Hi,

I am hoping someone can help me solve this, either directly by providing things I can try, or by putting me in touch with someone useful at Telecom. Sorry the post is so long, but it has been going on a long time and I have tried lots of things, so there is a lot to document.

On the 23rd of December we had our broadband connection upgraded to VDSL. Previously we had ADSL, and everything was fine. There have been no deliberate changes to any part of our networking since the upgrade, except for the new modem Telecom supplied (a Technicolor unit). At this point, our broadband is effectively unusable *for browsing the web*.

Our basic problem is that all web pages fail to load/timeout when we try to load them. This happens on at least 4 devices (Win8 desktop PC connected to router by cable, two Win 8 tablets and a Win8 laptop connected via WiFi). It happens with all browsers we've tried - IE 11, Chrome, Firefox. Oddly, I have no problems connecting to my office or customers via VPN (standard Windows PPTP VPN), and usually (though not always) I am able to download game updates via Steam. It *seems* like it is only web traffic that is 'broken'.

I should mention that the problems with accessing the web are intermittent, though 98% of the time nothing works, and most of the rest of the time it only 'sort of works'. By sort of I mean that often when we can get a site to load at all, only a single page will load. Any links we try to follow or form posts we attempt usually fail. For example, when we can get to google dot com it often fails to bring up search results. If we are able to get a results page, usually none of the linked sites come up. Sometimes only the html for a page loads, all the images, css and script files appear to fail - leaving the page unreadable/usable. This occurs with both national and international websites. It even occurs with the Telecom NZ site.

My work laptop still works fine when I take it to my office and connect there (wifi or cable), but has the same problem as my other devices when on my home network. I believe that, and that multiple devices are affected indicates the problem is not on the devices themselves (i.e software blocking connections, bad windows networking setup etc). We are only using the standard Windows firewall (unchanged from when everything was working) and we do not have any security software installed that should be affecting the connection (i.e no Norton/Mcaffee internet security suite etc.)

We show VDSL speeds of around 10mb/s up and about 38mb/s down. The modem lights and status pages indicate the modem is ok, connected ok, and NOT dropping the line. These speeds are shown both by the modem and, when we can access the site, speedtest dot net. In addition Telecom put monitoring on our line after we initially reported the problem to them, and they show no drops either. For traffic that does work (VPN connection, steam game downloads) we get several mb/s depending on the server and time of day, so speed and latency etc. do not seem to be the issue, at least not directly.

My modem configuration shows the DNS server addresses configured as being the same as those published by Telecom on their support pages for non-Telecom modems.

Today a technician left a card in our door saying he had visited, checked the line and it was all fine. The connection still doesn't work for us.

Telecom have also provided us with a second modem (another Technicolor one). That didn't help either. Obviously neither has resetting the modem, or even a factory reset on the original unit. I actually don't think it is a hardware or wiring problem at this point. I suspect something funny with my Telecom account setup, or maybe the wiring at the cabinet/exchange/whatever.

Finally, the best piece of evidence I have is some tracert results. I'm not an expert in networking etc. so maybe this isn't conclusive, but to me it seems to show a problem at the Telecom end. When the problem is occurring, tracert to any site shows I get two hops beyond my modem, then everything times out. It is always the same - my modem -> Jetstream server -> global gateway server, then timeouts.

Here are some tracert results to different sites, some on the same day, some on other days;

Tracing route to www.gmail.com [198.18.1.8]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms <1 ms 1 ms dsldevice.lan [192.168.1.254]
2 54 ms 123 ms 115 ms 122-60-8-1.jetstream.xtra.co.nz [122.60.8.1]
3 * 30 ms 29 ms mdr-ip20e-int.msc.global-gateway.net.nz [203.96.
66.22]
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 * * * Request timed out.
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 * * * Request timed out.
8 * * * Request timed out.
9 * * * Request timed out.
10 * * * Request timed out.
11 * * * Request timed out.
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 * * * Request timed out.
26 * * * Request timed out.
27 * * * Request timed out.
28 * * * Request timed out.
29 * * * Request timed out.
30 * * * Request timed out.

Trace complete.

Tracing route to www.telecom.co.nz [198.18.1.18]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms dsldevice.lan [192.168.1.254]
2 659 ms 111 ms 28 ms 122-60-8-1.jetstream.xtra.co.nz [122.60.8.1]
3 30 ms 29 ms 29 ms mdr-ip20e-int.msc.global-gateway.net.nz [203.96.
66.22]
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 * * * Request timed out.
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 * * * Request timed out.
8 * * * Request timed out.
9 * * * Request timed out.
10 * * * Request timed out.
11 * * * Request timed out.
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 * * * Request timed out.
26 * * * Request timed out.
27 * * * Request timed out.
28 * * * Request timed out.
29 * * * Request timed out.
30 * * * Request timed out.

Trace complete.

Tracing route to www.outlook.com [198.18.1.215]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms dsldevice.lan [192.168.1.254]
2 41 ms 30 ms 32 ms 122-60-8-1.jetstream.xtra.co.nz [122.60.8.1]
3 * 29 ms 29 ms mdr-ip20e-int.msc.global-gateway.net.nz [203.96.
66.22]
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 * * * Request timed out.
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 * * * Request timed out.
8 * * * Request timed out.
9 * * * Request timed out.
10 * * * Request timed out.
11 * * * Request timed out.
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 * * * Request timed out.
26 * * * Request timed out.
27 * * * Request timed out.
28 * * * Request timed out.
29 * * * Request timed out.
30 * * * Request timed out.

Trace complete.

I have called Telecom 5-6 times now. For the last 3-4 times I have immediately be escalated to tier 2 support, but still no one has been able to help. I believe they are miscommunicating at their end - the last person I spoke to said as much. Apparently the previous person had sent the problem to another team but told them I only had problems with specific sites, so that team just came back and said not our problem - we don't even investigate this kind of issue. He (the last person I spoke to) said he would send it back to that team and make sure they understood it was any site, but I haven't heard anything for a couple of days now. This is the second time they have said it is a problem on my end - but have not given me anything useful to do or check. I can accept it might be on my end - but given the multiple devices, occurs on wifi or cable, at least one device still works on another network etc. I can't really see any evidence that the problem is with my equipment. Also, everything worked before the VDSL upgrade.

I didn't call them for the first 10 working days after the upgrade as I had been advised it would take them that long to 'optimise the line', but the problems have only gotten more frequent, not better. The first person I spoke to also seems to have incorrectly logged the problem as the line being dropped, even though I have explained every time I call the line IS NOT being dropped. Every time I call I have to re-explain the problem and all the things we've tried, all the evidence again etc. because either it's not all written down, or they aren't reading it. I'm not sure they're listening when I explain it again - we seem to go round in circles with them suggesting the same things time and again.

Thanks in advance.