Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Chunkers]

Our ADSL 2+ connection suddenly developed a fault a while back and after a frustrating few weeks (more for my kids than me) I decided to pay a Telecomms technician to come and sort out our wiring as I establshed it was to blame for most of the frequent drop-outs we experienced (but not the poor connection speed we have). When plugged into the 'Test' socket (very inconvenient and involved running network cable through the house) we were averaging 2 drop-outs per day and achieving the following performance which is the gold standard for Chunkers Towers:



After a complete re-wire of our phone line (£170) and plugging back into the normal socket in the office we get marginally better performance and the same 2 drop-outs per day :



The original wiring in our house was 1973 and extension was wired in by a total bunch of cowboys I mistakenly employed to do my extension,  I am pretty happy - I think a marginal speed improvement overall and now I pretty much know any problems are not in our house.

I am about 1.5km from the exchange and also have some horrible aluminium wiring to my location, according to the Kitz Max speed calculator I have double the noise I should (theoretically) have.

Question : has anyone ever had any success trying to get BT to improve line quality in my kind of situation ?

I am guessing the answer is NO and I just have to lump it, but its nice to check 

Chunkers

[Ronski]

If its dropping out two times a day when plugged into the test socket then you clearly have a fault external to your property, presuming of course the modems not faulty.

Is there any noise  on the telephone,  if so report a voice line fault, if not then try another modem and if the drop outs continue then report them to your ISP.

[Weaver]

You could try a different modem, but perhaps best done after you've had your line checked out. Do you need to change ISP, do they know what they're doing?

In any event, I would also definitely
 * get a Tandy RJ11 modem-wallsocket cable (aka adslnation) - see     http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php?topic=15910.0
 * fit an SSFP (Openreach faceplate)
 * consider getting hold of a Tacima mains filter unit
 * if you possibly have power quality problems, consider getting hold of a small UPS with a Belkin AV mains conditioner unit on the output from it (as well as the Tacima, that's what I use)

[Chunkers]

Thanks for the advice,

• I'll check out the cables, I have a few different types already, all supplied with various devices and i haven't noticed much difference between them yet
• Mains power should be OK as it is on APC UPS
• I have a couple of other modems I will be trying with different chipsets (I have a Zyxel VMG8324 and a D-Link 320B I have yet to test)
• If I keep getting the drop-outs I might put in a quick call to BT

Cheers!
Chunks

[Weaver]

If you are on a UPS, definitely use a Belkin AV mains conditioner with it, as I think my APC one has a staircase output (not a pure sine wave) although I'm not sure, but playing it safe. If so, then it will reduce your noise levels.

DLink: I myself use the DLink DSL-320-Z1 too (h/w rev Z1), strongly recommended on an ultra long line (mine is >7300 m). Supports MTU 1500+8 too, RFC 4638, and you are on 21CN, and so I hope your router does so too. I haven't managed to find out anything about that router model. If it does support RFC 4638, then you can test support for IP MRU/MTU 1500 (rather than being stuck with 1492).