down, all the lights (that are supposed to be on) on my modem are solid green.

The tech is coming back out in three days and doubt it will be fixed. But the last time he was out, I was able to see that our house is close enough to be able to get the 6Mb connection. Although being a month without stable internet they should compensate us for that by giving us a free month of 3Mb at least. But will they do that, probably not.

Oh and sorry to thread jack. People tend to read a reply on bigger thread's than a single issue with no replies.

[aclobos]

Hello just read your post. I'm having the same kind of problem. I have tried all types of wireless routers with my at&t speed stream 4100 modem. I'm not sure why I get disconnected from the network. I stay connected to the router but the router is disconnected from the modem (4100). The only way I can reconnect to the network is to log on to the speed stream 4100 model. I have the router locked down pretty tight. I don't broadcast my ssid. I only allow a connection to the router via wired to the PC. So some times I think someone is trying to hack into the router and maybe that's why I get disconnected. I have tried to connect to the router via wireless and notice that the router give me an error 401 and then I loose sometimes I my connection. It does not happy every time.

 Who knows, not sure if the modem is compatible with the routers. The modem is 6 or 7 years old and I have not updated any firmware. So did you ever get your problem taken care of?

[kg0001]

I'm here to join the disconnect club.  Long time DSL user, and like many others, disconnection problem only started few month ago.  It can happen at random time and random date, sometimes everything would be smooth for couple weeks, sometimes it will be so unbearable with frequent disconnects every 5-10mins for the entire day.

Had a tech guy came by aswell, same phone line testing with resulting signal being "great".

Really thought I'm the only one with this problem until I google searched it and found this post.  Honestly with this many people having issue, and no official reply, changing a provider might be a good idea.  Dsl just isn't stable like it use to be.

[aglennon]

It's been this way since March.  As I said before, tech came out, said everything tested fine, gave us a 2wire 2701HG-B to replace original SpeedStream 4100.  New modem/router combo does the same thing as the SpeedStream did.  It's like when dial-up use to drop the connection, except now, it just says "server not found" and you have to click Reload to get the connection again.  It does this wired and wirelessly - same problem.  We've just tolerated it.  It's unfortunate that we had so many years of a flawless, uninterrupted connection and now, we just live with a newer version of dial-up problems, timing out every few minutes, 24 hours a day.  I never thought there was a problem with our modem and router.  After all these months of sporadic service, I think this is just the lower quality of service we can expect nowadays.  Have you noticed how everyone is cutting back on everything?  Companies are cutting back on services they offer, which leads to a lesser quality of service.  And every company has quickly raised rates and often (See your phone bill - Increase every month).  Well, this applies to the DSL service.  It's sad they took a good service and degraded it so poorly, that we just have to live with it.  We might be paying for XXX speed and the stats in the modem might show that speed, but the true speed we get now is NOTHING close to what it is suppose to be.  It's like buying a dozen eggs but only getting eight of them<<<<<<<<

[bheiskl]

Well I solved my internet issue from the above. I switched providers. I'm now a customer of cable Internet. Twice as fast more reliable.