Is anyone else having major problems with Talk Talk broadband service?

Question

I signed up with them in March this year. My internet is either really slow or constantly dropping out (so im tryin to type this really fast b4 i lose it) Everytime I ring they blame my problems on something different and nothing gets resolved.

Answer 1

TalkTalk is an appalling service. They offer free ADSL if you sign up for their telephone service and then you get a monthly £10 bill for broadband. They then inform you that your exchange has not yet been unbundled and until that time (which will be soon...allegedly) the charge will apply.

I am not a customer, but an independent technician that has happened across this situation in my area on many occasions.

Things got worse following the merger of TalkTalk with Carphone Warehouse and AOL UK. Though I am not sure of the technicalities, I know the networks for these companies has been merged, with the addition of new 'traffic shaping' software. This has caused many on and off reliability problems and I am afraid there is nothing I can tell you to make it better. My advice would be to migrate to someone more reliable.

thinkbroadband.com are an independent site that review UK broadband providers, so if you want to pick a new one, here would be a good place to look for a reliable alternative. You will have to pay a little more than TalkTalk charge you though!

And with regard to turning off the router, this should be no problem after ADSL has been operating on your line for more than 10 days. The Stable Line Rate is set after this period of time, so any negative effects when turning the router back on will simply be due to the network being over subscribed or there servers failing to authenticate you before your router times out.

Hope this information helps... I certainly enjoyed venting!

Good luck.

**Edit

Just a further thought... you could try finding the MTU setting in your router and reducing it to 1400. This reduces the size of the packets of data that are sent over the network and sometimes improves reliability with a slight hit on performance.

Answer 2

My mum does, her internet connection drops constantly :)

Answer 3

How long have your problems been going on for? My friend has Talk Talk and hers has been going on for months and months!

Answer 4

One thing you can try is plug your router into the master socket.   If this does not help, then check the instructions that came with the router to find out how to sign on to the router.   You should be able to go to the log page that will generally tell you why the router is dropping the connection.

Another tip with the Talk Talk router is not to switch it off when you have finished your session.   Every time you switch the router on it spends several hours dropping the connection and renegotiating the line speed to make certain that you get the best available speed.  in doing so however the router continually up's and downs the connection and changes the speed at which it is connected.

Answer 5

What kind exactly?