Don' believe the adverts

[#1]

I joined Plusnet approx 6 months ago and looking forward to great service, that was what I was told.  I am looking forward to January when I can dump Plusnet.  There hardly a day passes that the Internet signal is interrupted with the message "no broadband" available and the speed at times is diabolical.  I never had these problems with Sky.

[#2]

Hi there,
I just had a quick look at your account.  A lot of your connection session times are *very* similar (29m15-30s).
Is it possible that your router has an idle timeout setting on it? It could be that the router is intentionally disconnecting.

[#3]

It is the router that Plusnet supplied and there were no instructions or warnings about an idle timeout.  If that is indeed the problem what do you advise?

[#4]

If you are having connection problems I'd recommend raising a ticket from the Help Assistant. These forums are good 'self help' and for the exchange of views, news and ideas. They are not official support, though PN staff do frequent here.
A problem that needs fixing will be logged and tracked with a ticket. My experience of the ticketing system has been good.
Good luck.

[#5]

Hi Abuderek,
With the line dropping virtually every half hour on the dot (see graph) it's unlikely to be a router issue as the default idle time out on the 582 is '0' or 'never'.
Do you still have Sky TV? Is your Sky box connected to the telephone socket? If so, does the Sky connection go into the socket before the broadband connection? Do you have more than one telephone socket in the house? Are there any unfiltered devices connected to any of these? Apart from the broadband connection, what other devices have you connected to the telephone system?
Jojo

[#6]

That's very pretty. 
Just as an aside, is there any facility for users to see these charts for their own accounts?  I'd be very interested to see mine connection stats.

[#7]

Hi chuckster,
There's no functionality for customers to get their own graphs I'm afraid, but if it's requested the staff in here can certainly oblige:
<img src="http://ccgi.psmith12.plus.com/visradius/generated/image13397549238087.png" />

[#8]

Thanks Matt. 
Mine looks quite boring by comparison.  Still.. mustn't grumble. 
I blame PlusNet for that blip on Wednesday.  That was when my upload speed was uncapped. 

[#9]

Quote from: chuckster

That's very pretty.  Just as an aside, is there any facility for users to see these charts for their own accounts?  I'd be very interested to see mine connection stats.

I think there is the problem that the Radius server at Plusnet does not always see ALL the disconnections on a line.
So there may be more that we see in these charts. In other words the pictures are not sometimes accurate.
If Plusnet start making them available via the user accounts facility then they become treated as the "definitive" statement on what is happening on a particular connection - when actually they are not.
Hence Plusnet's understandable reluctance to make them available generally - though it would be nice I agree and it would have to be with a large health warning on them that they may not be 100% accurate.
You can just see the scenario, people will start claiming that the usage meter is not accurate "because the radius server disconnections chart thingy isn't"

[#10]

They've got a big dog on the newest advert...that sells it to me hands down 
I think most problems can be traced back to the telephone network itself. It's good in the fact that it services so many people, and it's an open infrastructure so many companies can use it and not just BT...but when it's bad for people, it's really bad.
I think Plus Net can only do so much to help with disconnections and speed issues, and they tend to do a good job with the resources available to them. And their support staff are all based in the UK which makes a massive difference.
I'm sure a long time back there was talk of Virgin Media opening up their infrastructure in return for investment/funding (I could just be making this up), and they obviously must have refused. Imagine if Virgin Media had the same funding that BT OpenReach have to expand their network, and if the red tape was removed to make it cheaper to do the work, we would have an amazing network in place around the UK by now.
With OpenReach and the way things work in this country I fear the places like where I live that have some of the worst speeds for non-rural areas are just going to continue to be left behind. They will move onto the next technology soon enough and we will be left behind with slow connections for even longer.
There's a direct correlation between OpenReach investment and Virgin Media availability