Having used a orange livebox for a number of years we have become seriously hacked off at the frequency that the service drops out. Has anybody used a independant router and got a better performance. We went to Orange and got a new router so we have their latest upgrade. We are located near Levignac de Guyenne
Not the moment to make judgements about routers and ISPs. Almost everyone is reporting problems. The Internet is overloaded because of home working and people using it for news, entertainment and contact with friends and family. Slow response and drop outs have become the norm.
Be patient and wait for the end of lockdown. If you still have problems, then would be the time to consider making a change.
It doesnât really sound like the router, especially if Orange already replaced it.
And whichever ISP you use, assuming that there is a choice in your location, they will be using the same line back to the noeud de raccordement.
How do you get your telephony - direct connection to the incomming phone line or via the Livebox?
Have you tried https://tester-depanner-vos-services.orange.fr/? Orange will phone you to deal with the problem. They can test the line and organise an engineer to come out if necessary, and they also follow up the ongoing problem until it is resolved.
We have had constant synchronization errors and often no internet for months, randomly during the day and often at night, getting steadily worse around Christmas 2019. I used the app âMa Liveboxâ frequently to diagnose and reboot the Livebox, and that often worked, and at other times the service came back on its own. But the drop-outs got worse in January/February.
We contacted Orange and at first ended up changing the Livebox but it made no difference. I persevered with contacting Orange via tester/depanner above - probably 4 times in all. The problem sometimes appeared resolved but came back again. Finally an engineer rang to say had repaired something in the telecom box 3km away. But still no joy here. The conseiller rang me to follow up. He then arranged for an engineer to actually come to the house - luckily about 2 days before the confinement started - and he found the problem was the connection from the pole to our house wiring - old and degenerated by weather and age. Fixed instantly and now working perfectly. On the day, the débit was 6Mb (compared with 800Kb before that). It is half that now, due to the situation, but we are still very happy with our uninterrupted service!
Depends what you mean.
If you are finding that one of the speed test site is now reporting less than it used to - that might well be due to increased internet use and will depend to a large extent on your ISP (I havenât noticed much of a slow down but I pay for the privilege of an ISP that prides itself on having capacityto match peak demand at all times).
That slow down shouldnât really be more than 10% though or it suggests the ISP does not really have enough spare capacity.
However if you are looking at the connection speed as reported by your router - that has nothing to do with who is using the internet or how much, though maybe the original increase was a bit over optimistic for stability - when I had the drop-wire replace after some overenthusiastic workmen ripped it from the house with a JCB (is there a French "equivalent of JCB?) the connection rocketed up to over 80Mbps, ran like a dream for 10 minutes then just became very unstable - as the equipment gradually re-trained on the line it settled out to about 70Mbps and it has been rock solid at that for a while.
It is pretty consistently just below 3Mbps these days using a speed test site. And Ma Livebox gives me 3.09Mbps so I think thatâs about right. I know it goes up and down according to demand. 70Mbps can only be a wild dream! JCB - engin de BTP?
Just a thought.
ADSL filters can become faulty.
Some time before the lockdown I was having problems.
Changing the filter solved them.
Strangely, the helpline didnât detect it and didnât suggest it as a possibility.
They can - if unsure unplug any phones from the line and plug the router straight in to the phone socket without a filter.
The filter only âfiltersâ the phones - the router always connects directly to the line.
In fact if you have the phone connection via a Livebox, you do not need the filter at all.
I suspect Terry that you wonât find an affordable device better than the Livebox. ISPs buy in bulk and get massive discounts and to avoid costly service calls and interventions they want as good and reliable a spec for that price as possible. Your problem is almost certainly the line (assuming your in-house wiring is sound). How far are you from the exchange? The limit for ADSL is about 8km but the performance drops off pretty quickly from about 3km.
But you canât because it is a different socket. The filter also functions as an adapter.
Oh, sorry, yes forgot the weird French socket
Mike
Thanks for the advice which I shall follow
1 Like
Here is my new router that arrived today;
I am excited to have a go with it just waiting for the router bits to arrive.
WiFi is crap though
1 Like
Nice bit of kit. Always need a lot of care and attention using a router, had a friend back in the world who managed to router off the top of his little finger, just left the bone sticking outâŠ
1 Like
Yes, it is called a âtractopelleâ.
The reliability of service will more likely depend on your service provider, and the infrastructure it is using. As you have an Orange Livebox, then your service provider is Orange, any dropouts are more than likely caused by crappy infrastructure (which is/was probably also Orangeâs responsibility), deliberate ISP throttling during Covid19 lockdown as a means of load balancing, and finally an electrical or software fault in the router, so changing the router might not bring about a huge change in reliability, and the only way to find out would be to go to the expense of buying one, e.g. a Fritzbox, with OpenWRT code running on it, and then configure the connection and settings yourself. If you do that, then you will probably also void any warranty that Orange might have given with regard to its contracted service (I havenât checked the contract, but it is likely). No one will help you configure your router for you, so be prepared to spend some time doing this, with the inevitable frustration that may or may not occur when attempting to synchronize your connection with Orangeâs infrastructure.
EDIT : if you fail to succeed with your new router, and contact Orange for help, if they deign to help you, they will charge you 70EUR or so for a technical callout (even if it is done remotely).
While that word is new to me (I would have gone with pelle mécanique if asked) I was more thinking of a manufacturer which is synonymous with mechanical digger in the same way that JCB is in the UK.
An old French brand synonymous with that idea is âPoclainâ, albeit probably somewhat less well known today outside of large building sites, and âManitouâ, which has expanded its range of machines to include backhoe diggers.
I agree with Paul Flinders it is unlikely to be the Livebox that is the problem. A few years ago I could get 18mb/s down and then it dropped to 8 mb/s and then most of the time to less than 1mb/s. It has improved a little recently but is still poor and flakey. I canât get 4G in the house but outside there is a poor signal but with an antenna on the roof I am able to get around 30 mb/s, sometimes a lot more at 50 mb/s but at busy times quite a bit worse, maybe 10mb/s. I now get most of my Internet by 4G and catch up TV. I have a business interest and need a fixed IP address which only an ADSL line can provide at reasonable cost. If you can get anything like a signal on 4G it would try that. I use a Huawei router which also has a phone socket.
Any particular reason - and why not just rent a cheap server (I have a Kimsufi one which is less than a tenner a month).