Hello all

We are looking for informal recommendations for individuals or companies who specialise in networks, broadband and general telecoms.  After 7 years of almost problem-free service, since 2016 we have faced a debilitating sequence of line faults, intermittent service, and download/upload speeds that are dire.  We engaged a realtively local firm to assist us and have dutifully paid the bills for what they have recommended, but almost a year later things are if anything worse rather than better and our confidence is exhausted.  In this forum, I'm sure I don't have to explain that connectivity is vital: when we lose the internet, almost everything grinds to a halt.  Please: there must be someone out there who really understands the technology, who we could bring in to review our current setup and help us put in place something that works.

The museum at Auchindrain is located in rural Scotland and in a very sparsely-populated area.  The nearest IT network specialists of any sort are 70 miles away in Glasgow.  Over two miles of old copper wires separate us from the local exchange, so although most of the area has superfast we cannot get it.  We have two incoming lines which go into an expensive, smart, Draytek router.  From the router, wifi covers the office building whilst a hardwired intranet connects up four VoIP phones and four or five computers that access the internet only for email and websearches - no-one regularly does large uploads or downloads.  At least ten times a day, usually when one has reached the top of the queue or are half-way through authorising a bank transaction, the phones or the internet, or both, go yellow-light and stay off for between 20 seconds and a couple of hours.  Checked through Speedtest, Ping is typically around 44ms, download around 12.20Mbps, and upload around 0.65Mbps.

Until a few months ago, we used an older PC as a fileserver, set to sync to the cloud through Dropbox Pro.  Staff working off-site could access the Dropbox copy of files, and Dropbox would then sync changes and additions back to the fileserver.  Dropbox-in-the-cloud was also our backup.  The problem was that Dropbox was clunky to use in this way, whilst the initial upload of large files could literally take weeks to complete.  We were advised to replace the fileserver with a NAS box, and were told that this could be set to back up to Dropbox or a cloud storage facility provided by the company we were working with.  We were also told that the NAS box could be configured so that staff working offsite could connect into it.  Four months later, the cloud backup has still not been created - we are backing up manually each week to a large RHD, whilst we are now being told that our broadband is so poor that remote access to the NAS box isn't technically feasible after all.  For remote access, staff have to use Team Viewer to access an office desktop, through which they can access the NAS box to download and upload files as necessary, which is slow and tortuous.

Our ISP is supportive and sympathetic, and we understand that there is little that they can do other than to report faults to Openreach.  The local Openreach engineers are almost on our payroll given the frequency of their visits, but have recently been saying that there are no faults on their side to cause the dropouts and super-slow speeds, and that thee problems must be caused by our equipment. Equally, the tech company we have been working with say that there is absolutely nothing wrong with our system or hardware and that the problems are being caused by line faults or the exchange equipment.

We accept that our rural Scottish location and our dependence on copper cables to a distant exchange is going to limit the download and upload speeds we can get, at least until the Scottish Government cajoles, bullies or bribes a deeply-reluctant BT to run fibre optic everywhere.  In the meantime, however (and it may be a very long meantime!), we don't actually want much.  We want VoIP phones and internet that work all the time, and sufficient speed/bandwidth so that VoIP phones and Skype will work properly.  We want a central file storage device like a NAS box that allows us to determine who can access which folders, which can be accessed from offsite and which will automatically back itself up to the cloud.  And we want someone who can both set things up for us properly, and see through the fog of confusion from Openreach to determine conclusively whether or not our two landline/broadband services are working as they should.

Please can somebody guide us towards competent help?


Bob Clark
Director
The Auchindrain Trust
mailto:[log in to unmask]

07770 420999
01499 320272 (Direct Line)

01499 500235 (Reception)

www.auchindrain.org.uk

Urras Achadh an Droighinn/The Auchindrain Trust
Achadh an Droighinn/Auchindrain
Inbhir Aora/Inveraray
Earra Ghàidheal/Argyll
PA32 8WD

Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation Number SC015528

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