orange livebox

[Nessie]

Our village got an adsl connection back in November, which was great news only 1 Meg but better than nothing. However after 2 weeks the line went down and it seems most of the village has lost the connection as well, we have spent about 4 hours calling the help centre over a period of one month and still no further forward, the lines are tested but no response. Although the instruction book seems to advise that you can go back to your dial up connection that has not been the case for us as the system tell us the passwords are no longer valid, and no help from orange so we have ended up taking out a free 90-day trial with AOL just to enable me to get back online.
I don’t really want to change as it would me a lot of work in changing details etc , but was wondering if anybody else has had any problems with the livebox and if they have any email or phone contacts other than the help line phone number that we could contact to try to resolve the problem

Thanks

[la vache!]

Nessie, can't you get an engineer out to look at the lines? I would have thought if there are enough of you with the same problem there would be no difficulty at all in getting someone out. I've never had a problem with Orange - they have always been very helpful in resolving issues and if I've had a problem with broadband, the dial up has worked with the same account and password, just changing from haut debit to bas debit on the connection software.
Re the livebox - even my students at Orange don't recommend it, not the box itself but the software isn't that good. I'm just sticking to the modem at the moment until I get a Netgear wifi box instead. I always dial the 3900 number for technical assistance.

[Alan Knighting]

Nessie,

I had similar problems when I first changed from ISDN to ADSL. The problem was that France Telecom was rolling out ADSL from my local exchange for the first time ever. Each time they added another user there was a “blink� on my connection. It wouldn’t have made any difference who my ADSL supplier was; they all use the same France Telecom backbone of cables. It didn’t last long but it was annoying.

Since then, I have used France Telecom’s 1013 to report faults. While waiting I’ve become a world renowned expert on things like Vivaldi’s Four Seasons but I’ve always had prompt service.

Susan,

With my Netgear wifi box I can always do a dial-up connection if I need to.

Fluffy

[marcus]

I did once revert to dial-up when the ADSL line was down - it's possible but a bit of a hassle.

I also had problems with Livebox at first - PC crashing etc, but it was about the same time I upgraded firefox etc so I wasn't sure what the problem was.

Anyway, I added Spyware Doctor and Registry Checker (about £30 I think) and that resolved all problems - I suspect the Livebox installation messed something up that Registry Checker corrected.

Point is - if you have a PC that stalls/crashes for no reason, more and more as time goes by, give it a go. If it adds a year to the life of your PC it's money well spent.

Anecdote: at my daughters school the standard response to 'why haven't you finished your homework?' is 'we've got a livebox, sir' which is met with an understanding nod, and a few extra days to complete the work.

[Jacqui]

Hi Nessie

If you're online with AOL is that dial up or ADSL connection?

My hubby is a bit of a whizz with these live boxes and we have found ours incredibly reliable.....WITHOUT the orange software I hasten to add that seems to give no end of problems!!

There is a "sticky" on another forum......pm me if you want details it goes quite indepth into how to get it all working. (BTW I don't mind posting it BUT it's very long!!)

Obviously this is all based on the fact that your ADSL connection is actually working. I rang 3900 for technical assistance last week for a friend and they were really good and sorted out the problem there and then - they do automatically check the line, etc and will tell you if it's ok

[Alan Knighting]

Marcus,

I did once revert to dial-up when the ADSL line was down - it's possible but a bit of a hassle.

Perhaps it's because I went through dial-up to ISDN to ADSL and kept my dial-up modem throughout I have no problems in reverting back to dial-up if I need to do so.

With my Netgear wifi installation the "hassle" is one click to go to dial up connection and a second click to make the connection. I've never found two clicks on a mouse to be too much of a "hassle". Maybe it's all very different with other broadband boxes?

Fluffy

[la vache!]

Alan,
Sorry to divert from the OP's question, but do you have repeaters with your Netgear product? I've had someone come out and quote to help set up wifi, but even with the Netgear product he has proposed there is only 27kb vitesse in the gites due to the thick walls, which isn't very much. It is better outside in the car park area. What are repeaters exactly and where do you put them??

[Alan Knighting]

Alan,
Sorry to divert from the OP's question, but do you have repeaters with your Netgear product? .... What are repeaters exactly and where do you put them??

No I don't have repeaters. Repeaters simply expand the area of coverage of the wireless network; they get round the problems of signals not going far enough or not going through stone walls.

My cottages are out of range of my wifi network but I don’t think it is too much of an imposition on my guests for them to have to come up to my terrace or around my pool to use their wifi enabled laptops on my broadband for free.

Fluffy

[Jacqui]

Hi Susan

You want to come up and see our set up - we aren't that far away from you - have got two networks set up - one secure (us) and one open (guests). We have wired and wifi available.

We have a netgear switch/hub all running from a livebox (admittedly I have no idea about it) but thankfully hubby does!

We serve a lot of music and films over the networks for guests and all seems to work well! It also did not cost huge amounts!

[Lesblancs]

Hi Jacqui,

Thanks for the information. Your hubby certainly knows his stuff.

Many thanks - Robert

[Nessie]

Hi Nessie

If you're online with AOL is that dial up or ADSL connection?

My hubby is a bit of a whizz with these live boxes and we have found ours incredibly reliable.....WITHOUT the orange software I hasten to add that seems to give no end of problems!!

There is a "sticky" on another forum......pm me if you want details it goes quite indepth into how to get it all working. (BTW I don't mind posting it BUT it's very long!!)

Obviously this is all based on the fact that your ADSL connection is actually working. I rang 3900 for technical assistance last week for a friend and they were really good and sorted out the problem there and then - they do automatically check the line, etc and will tell you if it's ok

Hi Jacqui
If you could pm me the sticky or point me to the forum i will take a look.
Yes currently i am using dial up with AOL. When we called the 3900 Number the first time after 30 minutes they rang us back and then later said that they would need to check the line which would take 2 days, called back to say that the bow should be working within 4 days, but did not so called again after about an hour and i am no techie of changing various programes they said the line would have to be rechecked.

Most likely will give them a call again tomorrow as the past few days have been busy

thanks for help

[la vache!]

Hi Jacqui
thanks for the info - I may be pming your good hubby for other info! I have got someone to help me, but as usual he is late and as I say, the bandwidth offered is not great. Have you any idea approximately what price you paid for the Netgear thingy? I only get 1,2Mbits here, to narrow for TV etc., I just want internet wifi access for the guests.

[Jacqui]

We paid £99 for the switch (ebay uk!) and then bought 2 netgear routers too - one from ebay (around £20) and the other from Carrefour or Connexions I think for around 60€. We bought the second to put into the roof space to get the wifi down the garden.

The cards in the back of the PC's are ten a penny! Although several guests have bought laptops.

Our connection here is 20 meg a second - we're on this ADSL 2 connection with Orange so that is really fast!!
It is always worth checking on line as to what offers you can get from Orange as they never seem to ring or email you to tell you that the exchange has been upgraded and do you want a bigger better connection. Previously I used to check every month or so as we found once ADSL was available then within 6 - 9 months we had had several different packages and speeds, and finally went super sonically fast about twelve months ago!

We don't get anywhere near that connection speed wirelessly although it is still fast - definitely faster than 27 kbs!

[Bob T]

If you want the popular Netgear 834 modem router then it is for sale here in France for 56€. This is the link
http://www.cdiscount.com/informatique/w ... &numpage=1
I have used them many times