AT&T U-verse → U-verse broadband goes out every Friday

I have had U-verse since it first came into my neighborhood several years ago with few problems. My service includes tv, internet and phone. About 3 months ago I started losing my broadband connection on Friday evenings. It comes and goes all weekend, and by Monday it's fine until the following Friday. Like clockwork.

I have had various service technicians out during this time. They have replaced all the hardware inside the house 3 times. They have replaced the couplings on all my coax. They have run a new line from my box to my modem; a new drop from the pedestal to my box; re-grounded my box; replaced the port at the vrad. Each time they are sure they have fixed the problem. Every Friday it goes out again.

I have the direct line of a level 2 supervisor-we chat frequently and I like him a lot. He has no clue what this could be. The last time someone came out it was a local supervisor with her ace tech in tow. She will no longer return my calls.

Today, between episodes, I downloaded and installed UV Realtime. Looks cool-I have no idea what any of it means.

I have read everything about electro magnetic interference I can find, but there's nothing in my house that's any different on the weekend than during the week. Another person in my neighborhood says she has similar problems on the weekends-she's on Comcast!

I don't want to dump U-verse, I rather like it when it works.

If anyone might have any insight about this I would appreciate it. If I need to put screenshots of my numbers on here I will, if you will tell what screens to copy from Realtime.

Thanks.

It would not hurt to post some screen shots, of your connection.

The issue your neighbor is having is a very typical problem with cable internet. On the weekends, when every one is off work or, has the weekend off from work they are all playing on the internet. This can overload the cable company's network for the neighborhood causing some people to either get very slow connections or, none at all..

Have you looked around the neighborhood for ham radio antennas? Got any neighbors that travel all week and are using the CB radio at home all weekend?

Can you think of anything that happens only on weekends ... lighting at tennis courts, powering up a stage at the bar down the block ... arc welder ... pirate radio ...

I suggest the standard version of Ping Plotter. It will graph the outage times. It only shows 48 hours max at a time, but you can scroll the graph. Free 30-day trial. No registration to try IIRC.

UV realtime did not work for me now, even after reinstall. So I was not able to give you specific info as to what the post. The signal levels, margins and images of the the green and yellow( I think)color spectrum graphs would seem to be what you would post.

The modem itself will have some diagnostic info including levels and signal to noise ratios. Note the differences when good vs bad.

I suggest you post what modem you have. That may help others to post relevant information. I have a 2Wire 3801. Like many 2wire modems, you can get to its web pages by entering gateway into the address box of your browser.

Also, I'm taking a U-verse day and a tech is coming between 12 and 4 pm. I don't know what good it will do but we've been down almost all weekend and even today (Monday) its is going up and down constantly. I have walked the neighborhood looking for emi sources but I don't see anything. Is there such a thing as an emi detector where I could walk around and try to find any source of interference? Grasping at straws....

How do you connect your computer to the gateway? Are you using a directly wired connection? (from computer to the gateway) or are you connecting via a wireless connection? If wireless try a wired connection and see if it works any better.

My computer connects wirelessly, but I'm not sure how a wired connection would help, as the wireless connectivity doesn't go down. It is the broadband coming into the modem from the outside that goes down.

It will be interesting if you get the yellow and green graph during problem timres. Also keep an eye on changes to Noise Margin and Attenuation.

You can get those Noise Margin and Attenuation. stats at »gateway.2wire.net/xslt?P ··· GE=C_1_0 also.

This is not the weekend. Your latest pictures don't show a current problem, but the stats show that you had problem times recently.

Ping Plotter Standard?
I would use it to ping rice.edu every 2.5 seconds for a few days. Do not be concerned about intermediate hops that do not return all of the packets. Packets that reach a farther point will have gone through the earlier points. Purpose: look at the pattern vs time. For example, see if things are pretty much on and off, or does the problem build?

The first hop will be your router.

If you have a neighbor with perhaps the same problem, compare graphs to see if the problem times coincide. Your Comcast-using neighbor would be ideal.

Are you sure there's nothing like a light knocking out your connection? Your stats are not bad, but there is something affecting you in the AM hours.

What you have is a perfect Uverse install getting wrecked by an errant source of interference that is likely not within ATT's power to fix.
Resident Uverse guru and UVRealtime author SomeJoe7777 has a nifty little post on the Uverse forums that may offer some inspiration: »forums.att.com/t5/Receiv ··· 7#M47347

That's a great writeup.

If the OP's problem is consistent enough, it would be useful to connect the 2Wire directly to the NID, power it from a UPS, and simply shut off all the branch circuits and then the main.

If the problem clears up, it's inside the house.
If the problem persists, it's outside the house.

Suppose the problem persists, but it also persists at the same time with the Comcast-using neighbor?

Thanks you guys-some really great ideas. Keep 'em coming. When I get some time I will try some of these and see if I can find any problems in the house.

Look around at your utilities to see of the any utility company has installed transmitters. Water companies are doing this now and I have noticed they cause interference on weekends, I guess thats when they start their uploading. Tell tale signs are radio clocks not updating on the weekends. Also have an electrician check the ground to your house, proper grounding should help mains powered devices avoid that interference.

At that point I would recommend hosting a block party, during which an associate goes around pulling the meters one-by-one at all of the neighbors' houses until the problem is found.

I would try to borrow a spectrum analyzer to analyze the neighborhood RF. If I could not do that, I would listen as best I could on radio receivers... broadcast AM, then a general coverage receiver with a minimal antenna to ignore all but the strongest of signals. Maybe I would use a non-powered field strength meter. Of course that would all be after I at least had a good start on characterizing the schedule of the problem.

I sent you a pm. Have you posted this in the direct forum? What I have seen on your screen shots has peaked my interest. you can post in the direct forum with your acct number so one of us can take a look at it

Hi, I am considering moving from ATT DSL to the U Verse setup, but I am wondering if a problem I had might be affecting you as well.

After the local power company installed a smart meter, I started having numerous glitches / restarts and odd behavior. I work from home, so this was a real problem.

I bought an APC UPS with enough capacity to run my DSL modem and router for about 6 hours, and set it to respond "very fast" to power glitches / failures. I think this is important, as the glitches I was seeing were so fast that the lights didn't blink (that I ever noticed).

The problem disappeared, so I cannot say with certainty that this was the actual cause, but I don't have the tools or motivation to explore this further.

It might be worth considering to put all of the chargers and wall warts in your office on a UPS for a few weeks to see if that helps as well. There are some wierd interferences that can cause from these starting to fail.

If you suspect an RF interference, consider to have an electrician add braided cable ground wires all the way to the ground stake, as RF travels on the surface of a wire, not in the bulk of the wire. The fact that both you and your neighbor sometimes have related problems might indicate an RF ground problem.

Are you sure that someone is not playing around with the RG or your NID or iNid if you have one?

Is the Nid or iNid properly bonded to the Earth ground rod, not connected to a strap on the side of the meter pan, or bonded to a cold water pipe inside the structure.

If I had to make a fair guess going back to the first part I stated, wonder if someone is trying to play around with you, and make the weekends a technology free time.

I don't know if your post has anything to do with the STB PHY rate in his 3rd screenshot but one STB is at 64...

Maybe he should try and unplug that affected STB and see if the issue stops. STB's with a reduced HPNA rate can backfeed "noise" and FEC's into the RG causing it to reboot/lose service.

That run of coax, if it has lost it's grounding abilities, can be the local interferer.