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[Black Sheep]

Not guaranteed whatsoever, It all depends on the severity of the HR. As I've mentioned above, the PQT is just one test and should not be taken as the holy grail of results ..... it is a good indicator, but needs to be taken into consideration with other tests made.

Am signing off now, so will pick up with you again tomorrow. 

[aesmith]

Another inconclusive visit I'm afraid.   The guy sort of caught me on the hop by rolling up around 1/2 hour after the end of the appointment window, by which time I was assuming it was going to be a no-show (which wouldn't be surprising given weather issues locally).    Anyway he ran a couple of tests, presumably the basic line test first, the second one was a DSL test with a different screen from the previous guy.  His test ran for a couple of minutes and he said it showed no errors.  He then popped down the the exchange to check something, and gave me a call from there saying he'd checked the equipment and that my DSL still seems stable as well.  He suggested we monitor the line, and speculated that if the fault got worse then maybe they'd be able to locate it.   He didn't return to the house.   Buzz on phone line is unchanged.   

I've asked the ISP to reset me back to 6dB/Interleaved and report on error stats, but this is going round in circles.

[aesmith]

More productive visit this time.  As before the guy ran a test from the house, which passed.  However he didn't leave it at that, since he agreed with me that a good telephone line shouldn't have a clearly audible buzzing.   He checked a couple of joints, and at around 100m from the house the noise was still present on the Exchange side.   Over to the exchange and no noise found there (shame that would have been an easy fix I'd think).   He couldn't check at the "DP" since the pole's marked unsafe so can't be accessed without special equipment.  Job has been referred back, classed as "underground". 

So some progress, at least there's agreement that the buzzing indicates an issue, and that it doesn't originate on our property.

[Moderator edited to convert "should" to "shouldn't".]

[Black Sheep]

More productive visit this time.  As before the guy ran a test from the house, which passed.  However he didn't leave it at that, since he agreed with me that a good telephone line should have a clearly audible buzzing.   He checked a couple of joints, and at around 100m from the house the noise was still present on the Exchange side.   Over to the exchange and no noise found there (shame that would have been an easy fix I'd think).   He couldn't check at the "DP" since the pole's marked unsafe so can't be accessed without special equipment.  Job has been referred back, classed as "underground". 

So some progress, at least there's agreement that the buzzing indicates an issue, and that it doesn't originate on our property.

LOL ....... methinks that should read as ..... "shouldn't have a clearly audible buzzing". Never doubted for a minute that it wasn't REIN. 

[aesmith]

Oops, that's correct "shouldn't".  As for REIN or not, I don't know what to believe after all this time, however I was pretty miffed that it seemed to be an unshakeable assumption from the broadband engineers, in particular the last but one had already made is mind up before entering the house.  The last guy, who found no fault on the DSL, I think that must have been using the 15dB nm target as the line does indeed seem to run with minimal errors once it's slowed that far.

Anyway, next update expected mid next week so fingers crossed the buzzing gets fixed, and hopefully that will fix the DSL.

[burakkucat]

Have you had any success communicating with the maintainer of the electricity supply infrastructure? (Or has that now been definitely ruled out?) 

[aesmith]

I haven't followed that up to date.  I had a wander near the 11kV transformer with my AM radio and wasn't picking anything up to make me suspicious, so nothing really to report to the DNO.  The transformer's over 50m from the phone line so I thought it would need to be a pretty strong signal to carry that far.  I'm going to wait and see just now.  The fact that the OR guy checked 100m from the house and found noise on the exchange side of the joint suggests that it originates elsewhere (only 5200m to check).

I'll revisit electrics if clearing the buzzing doesn't clean up the DSL, I could probably power the router from a battery for testing with the whole house electrics switched off.  But will cross that one when I come to it.

[burakkucat]

I now understand. Thank you.

[aesmith]

Some progress today I hope.  The Openreach engineer was a local guy, which helps, and with a bigger van.  He was able to access some of the underground joints that the previous guy wasn't equipped to work on.  His testing showed the line clear at the public road, quiet after the branch to our neighbour, then noisy halfway along to us, maybe 400m from the house.  He swapped us onto another pair over that section, and we now have a nice quiet line.  It remains to be seen how the DSL behaves, I've swapped back to the Thomson router so I can monitor with DSL Stats, but at 2752k (15dB target) that fact that it's error free is not conclusive.  I'll see if Plusnet will reset everything tomorrow.

As a side issue I found that my test phone was picking up noise, a distinct 50Hz buzz, when it was near the DECT handset.  That confused the heck out of me when I was trying to check that the noise was gone from the house.  It was noisiest when the DECT handset was near the phone itself, not when I held the handset near the phone line.  Very odd, I wouldn't expect 50Hz noise from a battery powered device.   To further confuse, it didn't happen when the base station was powered off.  Switching off the base station caused the noise to disappear altogether, powering it back on the noise resumed when the station booted up completely (blue LAN light comes on).

Tony S

[burakkucat]

Interesting developments.

Though the induced 50 Hz noise via the DECT phone is a bit puzzling. 

[NewtronStar]

Interesting developments.

Though the induced 50 Hz noise via the DECT phone is a bit puzzling. 

I am not surprised the power supply on the dect phone converts the 250v AC to 9 or 12V DC and then enters the circuitry on the dect base station and then exits via the DSl cable to master socket.

I would try a compatible PSU for the dect phone if no change then a component inside the dect phone base station circuitry is showing signs of a failure. 

[aesmith]

I am not surprised the power supply on the dect phone converts the 250v AC to 9 or 12V DC and then enters the circuitry on the dect base station and then exits via the DSl cable to master socket.

I don't think that's what was happening in this case.  The DECT base station wasn't connected to the phone line, I had my test phone connected to the line.  The noise I was picking up was when the DECT handset (not the base station) was held near to the test telephone.   I'm sticking my neck out and saying the noise didn't originate from the PSU, because it didn't start when the PSU was plugged in, only after 30 seconds when the base station was fully booted up and paired with the handset.

[aesmith]

Disappointingly it looks like the errors might be returning.  We're still only connecting at 2752 on the 15dB NM target, but at around 04:30 this morning it changed from a few FECs every now and then to a steady rate of hundreds per minute.  Still no CRCs, but of course we're running artificially slow.

[burakkucat]

I have to agree . . . that doesn't look nice. 

[ejs]

I sometimes get FEC going up to around 100,000 per minute, but that's on ADSL2. High FEC rates don't cause me any problems, but ADSL1 is likely to be less effective at correcting the errors.