Comments on: Troubleshooting broadband connection problems

By: From the Potting Shed | Headset Hotties

From the Potting Shed | Headset Hotties — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 07:49:51 +0000

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scottcarver.info › From the Potting Shed — Sat, 31 May 2008 23:48:48 +0000

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By: Gareth J M Saunders

Gareth J M Saunders — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 08:55:24 +0000

Would you believe, this blog is hosted on a Pipex (WebFusion) server? I’ve had pretty good service from Pipex.

As I’ve said before I chose BT because they seem to own, oversee and maintain the communications network in this country, and therefore *should* be the right people to contact when things are going pear-shaped.

Admittedly, all the problems encountered so far *have* been fixed … it’s just been frustrating a) getting the call-centre folks to take me seriously enough to do something about it, and b) see a) above (it’s quite important)!

By: David

David — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 19:07:56 +0000

BT are, well BT – in my experience they have never changed, for 20 years they have been rubbish and no doubt will continue for another 20

Watch you phone bill with some of these ISP’s when they use 0870 numbers for support, can cost a fair bit – found this a great site !

http://www.saynoto0870.co.uk/

Try Pipex, the best customer service but the most confusing interface for webmail and checking your account on-line

David

By: Essie

Essie — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 09:17:09 +0000

I’ve been reading your broadband problems and nodding sympathetically – I’m with Orange, and I lose the ability to view webpages randomly, and every week or so (2 days ago I went to get something to eat, having been online for a couple of hours, and couldn’t connect when I got back.) So I don’t have your ability with networks etc, but I do know a thing or two, and I’m frustrated at phoning India (it’s Chennai, actually, and the climate is lovely) to tell them that the PPP server is down, what does that mean? To be told ‘now we will reset the livebox…’. The answer to any query! They are not proper IT experts but have a script, and can’t deviate from it.

Thing is, I feel quite powerless – isn’t there anything we can do about this? I have to wait a minimum of 15 minutes before speaking to an advisor, and then I get the script (which I have now memorised, including the admin passwords, and it’s stuck to the side of my livebox for when it goes down again, which it invariably will, in about four days’ time).

So basically, it’s sympathy from me, and a realisation that orange are no better, or worse, than other providers.

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 20:46:18 +0000

Just for completeness in case anyone else comes past looking for network connectivity diagnosis, let’s not forget firewalls and telnet.

Make sure you’ve got no sockets listening with a quick `netstat -an’, before disabling the firewall.

And the reason I mention this is because FTP comes in two distinct kinds, active (where you negotiate a port on which you listen and the server connects back to you to push the actual data) and passive (where you connect to it on a range of ports or port 20 for the data). So, if you have a rather naive firewall that’s blocking everything new coming in, active FTP won’t work. Most browsers use passive by default, which is good, and ftp from the commandline should be configurable.

You can test connectivity to a particular port with telnet hostname portnumber, eg telnet http://www.google.com 80. If you get an error about `connection refused’ it’s probably not listening; if you get a timeout, you’ve more likely got a firewalling problem. (Not exclusively, but arranging for this is good firewall design.)

HTH