UKC Forums - Broadband - How's that work then???

Broadband - How's that work then???

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Enty 23 Jul 2010

So two weeks ago my broadband connection went crap - after about 3 minutes the connection went down.
The telephone, which is connected to my freebox was also crap - conversations became impossible after about 2 minutes.

I contacted our provied who asked for the serial number for the freebox. They then sent me a new power lead and it all works fine.

I think I know what the problem was but would like someone to explain the technicalities of it.

JK? anyone?

E

Milesy 23 Jul 2010

any equipment which connects to the phone line has potential to go faulty and introduce noise, thus the broadband signal is affected.

Different Steve 23 Jul 2010

In reply to Enty:

So was that the phone connected to your broadband box - e.g. BT Home Hub?

If so, that phone also uses the your broadband connection which is why it would suffer from the same problem as your PC.

JoshOvki 23 Jul 2010

In reply to Enty:

If you are with virgin everything goes down the same cable that is effectively a TV areal going back to a green box at the end of the road. A faulty power supply could be feeding too much juice into the box, which is possibly sending it excess power down that cable going back to the green box causing all sorts of interference. That would be my guess anyway.

OP Enty 23 Jul 2010

In reply to Different Steve:

Think so. We're with a big French provider called Free.fr.

Main line come sinto the house to the box then the PC and phone are connected to the box. It's been ace for years. Funny how just the power lead / transformer can affect it.

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Doug 23 Jul 2010

In reply to Enty: I had something vaguely similar with an Orange 'Livebox' (probably similar to your freebox). When turned on it would connect & work for maybe 10 minutes, then stop. After wasting a lot of time with the helpline they eventually sent an engineer. Much of what the guy said was complete rubbish & impossible but he did fix the problem by replacing the power unit and claimed that the old power unit had a fault & once it warmed up somehow interfered with the connection.

sutty 23 Jul 2010

In reply to Enty:

Sounds like an inline smoothing device went down in the lead and it interfered with the signal, much like the filters you put on phone lines here to stop the phone messing your PC up.

Now you can watch the race again on the PC? Or do you have a good feed on the TV there?

interdit 23 Jul 2010

In reply to Enty:

hi mate.

our free.fr broadband and phone died last year sometime - the box came on but would not get past the 'PPP' stage.

they sent a new power pack - it worked straight away.

the new power pack has a RF choke (a black plastic lump clamped over the cable) on the cable near to where it enters the box.
this filtered whatever interference was stopping our box working.

i bloody hate free.fr and orange.fr etc using proprietary equipment.

owlart 23 Jul 2010

In reply to Doug: If the power supply is not producing a 'clean' voltage then this can cause some odd effects, similar to those you describe. Replacing the PSU with a new one that gives a clean/smooth output will cure the problem, as you've found out!

Mikkel 23 Jul 2010

In reply to Enty:

I bet they have had a bad batch of powersupplies, which have not been shielded prober etc, and checking the serial number confirmed it was one of those, and they therefor send you a new one.

OP Enty 23 Jul 2010

In reply to interdit:

> (In reply to Enty)
>
> hi mate.
>
> our free.fr broadband and phone died last year sometime - the box came on but would not get past the 'PPP' stage.
>
> they sent a new power pack - it worked straight away.
>
> the new power pack has a RF choke (a black plastic lump clamped over the cable) on the cable near to where it enters the box.
> this filtered whatever interference was stopping our box working.
>
>
> i bloody hate free.fr and orange.fr etc using proprietary equipment.

Spot on - can't complain about free though - 8 years perfect service.
29.99€ a month for unlimited everything - and a quick connection.

E