Unusual Connection Problem

[Daffy D]

A few days ago my connection went down in the afternoon, the phone as well as Internet. Didn't bother much about it just figured it was my turn to get some of the problems that others seem to be having all the time.

Next morning nothing again till about 4.30pm when the connection came back up. Great. It worked all evening but was down again all next day until about 4.30pm.

This went on for several days, off all day then comes on about 4.30pm. Then nothing next day again till about 4.30pm.

It was all a bit strange but figured because of the regular times there must be some maintenance going on somewhere.

Called TOT who said as far as they knew there was no maintenance going on and my line was fine.

Yesterday the engineers came round and confirmed that there was no signal at my inside connection but at the Grey outside box the signal was fine.

So obviously a problem with the line between the Grey box outside and the phone plug inside.

Had a bit of a discussion with the engineers and the obvious cause was probably rats or something chewing through the wire but nobody could explain the daily regular times of the connection loss.

(Maybe it was mommy rat each afternoon at 4.30 telling the baby ratlings it was bedtime and stop playing with the nice plastic wire)

TOT are only responsible for their line as far the outside Grey box so it was up to me to run a new wire from there to my computer corner.

I was getting ready for a session of crawling around in the roof space when I noticed that where the wire entered the house it had slipped down and was trapped between a large wooden support post and the cement block wall.

The wire was jammed so tight that I couldn't pull it out so it seemed logical that this was where the wires had shorted. I cut out the offending section and joined it all up making sure the wire was well away from the crack and it worked just fine.

The wall where the wire was trapped is West facing and gets the full sun each afternoon. I can only assume that the changes in temperature between the wood support beam and cement wall caused some slight movement of the trapped wire to make it connect/disconnect at roughly the same time each day.

Who would have guessed?

Hope this information may be usefully to someone else in the future.

[Pib]

This will be the first thing I check the next time my internet goes down.

Seriously though, wiring problems can cause very strange and intermittent problems sometimes. And critters do like to nibble on on electrical-type lines. Last month I was doing a routine/periodic visual check of some C-band satellite TV equipment/wiring in my roof area and noticed an 18VDC power adapter "cable" running from the power adapter itself to a multi-switch it was powering had been chewed-on in several places....chewed-on right down to bare wire showing. Rats no doubt. Anyway I wrapped the cable with some electrical tape...probably should have slipped a piece of PVC pipe over the 18VDC line (maybe I will soon) since the critters probably like electrical tape also. Yeap, critters do like to chew on electrical lines of various types.

[rakman]

Great story, and logical conclusion. You might have been able to get the wire free by cooling the wall after dark, but splicing (assuming you did a nice job sealing the gaps from moisture) is a good alternative.

I once had the oddest problem with an HP Unix workstation. For some odd reason, the chassis (no electrical parts) caused the unit to crash every two weeks.

Sometimes the electrons have a mind of their own.