we have been with virgin internet service for years and have had absolutely no problems but,in the last few days,our broadband has been cutting out for approx.12 hours and then suddenly coming on agai

[cutekids]

we've reported the fault and virgin have told us that they will have to wait for BT's report before they can tell us what's wrong.i thought it was the router that's the problem but if it's picking up some of the time it can't be .... can it?!?

OK - it could be any number if things - interference on the line, your router overheating but I hope for your sake it isn't the same problem we had recently which lasted nearly 2 months - REIN. (Random electrical noise interference).

Basically it means that someone somewhere (could be in your house, could be a neighbours) has an electrical appliance that may seem to be working but is giving out a signal which interferes with your broadband signal. (The most notorious culprits are sky boxes.) You can check by tuning a portable radio to a 'white noise' station (ie a low hiss) then walk around the house with it past all your electric items. If the hiss gets louder and sounds very buzzy and static -y near one then you could turn it off and check if your broadband works.

If your broadband is cutting out at certain times you could see if it corresponds with say heating switching on at night, or an appliance being turned on...

It is an incredibly difficult problem to trace - in the end ours just righted itself but we never found out what it came from.

You could check if your neighbours are affected. If they are, the most likely problem will be REIN.

I am, sadly (!) an expert on this now so if you find REIN to be the case, keep me posted and I can tell you more!!!!

Watching this with interest as ours has been doing the same but a message from Firefox came up yesterday saying their site had crashed.
It has been intermittent for a while now so I'm wondering from Merrylegs's posting if it is due to the fact we have had solid rain for 10 days here and are only 30 feet from an electrical pylon.

cutekids - this used to happen to us with BT. It may be the things that Merrylegs says but in our case it was the local exchange becoming overloaded as more and more peole signed up for broadband.

Most broadband services still goes through BT exchanges even if your provider is not BT - as it appears Virgin do from what your OP says.

When your phone line gets to the BT exchange it goes through a cable splitter so the voice part goes into one part of the exchange and the broadband part goes to an electronic box called a DSLAM. When there are too many lines put into each DSLAM the amount of capacity available to serve each line falls off. If you live further from the exchange (as we do) it tends to be you that suffers when a lot of people are online during the day in your area that live nearer the exchange.

The other problem that may be occuring is in the Virgin's own servers that allocate and route broadband capacity. Your line may need the setting changing.

Very difficult to sort out the real cause though. Most firms try and fob you off that is your PC that is causing the problem.

If it is dropping of during then day and then working perfectly at night up until say 7.00 a.m. it is these kinds of issues, rather than your home or PC that is the problem. We used to be off a lot during the day when the internet was busy.