O2 Broadband Timeouts & Drop outs !

johnd

I'm based in county cork and I've been using the O2 broadband service for about 2 months now and over the past month every day I am experiencing massive variations in my O2 Broadband service from high speeds down to timeouts and losing internet connectivity completely.

The facts are as follows :

1. I can literally see the O2 mast from my house and it is no more than
a quarter mile as the crow flies from my house. The O2 software
displays of my signal strength is top notch at 5 bars for HSDPA and it
never varies unless I stop using the connection and it drops back to 5
bars for UMTS which is totally normal for the service when it is not in use.

2. I use the connection as my main access method during the business
day and the speed is usually very good in the morning, the afternoon
until about 6pm usually suffers from a couple of timeouts where all
webpages become inaccessible for minutes at a time and instant
messenger applications drop out. The timeouts/dropout can last a
few minutes but if I leave it alone, the connectivity comes back
and things go back to normal until the next time. Usually one or
two of these timeouts/dropouts happen each afternoon.

3. After about 6pm things become rapidly worse. Speeds slow down
and timeouts more regular and in the late evening after 9pm usually
I lose connectivity completely and often can only restore same by
rebooting the machine and starting all over again, and I can lose
connectivity again or at minimum will suffer complete dropouts for
minutes at a time. Again I stress the connectivity indicators always
display 5 bars and HSDPA.

4. Excluding timeouts/dropouts Idle connection speeds are varying
massively, in the last 24 hours for example they are as follows :

Downlink Speed varied between : 207 to 2584 kbps
Uplinkspeeds varied between : 40 to 312 kpbs

5. Some thoughts

---

i) Given my proximity and apparent consistent signal strength it
appears reasonable to rule out the wireless network connection
as the culprit.

ii) Given that the wireless network connection appears ok it
would seem that the problem is with either the a) PC, b) the physical
Huawei modem OR c) with the backend O2 internet connectivity

a) The PC is running Windows Vista 32 bit and though Vista
is no improvement whatever on XP in my view, it seems
quite stable and I have no other issues and the modem
plugged in and worked first time, and has been plugged an
unplugged regularly and Vista picks it up and appears to
work fine with it.

b) The Huawei modem - The worst of the problems are mainly
occurring late in the day when the machine/modem
have been on / in use all day. When I get a complete
drop out at this stage using the o2 software I disconnect
the connection and restart the connection and this
never works, it always returns a connection with LIMITED
CONNECTIVITY [Local only]. Only when I restart the computer
will the o2 connection have Internet connectivity again,
yet even after this the connection is always quite slow.

c) Backend O2 internet connectivity - This is the one I suspect
most for some reason ! It is as if the internet capacity is
being overwhelmed in the evening times, as most o2 broadband
users are coming on in the evening, and according to some
reports the numbers of users o2 have versus what they planned
for is well over the network quota. The modem loses connectivity
as becomes so busy managing all the timeouts and retries that
it eventually freezes and has to be rebooted completely to
restart.

I am no expert in such matters, and would welcome more expert thoughts and particularly hearing if others on the 02 broadband network in cork or
elsewhere are experiencing such significant timeouts, dropouts and variations
in speed during the day and or evenings.

Many thanks
JD

PS. Apologies if this post duplicates another but for the life of me I could not get the search Forum function to find any reference to o2 in this forum it kept saying NO POSTS matching o2 in the title or body which is clearly incorrect !

KStaford

I am using o2 BB in south county Sligo. Similar to the poster above, it seems to worsen in the evenings.

I only get 1 bar of 3g which normally gets me around half a meg speed. This does me for web browsing and emails. During the evening the speed can drop down to ISDN speeds and I can suffer drop outs etc.

I plug my Huawei USB device into a wireless router and share the connection that way. I notice that often, after periods of inactivity, the speed drops to approx 64k and I have to do a router to o2 reconnect to get back my 500k.

All in all, its crap and it cost sme €40 per month. I have no alternative.

kluivert

I have the same problem and I am wondering is it a case with all O2 users on the net at the same time the download speeds are therefore get slower.

I am not happy with my service either from O2 and are going to complain.

PawelPabich

I've been experiencing the same problem. I have an application running in background that queries google every 5 seconds. Every 10th-15th request fails because of a time out. Very wired.

Our man in Havana

My O2 bb is on EDGE and it tends to die off completely in the evenings causing timeouts. CS don't seem to care, all they tell you to do is unplug your modem and restart.

I think the problems 3 had are now spreading to O2.

ChRoMe

I'm experiencing the same problem. I've used (or attempted to) the o2 broadband in 3 different areas of dublin city and I rarely get more than one bar coverage when my O2 3g phone has a full bar. There is a lot of disconnects (usually on the river while playing poker!) and sometimes the speed dies to gprs like performance.

After seeing this thread I'm going to complain.