About eight weeks ago, after four years of reliable service, we started losing our VirginMedia broadband connection on an intermittent basis (phone and tv unaffected, all cabled not wireless). Didn't really think anything of it at first because it would be off for a few minutes and then sort itself out. A fortnight later, it was off more than on - modem ready light flashing instead of 'on' constantly. Rebooting didn't help. (Pic of boxes here:
He phones Virgin tech to get them to check at their end. I can tell from the conversation they're totally unhelpful. He gripes about them not helping field engineers to diagnose upstream faults.
It's working. He's about to leave. The connection drops again.
He goes to the green distribution box in the street, shows me that there are two busbars in there and says that we're on the lower power one because we're so near to the box. He puts us on the higher power one.
It's working. He leaves. Two weeks later and we're stuffed again.
Another engineer arrives, tells me the flashing ready light indicates an upstream green box problem, dumps one of the equalisers from the modem, tells me both busbars are the same power and which one you're connected to makes no difference, loosens a nut in the box and retightens it and says that that often solves poor connection problems. That sounds like a crock of shit to me but amazingly it does start working again and we have a month of uninterrupted broadband.
Until yesterday. And Virgin are sending a third tech around this p.m.
Can anyone suggest what the problem might be so I don't have to watch him go through the same twice-failed tick-box routine? A spade through a cable somewhere? A fault way upstream at Virgin's "exchange" or whatever they call the broadband equivalent?
Any pointers to help Virgin do their job would be much appreciated.