Regular internet disconnections

[odinsnephew]

Not specifically to with gaming but I am at the end of my tether and I hope you guys can offer a bit of advice. Here is my problem,

At regular 8 hour intervals my connection fails for exactly 2 hours. In that time I can connect back after about 60 seconds for about 7 or 8 minutes and it will go down again. At present it goes down from 11.25 to 13.25, then 19.25 to 21.25 (as I am writing this I have been disconnected!) and 03.25 to 05.25. During the 6 hours in between the end of a disconnection period and the start of the next one I am free as a bird.

I had a "similar" but more irregular problem last year and my ISP Tiscali (stop that laughing Kalos!) eventually sorted it out and stated that it was a problem in the exchange. And duly sorted the issue out. For a few months. This as I say is similar, but I can quite literally set my clock by this new problem! I have spoken to the ISP and am rapidly getting nowhere as they just simply keep you on the phone for ages going round in circles *takes stress pill x 10 lol* until you give up. There really is only a certain amount of crap you can take from these idiots ;)

So, my main question is - What would cause a regular disconnection such as this? When it has been fine before?

I just dont understand, I mean I know a lot of people who work in IT such industries but im at a loss with this one. Im not going to drop a load of system details on your laps as I feel that is irrelevant in this but will do so if required.

As I say, not particularly WoW related (apart from the fact I cant play during those times!) but any advice or help would be gladly appreciated :)

[Kalos]

It's probably unhelpful to say this, but it's almost certainly your ISP. Tiscali has been known to cut people off at certain hours, most likely to improve service for others. My inner conspiracy theorist tells me that they simply rotate it after a few months, so it looks like the problem gets fixed to those who did suffer from it, and the costs saved in having those people not online taking up bandwidth are still being reaped through others.

[odinsnephew]

Thank you Kalos,, it confirms my suspicions really. I have called them, emailed them etc. But they are just obstinate to say the very least. Luckily I am in the process of selling my house and moving to pastures new fairly soon....and when I do they can feed on my droppings! Although that means choosing another ISP /groan

Customer support in Scotland and tech support in India fails dramatically ;)

Thank you again Kalos :)

[Unknowable]

Although I do agree with Kalos that it's probably just a bandwidth issue on their end and that they are actively manipulating connections to improve service for a portion of their customer base, I do have to postulate another theory - two words - Patch Tuesday. I work for an ISP, and we routinely have issues on our maintenance days (varies depending on the service area). It's possible that they have a neurotic sys admin that wants to do hardware maintenance at certain times. I don't know how big your ISP is (States based here) but if it's small enough, it might be someone screwing with connections for kicks.

[Kalos]

Tiscali is in the top five ISP providers, at least in terms of numbers. Very much a budget organisation sadly, costs have been driven very low in the last three years in the UK market, leaving little money for ISPs to donate towards the common cause of refitting the network, profit margins are very slim. I think it's a cost cutting measure that they obviously won't admit to, it certainly works in thier favour, though causing customers to jump ship is hardly a good move.