Bizarre broadband problem

**Toad** · 4 November 2006, 00:47

Nope, no idea at all.

Have you tried going into the browser and deleting all cookies etc. ?
Have you tried going to Command Prompt and IPCONFIG /FLUSHDNS. ?
Can you ping the DNS servers ?
Have you rebooted the PC ?
Are you with BT ? (lots of problems over the last week or so)

Don't know, don't care, too many drinks and can't be bothered thinking.

Customer Services is now closing down for the night.
Thank you for calling.
Have a nice day now.

**AtW** · 4 November 2006, 00:51

Could be crap DNS servers rather than connectivity per se.

Use ping to bbc.co.uk to see if you get high packet loss or very high pings, which would point out to problem with upstream, possibly for your exchange/UBR.

**hyperD** · 4 November 2006, 00:56

Or it could be like a mate of mine that recently has had some plumbers and plasterers in his living room and ever since the plasterer has stood on the router and there's a fine layer of fine pink dust over all his equipment, he's not been able to get an internet connection, let alone an erection.

**Sockpuppet** · 4 November 2006, 00:57

Originally posted by xoggoth

Fine until about 7pm and then utterly useless, almost every site gives not found, although CUK always works and my own contractor site page does sometimes. Possibly cos' they have few or no pictures so are small?

Sometimes it seems better for a very short while if I reboot the modem although mostly it makes no difference. What I can't follow is that I get not found instantly on sites, it is not timing out.

Will ring bb suppliers tomorrow. Any other ideas what might be wrong?

Cheers

Whats the SNR like? At night the background noise rises so if you are borderline could result in a dodgy connection.

**DaveB** · 4 November 2006, 11:19

Originally posted by xoggoth

Fine until about 7pm and then utterly useless, almost every site gives not found, although CUK always works and my own contractor site page does sometimes. Possibly cos' they have few or no pictures so are small?

Sometimes it seems better for a very short while if I reboot the modem although mostly it makes no difference. What I can't follow is that I get not found instantly on sites, it is not timing out.

Will ring bb suppliers tomorrow. Any other ideas what might be wrong?

Cheers

Sounds like a DNS issue rather than connectivity.

Try running nslookup from the command line and see what happens. Try pinging a couple of known IP addresses as well. If they respond ok but pinging the corresponding domain name times out then it's definately a DNS issue.

**AtW** · 4 November 2006, 11:26

Install this: http://www.simpledns.com/

And put your localhost as DNS server in TCP/IP config, if all becomes quick then it was definately a DNS server issue.

**xoggoth** · 4 November 2006, 11:35

Hey! some sensible comments!!! That makes a change! Cheers chaps, have a look at that tonight.

PS Except from hyperd - typical process engineer!
PPS What's an snr sockpuppet?

**VectraMan** · 4 November 2006, 12:01

I had similar sort of wierd tulip a couple of weeks back: it'd be okay, then some sites would be slow, others would return not found instantly. I was about to resort to Pipex tech support, but tried my laptop out and everything worked fine, but pinging from the laptop to the desktop and vice versa was flakey.

I realized eventually that the aerial was loose on the back of my PCs wireless card.

Not enough for it to report that the wireless connection had failed, but obviously enough for a lot of packets to go AWOL.

**Sockpuppet** · 4 November 2006, 13:45

Originally posted by xoggoth

PPS What's an snr sockpuppet?

Signal To Noise ratio. How much the modem can hear of the data over the background noise. In the evenings / night the SNR will raise (its just a natural thing) so when this raises the modem has a harder time hearing the data that is sent.

Bizarre broadband problem