Not being believed - Internet keeps going down for no reason (wfh)

[millerjane]

Luckily I am able to work from home.

The only issue is it KEEPS going down. Yesterday I was suppossed to run a fairly important meeting. Smilar happened week before! I've been begging for more responsibilities from my Line Manager.

Some of the emails were quite sarcy/passive aggressive (sure they are trying to be funny) but I can't help but detect some actual frustration.

You could install a tracker to monitor the connection? That way you can easily prove you are not making it up.
There is now issue in general as too many people are online.
It must ve frustrating for both sides involved. Can you use your mobile data?

Are you with sky by any chance? I heard of two people getting virgin in this week for the same reason.

Have you identified if it only goes down when you use a particular software? Make sure that you don't have anything else using broadband while you run meetings. Close everything else down on your PC including Outlook and all apps closed on your phone. On your phone settings don't allow apps to update in the background. Video streaming is heavy on data. Is anyone else in your home using it? Make sure they are off during your conference call hours. Do regular broadband speed checks online - both when using the meeting software and when not streaming a conference call.
Unlimited broadband packages have a fair usage limit - they aren't actually unlimited. Check your policy.

I’m with Sky. It’s shit.

It’s supposed to be super fast but I can’t even have a Skype call with my boss without it crashing, buffering and cutting off.

Tbh of course they are going to be frustrated. If you are supposed to run a meeting and can't, it puts everyone else out. Your post says you've been begging for more responsibility which I understand if you are sure you can do the job. However if you are unable to do to what you are asked whether or not it is due to a technical issue that does not inspire confidence in your ability to overcome problems and so they may be reluctant to increase any workload or any further responsibilities.

I am with Sky!

Tracker is a great idea, thanks.

Unfortunately there are 4 people in this household wfh and we all seem to be on non stop conference calls.

I've only been granted permission to use my home network. The software installed won't allow me to use "unsecire networks".

I had this with Sky last week sometimes four or five times an hour it is so frustrating. I turned off all other devices such as phones sky box etc that were using the connection which did help a bit.

4 people regularly streaming conference calls, on top of usual household usage, is too much bandwidth for residential packages to handle. I suggest you don't volunteer to host meetings and only dial in with audio. Tell your household to cut down on video streaming whenever possible.

OP, Sky has been up and down like I don't know what. We were out here all day Friday trying to work (teathered to mobiles in the end) and it was up and down over the weekend.

You don't necessarily need to install anything to monitor your connection, you could do one of two things: 1) Your router will hold a log of your connection status and you can extract that from the web based front end, or 2) go on to downdetector.co.uk and search for Sky. It does hold pretty comprehensive info, an outage map and also the shitty comments from customers.

Apparently the routers can only manage certain number of connected devices at the same time. So I imagine it's combination of that and high usage at the same time

All broadband providers are going to be stretched at the moment in terms of connection quality. Everyone's at home, alot of people are going to be on amazon prime, Netflix, YouTube, working from home. All using Internet. The demand is isn't something any of the broadband providers are used to handling at one time.
Ours keeps dropping out too (not sky).

My guess is that they get hundreds of calls a day with network problems, can't physically do much about it at the moment so are fobbing off.

Are you with bt. Ours was the same yesterday about 4/5pm

4 people regularly streaming conference calls, on top of usual household usage, is too much bandwidth for residential packages to handle.

Depends on your speed. I've got Sky Fibre and our 2 boys are streaming all time, me and my wife were on con calls last week, pretty much at the same time, I was remoted in to a clients server and at one point downloading an ISO file from Microsoft, it was all running fine and is a normal residential package.

Not sure it is one provider or another as we have sky and both me and dh are wfh on vpns with ds on and off Internet for school work and his xbox during breaks (this week I am off and ds on Easter hols thank goodness) we are sky and have not been dropping off - I wonder if it anything to do with your exchange? I would report it and ask on your local Facebook pages whether others have same issue? If so they should also report it.

I can't do a decent video call at the same time as ds is on his ps4. We have to schedule around the work and life of everyone in the household. If work colleagues/customers are relying on me, that comes first. So when I am delivering training on a live stream, everyone else at home has to be offline. If its yet another boring pointless Teams call, I let DS go online and have a glitchy connection myself.

Ironically I'm currently consulting for an ISP.

We have sky, and ds is on his pc gaming, running his phone and face timing whilst I’m on my phone and laptop and streaming - I’ve noticed ours have slowed a little not enough to make a difference but if I download a sky movie, where it normally comes up immediately available it takes about 10-15 seconds.

My internet has been going on and off on certain days, not too bad and tbh I'm pretty impressed by how well it's doing with so much extra load.

Sky are shit after 11am each day. I deliberately book all online meetings for early each day because then I don't have to weep in my office and whisper "just fucking work you lazy bastard" at the sky box while I'm being watched by colleagues.

My superfast virgin keeps failing - all providers are struggling to keep up! It is a complete pain 😒

If you do a internet speed check what does it show?

My BT wifi keeps telling me I have a poor connection when using Mumsnet on the phone. If I look at the WIFI choices it shows weak signal, but strangely it shows "BT with FON" as being super strong.

Doesn't seem right somehow, surely the FON thing is using BT lines anyway.

I have tried and tried to login to use the FON, but I can't get a password update. Though it knows full well I am who I purport to be, seeing as I am logged onto my private passworded router at the time.

I had this with a previous ISP - numerous calls to them and scripted 'troubleshooting' from their call centre, escalating to Openreach. Took 6 visits in the end. Our local lines were being 'polluted' by a neighbour's laptop with a faulty charger. Obscure problem that's hard to pickup! Noisy electricity :)

Perhaps it is time that your company moved forward into the 1990s and started working via email rather than endless meetings and phone calls.

If you are all streaming and on conference calls, it could be your wifi not handling it. We changed over to a mesh network earlier this year and the difference is huge. I don't used to be able to do conference call over wifi, I had to use power over ethernet. Once we have switched over, we now managed to have two calls and also kids streaming at the same time, all over wifi. It has nothing to do with the connection going out to the internet provider. It was always capable of that bandwidth. It's stuff within the house that's failing.