I've been having some problems with my VDSL line in the last week, with fluctuating sync speeds and repeated dropping of the connection. I logged a ticket with Skinny and they replied saying they had started a 24 hour line test as of about 2pm Saturday. Typically the instability stopped shortly before the test started (this is an intermittent fault) but it was back in full force on Sunday morning, with the line repeatedly dropping and reconnecting for several hours. It finally steadied out by about midday Sunday. It was a total pain that morning, when trying to make plans and grocery shopping lists etc, but I was glad the problem had occurred while the trace was on my line.

Skinny then emailed me last night to say that the test had shown my line was stable throughout the 24 hour period so they would not be logging a fault with Chorus, and suggesting my problems might be due to my local wireless network. What?!

I know my line was unstable because I was logged into the modem on Sunday morning watching it repeatedly desync and resync. I can't see the number of times the connection dropped, as the HG659 doesn't appear to report it, but given the speed it was happening it could have happened hundreds of times over the course of Sunday morning. When I received Skinny's email last night, my connection uptime was about 9 hours, proving that it had dropped at least once during the 24 hour period. The sync speeds were also wildly inconsistent throughout, with my upstream spending much of the day at 5, 2 or 1 Mbps (normal for my line is 10-11Mbps).

I immediately replied to Skinny asking them to double check the results of the test, but as yet have had no response. While I wait, can anyone cast any light on how I could have possibly got this response? I assumed the 24 hour test would have not only reported the number of desyncs, but also recorded detailed statistics about my SNR and sync rates over the period, which would have very clearly demonstrated a highly unstable line. I am really scratching my head here.