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[daverk]

After 2-3 years with a superb broadband connection (14 Meg on noise margin 6dB 1.7 km from exchange via overhead copper) my internet connections became intermittent from 3rd week June.  The history is tedious and the fault was never definitively identified, but on the phone line Openreach found HRs on the line at the exchange, the cabinet, at a JB at the top of a pole, and where an inline connector was damaged; and on the broadband side they also said they found a loose wire on the B-RAS.  Some of these were probably 'technical' faults which had not contributed to the disconnections which I suspect were mainly due to that damaged inline connector (on a pole in a neighbour's garden, buried in an unpruned tree).

After all this the connection initially came back at 4Meg and 25dB noise margin so I called the ISP to ask them to increase the speed to get back to where it had been for the previous 2-3 years - they said that it was capped at 4 Meg which they removed but they could not lower the noise margin below 15bB - I don't know if it is the DLM or a human which has fixed that.  After the target margin was lowered it has been running ok for a week albeit at 9Meg and noise margin 15dB.  The ISP said (with my router plugged into test socket via brand new ASDL dongle filter, no phone plugged in) that their test found noise on the line (a Quiet Line Test does not reveal this) which they thought was why the noise margin was up at 15dB.  They said that the noise was typical of faulty internal extensions or faulty ADSL filters. That cannot be because they got the same test result with router plugged into a brand new ADSL filter directly into the test socket.  So they are suggesting another BT Openreach investigation, this time to look for noise, after a period of monitoring.  The connection has been running well at 9Meg/15dB without disconnecting for 4 days, and after weeks of disconnections, I had reached a stage where I am losing the will to live and reluctant to pursue this further while the connection is reliable at 9Meg even though I know that it should be a higher speed at a 6dB noise margin based on previous experience!

I have tried 4 different Modem/Routers (2 x Netgear DG834Gv4, 1 x Netgear DG834Gv5, 1 x Netgear DGN2200), different cables, 5 different ADSL filters, I have unplugged phones completely and turned off cordless phones to eliminate interference, I have unplugged Homeplugs to eliminate interference from mains or faulty Homeplugs.  One of the BT OR Engineers replaced a 35 year old BT Master Socket with a new Openreach NTE5 one (no ADSL filter in the faceplate), and recrimped the connections etc.  No difference, so I had concluded that the fault must be in the exchange equipment somewhere because the local loop was last week achieving 99.7% on the last engineer's tester, and all greens.

However, today I unplugged a dongle filter and phone from the faceplate of the master socket today to reposition it; and then plugged another dongle filter into that master socket faceplate and another phone into that.  On both occasions (unplugging and replugging) the router connection dropped and then reconnected.  So at last, the questions:

• what causes the unplugging or plugging-in of a filter & phone to disconnect the router? (The router was at the time plugged into a short extension run off the rear of the faceplate).
• could the faceplate or the components of the new master socket be faulty?

The problem as always is isolating the variables which might be causing the problem.  And there is the threat of a £150 bill from BT OR should the problem be on my side, but I just cannot see how that can be.  Any observations/suggestions welcome, please.

Sorry this is so long.  Just a last thought - I put DGTeam firmware on one of the DG834Gv4's so have the ability to change the SNR margin from my end but am loath to do that in case it freaks out the DLM.  Would prefer to get the basic connection good and stable first.

P.S. there is no bell wire connected to the faceplate, hasn't been for years, and it works fine without

[digitalnemesis]

Sounds like a HR fault which hasn't been fully rectified.

Tried another NTE5a faceplate?

[daverk]

Sounds like a HR fault which hasn't been fully rectified.

Tried another NTE5a faceplate?

Thanks.  Yes that is logical, I will try that although it is a brand new NTE5a which BT Openreach put in only a few weeks ago.

Had a BT phone line engineer in only yesterday again (no HRs found although intermittently not when he was here of course, there is phone line background noise, more like white noise than crackling but I cannot find any electrical noise which might be causing it; and I mentioned the faceplate but he didn't think it was causing the problem) and after that, after 24 hours,  the connection got up to 13 Meg on a 9dB margin. But then the router seemed to be in synch but it really wasn't so I had to reboot it after which it reconnected at 13 Meg/9dB and after 10mins the DLM obviously decided that a disconnection was a bad thing so it's now dropped down to 5 Meg/23.9dB!

I will replace the faceplate and otherwise just try to leave the router connected as best I can so that the DLM settles down, and then decide what to do after 10 days or so.

[digitalnemesis]

I've had a HR fault in the past and know how it sounds on the phone. Is the line clear when the router/modem is not connected? It's a yes right?

Does your SNRM drop when you pickup the phone or call received (don't answer)?

[daverk]

I've had a HR fault in the past and know how it sounds on the phone. Is the line clear when the router/modem is not connected? It's a yes right?

Does your SNRM drop when you pickup the phone or call received (don't answer)?

Thanks. I have had multiple faults over the last 6 weeks so it is difficult to isolate causes.
However, now, the disconnection when I unplug or replug the phone is no longer occurring!  And I just watched the SNRM while I got a dialling tone and shut it again - the Margin didn't budge (steady at 23.3dB presumably due to having to reboot router earlier).
The phone line sounds the same whether the modem router is connected or not, but it is not making the background swishing sound at the moment during calls, or on a QLT.  When and if it does that again I will pull out the router cable.  It can't be the router, the cable or ADSL filters though because I have swapped them all over one by one (see O.P.).
The BT Openreach engineer was testing as normal through the test socket yesterday.  I was watching his HR testing.  There were no spikes, it seems like a good line.  So you may well be right, maybe it's the faceplate (it will be here Thursday).  He was suggesting that it could be an intermittent on the broadband port/card etc at the exchange, and my ISP said that the splitter (?) at the exchange might be causing it.   The ISP ran an intrusive test for me yesterday but it was clear.  They could see a SNRM ranging from 15 to 27dB in their stats but on questioning that I was told that it was on a 14 day rolling period so the SNRMs over 15dB would have been when the faults/line were in the worst period.  I'm reluctant to get the ISP to call out a BB engineer (yet) because I risk having to pay if no fault found.....