LIVEBOX OR DEADBOX?

[Shane]

After a few weeks of stress we eventually got ADSL up and running here in the south Haute Vienne via a Livebox and have surfed happily ever since EXCEPT about every two days or so it goes off at various times of the day. The light flashes slowly and can take anything from 10 minutes to an hour to reconnect.

We initially tried resetting the box with the Number 1 buttom, but last night just left it and eventually it reconnected.

Is this a common problem or is it something we are doing? Anyone else had problems like this.

[Deimos]

The problem may not relate to the livebox but to your line quality. I had a similar problem (though not with a livebox). Every now and again it would lose sync. Sometimes switching box off and on again helped, sometimes is did not and I just had to wait.

Spent quite a long time with France Telecom testing line, testing devices on the line, etc. until eventually I demanded they come and sort it out. Of course it worked perfectly when they visited. However, they engineer did go round the house and decided to disconnect all cables from the telephone sockets that were not needed (or used – whoever installed the system had connected up all the wires). According to his “dynamic line testing” this improved the line quality quite a bit. He actually showed me the readings before and after so it was not slight of hand. Been pretty well OK since then except when it rains hard (because the cables go through trees and have apparently rubbed the insulation. Got FT to cut a few branches but “their hearts were not in the task” and then they decided it was my responsibility (which apparently it is).

In theory, if FT attend your premises and the problem is inside your house (and thus not their fault) they charge you for the visit. However, I have had several visits for internet connectivity problems (the trees, in-house wiring) and it has always been “my fault” and they have not yet tried to charge me for the visit. However, this may just be the engineers who attend and what they report.

Anyway, your problem may be marginal’ish line quality. Make sure you have filters installed properly and everywhere necessary

Ian

[Shane]

Thanks for that, did suspect as much, and also have to say France Telecom and Wanadoo have been a nightmare over this ADSL line so I would be very reluctant to call them in to check anything as I think, yes, it would be our fault.

When we received the box and waited the said 10 days for it to sync and it didn't, we rang France Telecom who said ring Wanadoo who said ring France Telecom who said you do not have an order (we had) and you do not have an account (we had for 3 years) who then said ring Wanadoo and on it went for 3 weeks!!!!!!!!!!

Well as I said eventually it got sorted, so fingers crossed, this down time will be short and sweet!

[Tillergirl]

Hi,

I live in the Pas De Calais and also have a livebox with Wanadoo/France Telecom. When ours decides to cut itself off we generally take the power lead out for 10 seconds reconnect it and then after a minute it generally sorts itself out and reconnects.

However general word of warning i would appear that there was a small system update in our area last week which sparked it to dissconnect and the 5 red lights at the top of the box flashed in unsion whilst the France Telecom Symbol flashed alternating to the five top lights so it would go 5 top front sysmbol repeating on and on.

Looking in our booklet which came with the box it told us it the 5 top lights come on together you need to reset pressing button underneath. NO wrong answer not during update which is when you get the alternating flashing as described above. When this happens leave box alone DO NOT under any circumstances dissconnect phone line or power supply otherwise you will need to uninstall reinstall and reconfigure the live box to your computor.

I know this now as this is what we did we tried the reset a few times last week to no avail not realising what was happening and so decided to unplug the box and leave it to rest for a while and try again.

We have sine been informed that if you interupt the livebox during and update it wil automatically lock itself out of the system.

This information we obtained through the Wandoo UK helpline as at the time we were having difficulty getting through to the French Helpline. The Uk office mentioned a system rescue disk if we couldn't solve the problem but this would have to come through Wanadoo FR as there are slight differences in the boxes making their one unsuitable for our box.

Now the fun started with my sentances prepared so i could make myself understod i rand Wanadoo FR helpline first timethe gentleman seemed to understand some of what i was saying to him and told me to reconnect the box and leave for up to a day at which point it will have sorted itself out.

No. That didn't work rang back 2 days later spoke to a different gentlemen using same prepared speech just with the added information of the previous persons advice gentleman couldn't understand me for whatever reason and told me i need to geta French Friend to ring back and maybe then they can hep us. That comment made me want to scream..

Then My Husband 10 mins later rang the helpline and spoke to a nice lady who tried to talk us through the basic reset proceedure press and hold button etc to no avail.

So after a week and still without internet we read through the book again with bigger more comprehensive dictionary and came to the conclusion that we needed to try to reconfigure the livebox to the computor. We tried and Yeah we now have internet again.

One thing i have learnt from this Wanadoo FR helpline more frustraing than helpful.

Hope you dont have any more problems with your livebox as in general when it is working it is an ingenius piece of machinary.

All the Best.

Sarah Tiller.

[Lori]

I would add that the helpline with Cegetel is less than "helpful" too.  Their supposed online service is even worse an actual joke !  I found the answer to our problem online by searching the problem.  Amazing...  after getting 3 ridiculous and insulting emails back from my online request to Cegetel I found the answer myself.

 

[Paolo]

I had a similar Livebox problem. It frequently went dead and disconnecting and reconnecting the power reset it. Then it just stopped altogether. I had 8 sessions with the Wanadoo helpline. I am not French but in England I would pass for fluent, and I had trouble understanding what some of the operators were saying - they rattle out technical terms and assume you know what they mean. And each time you call you have to go through their checklist of questions - what operating system are you using, are you using a USB cable, etc. even though they say they are noting all these details on their system.

Anyway, eventually I had the bright idea of re-installing the Livebox CD, and hey presto it now works again. So I would recommend doing that if the lights don't stop blinking.

Paolo

[Shane]

Thanks to all for your replies and support, its good to know you are not alone when trying to deal with France Telecom or Wanadoo.

We too speak good french but because we were getting nowhere a friend of ours came over who is fluent in french and he too was confused and misunderstood by the "helpline" people. Drives you mad sometimes.

Never mind all comments taken on board and hopefully we can enjoy our surfing during the "up" times and dream of surfing during the "down" times.

Carol

[Teamedup]

Until someone was going mad about livebox the other day I did't even realise that the modem was that important. And when this person was going on about it a couple of others chipped in complaining too.

 

Is there something special about live box?

[Shane]

Dear Teamed Up

A Live Box is very special if you are on ADSL/Broadband using it as a modem link. If your Live Box is not LIVE there is NO internet access let alone FAST internet access. So when its down its a real problem as we lovers of surfing cannot get on the internet and unfortunately feel completely cut off from the world.

If you use the internet alot for keeping in touch with family and friends and finding information then ADSL is a cheaper and better option than normal dial up connection.

So in conclusion IT IS VERY IMPORTANT AND VERY SPECIAL.

Hope that helps.

 

[Paolo]

The other thing that makes Livebox special is that it is not just a modem, it give you wireless connection to the internet, so (if your walls allow it) you can wander around in the house or garden with a laptop and be on high-speed internet.

I believe that in rural France there is no choice if you want ADSL and/or wi-fi ADSL - it has to be Wanadoo and Livebox.

Paolo

[Ron Avery]

It could just be that all the problems with liveboxes recently were caused by Wanadoo and not the Livebox.  I had horrendous problems last week and reinstalled my OE accouunt and reconnected Livebox a number of times, I reset it on the button and by taking out the power lead, only to find that it came back a good 12 hours later all on its own.  Then on here I found out that it was Wanadoo that was down and nothing to do with the box.  As an aside, just got Mrs Ron a PC of her own so went into FT shop for another wireless adaptor, after the usual 40 minute wait while people looking for mobile phones went back and forwards up the display and then left with nothing, I had to order one.  The guy in FT said the connection I wanted was a phone cable  When I pointed out that the purpose of wi-fi and Livebox was wireless connections for one or more PC's he told me he had to order one as the one supplied by Wanadoo was not compatible with the one they  were now using  He showed me the one that they were using in the shop, it was not a sagem, it was flatter and chrome.  Is it true that you have to have to have a SAGEM?

[David M]

 Is it true that you have to have to have a SAGEM?...

No Ron, any compatible WiFi adapter should work... the livebox (who thought that name up?) operates to a couple of standards commonly referred to as 802.11b and 802.11g  (These are IEEE standards published orginally back in 1985, and since re-issued by the ISO).

802.11 is the Wireless LAN standard.  They include 11b, 11a and 11g (there are others).  The 11a is NOT suitable for your livebox, the other two are.  (b and g operate on a 2.4 Ghz frequency whereas a runs at 5 Ghz.)

11b with give you up to 11Mbps throughput over a range of 30-50 metres.  In practice the best you will get is 6Mbps and if you are some distance or the otherside of a stone wall, it may drop as low as 1Mbps.

11g will give you 54 Mbps again over 30-50metres...but in reality you have to be quite close to get the best performance.

None of this tends to make much difference if you are just browsing the internet, these speeds are faster than your average internet connection anyway.

So any Wireless NIC (network interface card) designed for a modern PC running MS XP will do the job, if it says it's 802.11b or 802.11g

This could be a USB dongle (usually reserved for notebooks), An external box with an antena and a USB plug connecte to your PC, a PCMCIA (now called PC cards, credit card sized cards used in notebooks), or a PCI card (fits into the computer) with either an antenna attached, or one on a cable to let you move it around to get best reception.

There are plenty of manufacturers, Sagem is one, also Linksys, NetGear, Belkin and so on.  I personally use all of those and a couple of other less well known (including my Nokia 9500 mobile phone) to connect to my livebox.

The only difficulty in configuring is in (a) entering your WEP key.  This was printed on the side of your livebox packaging and inside the CD case when you took delivery.  It encrypts the data transferred between you PC and the livebox, to stop people like me sniffing and reading your data, and (b) I think that the livebox is set-up by default to use access control, so you may need to enter the MAC address of your new NIC into the access control dialog of your livebox.  The MAC address (Media Access Control) for an ethernet card (ie your new wireless lan card/adapter or whatever you buy) is a 48 digit identity number dispayed as 12 digits of hexadecimal.  It;s unique and is put on their by the manufacturer from a range of numbers given to it by the IEEE.   So it should look something like this:

 00-30-05.65-53-D1 (made up example)

You should see it printed on the network card, or you can find it by using the IPConfig/all command in an XP command prompt window. The point about this access control is that it stops other people connecting to your network through your livebox... all ISPs should be so conscientious...

One final point about the livebox, is that since the online upgrade from Wanadoo earlier this year, the Wifi has become quiet flakey, and at the moment I'm having to deactivate/reactive the wifi service in the livebox about 3 or 4 times a week.  This has got so bad that I've reverted to cable connections for two pcs.

Hope that helps

regards

David

[Teamedup]

We were told that Wanadoo would be bringing ADSL to our village and I really was not interested in having them. We had had them with a normal connection for a year and I was blxxdy glad to see the back of them. As it happened when ADSL arrived there was enough demand in the commune that Tiscali was doing it too and so we are with them. Not perfect, but we are on our third or forth server now and they are the best we have had so far, they sent us a sagem modem.

[Ron Avery]

[quote]Is it true that you have to have to have a SAGEM?... No Ron, any compatible WiFi adapter should work... the livebox (who thought that name up?) operates to a couple of standards commonly referred to ...[/quote]

Thank you David

You have confirmed my suspicions that all I needed is a 802.11b or 802.11g compatible adaptor. Wanadoo france actually call it le dongle  multe-passe do them for 35€ so it will be interesting to see what FT charge. I am assuming that a dongle is all I need to conect my new PC, that is how my first PC is connected, but do I understand that there are other wi-fi methods?

In France there are two types of Livebox, Sagem and Inventel, sense tells me that all I need is a 802.11b or 802.11g compatible adaptor, but this is France, I have the Sagem version

Wanadoo UK do a good guide to installing another PC to a Wi-Fi set up on http://www.wanadoo.co.uk/help/id/7116.htm 

Incidentally Wanadoo.fr has a similar but much shorter guide for installing another computer on Wi-Fi, but that does not even mention getting another adaptor and from the pictures it suggests that only one PC can be WI-fi.

Stupid question, but if both PC's are connected to anadoo.fr on WI-fi,  do they both get the E mails sent to the "home" address or can one PC delete incoming message before the other has a chance to read them and vice versa.  I suspect not as when I was in the UK I accessed my E mails via Wanadoo messagerie, but they were still on IE unopened when I got back

[David M]

I don't think it's a stupid question at all Ron...

There are two issues here (1) how many email accounts do you have? and (2) do actions to that account, undertaken in different applications (like say IE and then Outlook) synchronise? In other words, if I send a mail, or delete a mail in one application accessing may account, do the results show up in another application?

I'm assuming you both use the same email account.  So the short answer to your question is; Yes, one person could delete an email before another has had chance to see it.  Precisely because you are using only one account.

If you don't want that to happen, you should get an email account each.  This would give you an email address each and other people would write to either you or your wife.  But I realise that you may not want "separate" mail like that, so if you do this and still want to share you emails, you can..

1. set up two accounts
   
2. only issue the one email address
   
3. automatically forward all mail sent to the one email address to the second email address (mailbox) as well as keeping it in the original mailbox. - so the mail goes to both mail boxes (unfortunately not all ISPs will provide you with the facility, you will need to check) (you could create a two person distribution list, but this is probably a bit over the top)
   
4. Make sure that in your second mailbox that your reply to address is set to the email address of the first mailbox.

If you do this, all mails sent from either of you will show the one reply address... this will be the address of the first mailbox.  All mails received will go the the first mailbox but be copied to the second.  So you would both always get the same mails, be mailing with the same identity, but be able to treat what you did with incoming mails differently. (How you do this will depend on the application you use).

One final point on that, you will need to remember to copy your partner in on all mail sent so that you both have copies of sent mails in your sent mail folder.  However some ISPs will let you also copy all mail sent, to your own mailbox, which save you having to do this.

The problem with synchronising what happens to your mail when you access it with different mail tools/clients (eg IE or Outlook) is a litte more complex.  Such mail actions can be either completely synchronised, not synchronised at all, or somewhere in the middle - usually nearer to the not-synchronised-at-all end.

Most ISPs will not offer any synchronising facility.  Most ASPs (application services providers) most certainly will... but it does cost.  I expect to be able to synchronise my mail irrespective of the device I use to access it...

In the case of Wanadoo (though I don't know) I assume if you use Outlook, with the POP3 protocol to collect your mail you will get a chance to either remove it from the server when you download to Outlook or leave it there.  So if you remove it when you use Outlook and then your partner uses IE to access the mail, nothing will be there.. not deleted exactly, just removed from the server, down to your local PC.

Other mailbox protocols like IMAP4 (but not in every case, if I rember correctly) will also let you choose to keep mail on the server, but delete it when you are seen to delete it from your Outlook.

It's all a bit messy I'm afraid. I've been using public email since 1978 and it amazes me how little peoples expectations of it have advanced.  Most ISPs still seem to offer the same old protocols and inbox/outbox facilities that the UK Post Office were supplying me back almost 30 years ago.

Today I get my email, fax, telex, x.400, voicemail, SMS, multimedia messaging, all to the one account, I can access it from virtually any connected device anywhere in the world, including Antarctica, but I had to set up my own server to do it...

SMTP...you may see references to this.. this is the de-facto strandard protocol for SENDING mail on the internet.  (Simple Mail Transport Protocol).  When you are not using IE, whatever mail client you are using will use this protocol to SEND your mail, either directly to the server that holds the recepient mail account or to a proxy/smart server that handles it for you like Wanadoo.

... I never know how much information people want in these situations.. so sorry if this is just too much... I wrote it stuck in a queue in a ferry terminal...

regards

David

[Nev]

David

 

Excellent reply!

Just one thing puzzles me:  >>It's all a bit messy I'm afraid. I've been using public email since 1978

Nev

[David M]

That would be right Nev... I'm 55

I started using internal email around 1969.. you know.. hacking someone else share of the server, but didn't become a serious user until the mid 70's and could afford my own account until October 78... I think... The Post Office had 11 public email servers at the time, I had an account on one in Birmingham (I think... memory is going) called Keats... they were all called after poets.

Emails to the US generally took a day or so, as they were passed on from server to server... I forget the name of the protocol now.. I used it until around 1979... later it migrated to x.400 and I think there were about 300 of us the UK, and then my first direct internet connection arrived around 1984 (well in advance of www) when I got connected to JANet (Joint Academic Network) through Imperial College in London.. and my first CDLC modem for mobile comms...

... so I get kind of frustrated when things don't seem to me to have moved on much..

D