Broadband issues

[AlexJ]

A friend asked me to have a look at his connection as he's been having problems with his ADSL broadband connection (disconnections and slowdowns to the point of un-usability).

After checking his firewall etc. was working properly and checking for viri and spyware with no problems, I did a few other checks and one thing I noticed was the speed of the connection was some 4Mbps where as BT's line checker says "Our initial test on your phone line indicates that you should be able to have BT Total Broadband with a likely maximum speed of up to 2.5 (Megabits per second)."

Could this be the cause of the problems? If so who do I contact to get them to slow it down? The ISP or BT?

[Harrison]

It could be a speed set too high issue as that can cause erratic behaviour on the connection as you described, but that was more likely before BT upgraded all the exchanges to Broadband MAX. These days if he is on a standard BT 8Mbit MAX connection the exchange will dynamically adjust the connection speed based on stability (number of packets successfully received and sent by the exchange to your connection) and the amount of traffic being used on the line. The speed of the line can dynamically change throughout the day.

If he has only just got connected to ADSL it will act as you described for at least 10 days while the exchange pushes the limits of the line and connection to work out the speed it can safely run at on his line. After this initial period the line should become much more stable.

But, if it isn't a new line I would contact the ISP and ask their advice, although if the ISP is BT themselves I wish him luck as they are not meant to have a very good customer service.

The only other thing it could be is a broken router. For a while I was getting a dropped connection and the router couldn't find the ADSL or connect to it. After contacting my ISP and getting them to test the line, it all turned out fine, and I eventually worked out the router was faulty. I think it was overheating because if I switched it off for 30 minutes it would then work for a while. It would also drop the connection for a few minutes and then reconnect randomly. Since buying a new router I've not had any of these issues since.