Hil's to answer your question about will a new router improve your noise margin, the answer is possibly if you buy a quality one but it will only make a very small difference, the noise margin is related to the ISP connection and has nothing to do with Wi-Fi performance.

Re Wi-Fi, better routers are better, for home market Draytek and Cisco (linksys) are good, I have just changed a router/modem provided by talktalk for a modem from draytek and a router from Cisco and the signal is far more reliable, If you go for new I recommend N class, some new routers will support 2.4 and 5 Ghz and some will do that simultaneously, as 5Ghz is far less used this can have some advantages if your in a Wi-Fii congested area although for reasons that Derek discussed above the propagation and range of 5Ghz is different and so this does not automatically mean greater range or signal strength.

You can also consider having 2 routers with one acting only as an access point to extend coverage.

hils,

Like Isaacs I also swear by those power line products.

I have WiFi coming from my router but both my PC and my wife's laptop get their internet from the Devolos. The WiFi is handy for my iPhone and iPad - but I'd never use it for the computers.

TP

Isaacs, Spacie, TP,

Thanks for those suggestions - I'll bear them in mind. At the moment, I'm psyching myself up for another ear-bending session with Sky tomorrow, as we try to fathom out whether it's a line problem or a problem with the router.

What I find confusing is that DelBoy suggests that he doesn't see why a poor noise margin would cause mobile devices to lose connection because that shouldn't affect the LAN and I understand and agree with what he's saying, but others on different broadband forums seem to be saying the opposite in that changing the router can improve noise margin and prevent the dropped connections.

Also, if the noise margin is low and that is indeed the root cause of the dropped connections, I would've thought that, being a line problem, it's something Sky should be addressing rather than just trying to fob me off by saying "You've had 100% uptime for the last n months so it's not our problem. You need to change your router".

Hil,

Let me try to add more confusion clarify a bit.

If the Internet connection drops out for any reason - unplugged from the router even - only the WAN connection through the modem to the Internet is affected. At least with the Netgear router you have - others may be different, but I really don't believe so.

The bit with the WiFi and the Ethernet sockets is just an Ethernet switch with a DHCP server and a wireless access point. The WiFi should continue transmitting and receiving, the DHCP server should not reassign addresses - it's already assigned them - UNLESS the router is reset or power-cycled.

Hils a few questions?

1) are you a long way from your exchange?
2) what ADSL sync speed do you get?
3) When you get the

A better modem or router-modem, (its the modem bit that important here) can hold a connection with a worse noise margin for longer but the affect is likely to be fairly minimal. MM is completly correct about noise margin and wireless connection BUT its may just be semantics thats the problem here, if the noise margin (or whatever else) causes you to lose your ISP connection then you will lose internet connectivity however you should still keep your connection from PC/mac to the router and you shoudl still be able to use any other devices you have on your home network (printer etc), you wont be able to see any web pages or send emails etc.

Hils a few questions?

1) are you a long way from your exchange?
2) what ADSL sync speed do you get?
3) When you lose you connection do all the other users on your network also lose theirs?

A better modem or router-modem, (its the modem bit that important here) can hold a connection with a worse noise margin for longer but the affect is likely to be fairly minimal. MM is completly correct about noise margin and wireless connection BUT its may just be semantics thats the problem here, if the noise margin (or whatever else) causes you to lose your ISP connection then you will lose internet connectivity however you should still keep your connection from PC/mac to the router and you shoudl still be able to use any other devices you have on your home network (printer etc), you wont be able to see any web pages or send emails etc.

Opps I was writing at the same time as MM.

Hils last thing, dont get hung up on these numbers, If your losing your connection with the ISP and if your within service parameters (e.g not to far from the exchange) then they should fix it.

Re 100% stats from provider, I asked talktalk about that once when mine wasnt working and they siad they dont count a problem unless a certain number of people have reported it but they would not tell me how many that was.

Hil,

One more question: which Sky package are you using? Reason for question: some Sky connections are rebadged BT, others use SKy's own exchange equipment (LLU).

DelBoy,

What you've said is logical, and that's how I understood it should work.

When the WAN connection is lost, however, wired devices will stay on the LAN and regain their internet connection straightaway, but wireless devices can also drop their LAN connection and struggle to reconnect. They sometimes need to be restarted in order to connect back onto the network and sometimes one of the wired PCs will show a balloon in the taskbar saying that there's an IP conflict as the mobile device tries to reconnect to the LAN..

Because this isn't meant to happen, I'm partly inclined to think that there might indeed be a router problem.

Spacie,

I'm only a mile or so from the exchange and sync speed is 18,015/1,015 Kbps which seems OK to me. The problem as I see it is with the upstream noise margin which seems to spiking to zero several times a day, albeit the downstream noise margin stays at a constant level.

Because of this, I'm also inclined to think that there is a line problem.

Confused???

DelBoy,

I don't think Easynet/Sky unbundled our local exchange, but I don't know for sure. How can I find out?

Hils do you have more than 1 router on your LAN?

Re unbundling have a look on samknows for your exchange. http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange_search

This has a list of Local Loop unbundled exchanges. I gather it is kept pretty much up to date.

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/llu/exchanges

Thanks for the link - yes, my exchange is unbundled. I've only got 1 router, Spacie, plus a 5-port switch which was only added at the weekend when we switched a couple of wireless PCs to wired as a temporary fix to the problem because they wouldn't connect to the LAN.

I did have Sky broadband for several years (I now have Be Unlimited). I had quite a few problems towards the end with resyncing. It was with a Netgear WiFi router. Sky eventually sent me a new router and the problem was cured. There are times now that my broadband link resyncs, but the WiFi stays up. The kids usually tell me, "broadband has gone down but I have WiFi connection". It is odd that you mobile devices are reconnecting. It is almost as though your router was resetting itself.

It certainly seems as though something like that is happening, Haystack.

Because Sky withhold the ADSL username and password and download their own router firmware, I'm wondering if it's a router problem of their making. My husband is talking about flashing the router with Netgear's own latest firmware to see if that changes anything, but I've persuaded him to refrain for the moment.

Umm will sky give you the ADSL user-name and password if you get a new router?

What Sky might do is downgrade your speed a but to hold sync if they think its a noise issue. They will have different profiles and they will drop down to see if it stabilises.

If it was me I would borrow another router to test but as already said unless the router is actually faulty I dont think it will help with the noise margin and if Sky wont give you the login details you will have to work via them anyway.

I belive you can get the username and password out of the router. Sky do load their own modified version of the router's software into it. There are various forums that tell you how to jail break the router.

I've already got the Sky username and password saved, so that's not a problem. As Haystack says, there are forums which tell you how to do that.

:o)

Hil,

I think we've got to the nub of the problem - Sky's own firmware in the Netgear router. I wish they wouldn't do stupid things like that. They never upgrade it to fix problems, unlike the router manufacturers.

I should attempt to dissuade your husband from flashing.

You'd be better off splashing out on a new Netgear DG834G v.5 router (which has the latest ADSL chipset in it.) Less than 50.

On edit: the v.5 does a better job of the link to the new 21CN DSLAMs used by BT - I don't know about Sky's kit in LLU exchanges, but I wouldn't mind betting that the same is true.

That's apparently a discontinued model MM:

DISCONTINUED - USE DGN1000