ADSL Woes

[Neville Bailey]

I have an ADSL account through Incredible Connection, and my router is the latest Netgear model supplied by Telkom.

Generally the uptime has been very good in the two years or so that I have had the account, but the past few days have been very erratic.

The red light on the router comes on regularly, cutting the connection, and stays off for a few minutes, and then disappears of its own accord, restoring the connection for a few minutes, and so the cycle repeats itself.

I have pressed the reset button and I have cut the power to the router for a while, but the problem persists.

My problem is that I don't know where to start troubleshooting - is it the router itself, or do I call Telkom, or do I call Incredible Connection? I am dreading the inevitable situation where the one party blames the other party for the problem.

What would you do?

[IanF]

I would try telkom first. Rain has caused havoc with my ADSL line. But Telkom like to string out a repair so bug them a lot. We use the Cellc 3gig/365 day as a backup.

[Chrisjan B]

Telkom first, ask them to reset the port as a start. It may also because of the bad weather, something wet somewhere.....
It may be a line fault and a port reset as above may fix it....

Also consider moving your ADSL line to Afrihost, Axxess, Webafrica or Mweb - in case of problems they do the troubleshooting on your behalf, you also save a bit of money that way. You are not locked to their network on Axxess or Afrihost (not sure about Mweb) and can use the data portion of any ISP on the line. I think Afrihost and Webafrica let you troubleshoot the line from your customer control panel online...

I am with Axxess for years already and am happy....

[Perform Computers]

Neville,

The problem is at the UMC ( Universal Modular Carrier ) box. Those green / blue Telkom boxes you see on the street corners. The gentlemen that replied to this post are correct. Get them to do a soft reset on your port on Telkom's side. If the problem still persists then call Telkom and ask for a techie to come out & do a hard reset on your port.

( The techie physically changes your port on the UMC ). It happens because these boxes get a lot of wear & tear. Lightning, electricity spikes, cobwebs inside etc etc

Changing your port on the UMC DOES NOT change your phone number. It simply just uses a different port seeing that the one you are on is faulty. Telkom cannot charge to manually change your port, & make sure you GO WITH the techie when he changes it. Some of these okes just drive off, have a smoke & come back saying, "ok, all fixed up".