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Author Topic: The REIN it REINeth every day !  (Read 15275 times)

orainsear

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Re: The REIN it REINeth every day !
« Reply #15 on: August 18, 2009, 11:40:47 AM »

It does seem rather more likely that the noise is being propagated via telephone cables, and a repetitive nature would certainly point towards an electric fence pulse type signal.  If there is a short circuit in the fence, radio frequency energy will be generated, and if there are any telephone cables close by, (particularly if they run parallel) the fence will indeed act as an antenna.  The longer the parallel run the the more energy can be transmitted.

The interference will probably worsen with increasing air/ground humidity and heat.





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general disquiet

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Re: The REIN it REINeth every day !
« Reply #16 on: August 22, 2009, 09:02:21 AM »

Some really interesting ideas here.  I'm going to go hunting for electric fences along the course of the buried cable and will endeavour not to touch the things!  I've been out several times previously and don't believe there are any with 200 m of the cable, but I may need to wander further afield.  Normally, they are used (at least round here) as a temporary measure, but there may be something I have missed.

The interference is repetitive (4 single, millisecond-long spikes per day at roughly 6 hour intervals - the timing seems to drift on a 6-day cycle) and does get worse (sometimes) in heavy and persistent rain, but equally, we can have a bad week in the middle of a spell of dry weather, like this last week.  I would have expected the capacitor charging and discharge of an electric fence to be much more frequent than that?  Oh yes, we usually only see the lunchtime REIN on Mondays to Thursdays, rarely on Fridays and almost never at weekends - which to me suggests some sort of commercial activity.

Perversely, since mentioning the possible links between the two villages on the blog (http://winterbournestoke-thedigitaldivide.blogspot.com/2009/08/some-interesting-new-possibilities.html, the lunchtime REIN event, consistent for several months, has been very odd this week - shifts in timing, missing days, etc.  I guess I am becoming somewhat paranoid about this!
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Ezzer

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Re: The REIN it REINeth every day !
« Reply #17 on: August 22, 2009, 10:35:57 AM »

Attention all Gurus and especially @Kitz and Ezzer,

The General's problem could well be quite a challenge for us all.

Unless somebody has a lot of experience with scanners and their data capture it seems that we should obtain say at least three identical modems hooked up to laptops with plenty of disk storage and all configured into a logmein account so they can all be remotely accessed. We need powerful modems which can record at a high frequency perhaps with Routerstats lite to reduce the modem processor load ?

The next part of the plan is Ezzer's area. I've discovered, acording to SamKnows that, although all phone numbers are in the 01980 area, Winterbourne Stoke is part of the Shrewton Exchange and Enford is part of the Netheravon exchange yet they BOTH pick up the same REIN ? The Netheravon exchange is almost due south of Enford on the road down to the East-West A303. I suppose this might be the start of locating the transmitter's position? Can Ezzer confirm that it's unlikely that two exchanges would transmit REIN between them ? If so then we have a powerful transmitter capable of infecting presumably overhead lines running several miles apart?

The plot thickens !

Kind regards,
Walter

Once a fault gets refered via the REIN team then the router stats are recorded via "woosh"

If one source is affecting an area covering more than one exchange area then it may either be a line of sight beam causing the problem. particuarly near county hall in norwich you notice the car radio picking up a distinct buzz in a patch only a few meters accross. later it occured to me all the spots where this is picked up form a straight line.

I had a rein fault which covered several square miles. It was being transmitted back along the mains. 2 other rein chaps came up on this one, one from london who compiled the accreditation for REIN the other fromthe BT labs; he had the fancy spectral kit with the directional antennea (wish I had that kit,would make life a lot easyer on these faults but the cost is increadible) we found the source in one house. It was a 240-110v inverter about the size of a common plug.  Walter doyou have an american air base near you ?
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general disquiet

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Re: The REIN it REINeth every day !
« Reply #18 on: August 22, 2009, 11:38:33 AM »

Ezzer,

Some more interesting ideas there too.  Hadn't thought about voltage inverters, but living close to the Army and AirForce it's a fair bet that several of my neighbours will be running inverters on kit bought in the US or Europe.

Another thought, and I thought I'd get a few opinions before I started wielding my side-cutting pliers!   Just spotted a neighbours dropwire which they have wired to the wire netting covering their thatched roof - the roof runs under and mainly parallel to, a 3-phase powerline - which in turn connects to a drop pole.  My thinking is, damaged insulation on the dropwire connecting to a large aerial?  Is this a completely barking idea, or should I try the experiment?


« Last Edit: August 22, 2009, 07:52:21 PM by general disquiet »
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Ezzer

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Re: The REIN it REINeth every day !
« Reply #19 on: August 22, 2009, 01:30:28 PM »

One thing to remember about REIN is "anything electrical" can cause the problem. you have to keep an openmind whilst looking for the source.it will be all too easy to get fogged buy getting a suspect in mind
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general disquiet

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Re: The REIN it REINeth every day !
« Reply #20 on: August 22, 2009, 01:40:19 PM »

I know you are right about it being anything electrical - but it's helpful every now and again to have a few more suspect things to go and look at - and tick off the ever-growing list.  As an example, my hunt for electric fences in one half of the village this morning led to a mains-powered one that I and everyone else in the village had forgotten about.  The wire is disconnected, but is the unit still wired up and chuntering away to itself - locked away in someone's garage? 

That, in turn, led to the dropwire wired onto the thatch!  At least that's a new take on 'clutching at straws!'
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waltergmw

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Re: The REIN it REINeth every day !
« Reply #21 on: August 22, 2009, 04:34:04 PM »

@ Ezzer & Roseway,

We've got ourselves a bit of a double REIN topic in this thread. I started it due to the horsey-culture around Ewhurst but the General's problems are on Salisbury Plain, some 30-40 miles west of the Guildford area.

I've got enough to go on for Ewhurst thank you very much but the general has a far more serious and ongoing problem on the Plain.
With all the military and their research establishments, there is every chance of static or rotating RF beams beams (Radars) but as this is such a short and reasonably repititive working-days spike it would seem more likely to be due to the switching on or off of some plant or possibly some form of discharge to earth causing an arc. As it repeats it's probably a stationary source and as the signal amplitude is different in the two villages it possibly suggests the source is closer to one than the other if the pick-up mechanism is similar. However a different compass bearing for unshielded wires might well affect the amplitude.

I would second Ezzer's comments about anything electrical; also note that whenever you have an alternating current (or even a changing magnetic flux) you have the potential for a transformer so the General's wire netting doesn't even have to be physically connected to the drop wire. (Hence the problem with long lengths of parallel cables.)

Kind regards,
Walter
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general disquiet

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Re: The REIN it REINeth every day !
« Reply #22 on: August 22, 2009, 07:31:47 PM »

Guys,

The horsey theme has to continue. Spurred on by Ezzer, waltergmw, orainsear and others, I realised that they had saddled me with afternoon of bimbling through the depths of the countryside trying to find electric fences - which I duly did.

So, taking the bit between my teeth, I set of on Shank's pony towards the next village.  The bottom line is I found two operating electric fences  that might be an issue.  Neither can be seen from the road, which is why I hadn't found them previously.  The layout of one of these can be found here:



You might just be able to see that the last section of tape on the right hand run is lying on the ground - the unducted BT aluminium cable is somewhere this side of the hedgeline you can see towards the back of the photo.




The second fence is on a spur off the main 3 phase supply and the telephone line and again has sections running parallel to both the power and the telephone lines.

The first fence (horse fence) appears to have a section lying on the ground and presumably discharging to earth at this point.   Both have vegetation touching them, so presumably in wet weather...

The energizer units (battery powered) are from different manufacturers and have different discharge periods.  This suggests that every so often the discharges would be in phase and so if any signal from these spark generators was coupling into the power lines, or the BT cable (by RF or by earth leakage), then every so often, there might be a double whammy that could conceivably cause routers to lose sync.

I'd love to hear any thoughts before I go off to tackle the fence owners - who, thankfully, also suffer from the effects of the REIN.

« Last Edit: August 22, 2009, 08:01:10 PM by general disquiet »
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roseway

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Re: The REIN it REINeth every day !
« Reply #23 on: August 22, 2009, 10:46:28 PM »

I think that you've done a terrific bit of investigation, and it certainly seems likely that an electric fence with a partial short circuit to ground will cause that sort of interference. Hopefully the fence owner will be reasonable.
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waltergmw

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Re: The REIN it REINeth every day !
« Reply #24 on: August 23, 2009, 12:24:40 AM »

@ General,

I believe you say that you get an occasional massive short-duration noise spike to a zero noise margin.
You are probably right that there will be a race condition between the two fences but given that you've been looking at this problem for months you might expect that at some time you might have several peaks close together if that was the main cause of the massive spike problem. That doesn't mean that the fences aren't causing some sort of problem which would usually be characterised by a clicking noise at the fence frequency. Have you tried the quiet line test 17070 on those closest to the problem ? Ezzer might also have some comments on E side aluminium cables and whether they are likely to be screened ?

Continuing with the other idea that it is some form of significant energy broadcast occasionally, it would be a good idea to run routerstats lite at the highest sample rate that you dare. This would then provide more line plots which might give you a better idea of the shape and actual duration of the noise event. Do note that if you have a modem with a "slow" processor you might well see drops to zero which just indicate that Routerstats was unable to obtain a reading, but any correlation with the speed graph where the sync speed has changed is often a good indicator that there was a noise spike at that time.

I believe you said that you have access to a 2Wire modem. If so it's just possible that you could glean further data from the extensive diagnostic information available. Perhaps you could also lend the modem to the other village and / or your fellow sufferers as well ? (I shall be posting another thread on Sunday morning wiith some diagnostic pictures in the hopes of improving a very long line.)

Kind regards,
Walter
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general disquiet

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Re: The REIN it REINeth every day !
« Reply #25 on: August 23, 2009, 08:35:28 AM »

@waltergmw

Some interesting ideas for me to try there.  Like you, I already have 'spare' routers deployed round the village and folks are running RouterStats/RouterStats Lite, but I haven't tried the very high sampling rates, so will give that a try.   All the traces from round the village look more or less like the one I posted in the 5th entry in this thread.

The 2-Wire detailed diagnostics didn't show anything particularly exciting in over 6 months of monitoring them so I'm not too hopeful of that route.

Something else you said rang an alarm bell.  It comes down to what BT define as a D/side cable and an E/side cable.  Checking back though some documents from Openreach, they refer to the 3.4 km of backhaul to the exchange as D/side cable linking the PCP to an SCP (secondary connection point I presume).  I'd never really questioned that description before, but I wonder if Openreach have been confusing BT with this description?  Have decisions been taken on the basis this was a long and bad D/side cable, when in fact it is a log and bad E/side cable?  Does it matter? Another one for Ezzer perhaps.

I have noticed something on one phone line that in retrospect had the same period as the electric fence http://winterbournestoke-thedigitaldivide.blogspot.com/2009/07/tale-of-two-dropwires.html

This wasn't on a line close to the fence, but I guess it might depend on where in a cable bundle a particular pair sit.  Those closest to the outside might be more prone to picking up extraneous noise than those closest to the core. 

I'm off to see the farm owner this afternoon and will try the quiet line test whilst I'm there and will also set him up with RouterStats, if he is willing.  I'll post again when I get back.  Even if this isn't the cause, it's well worth eliminating it as a possibility as one of the things the REIN engineeer said (almost a year ago now!) was that there may be no single cause - it could be the convergence of several different effects.

I'll also watch out for your new thread, it looks interesting.
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waltergmw

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Re: The REIN it REINeth every day !
« Reply #26 on: August 23, 2009, 09:14:30 AM »

@ general,

I had always assumed that D side meant Distribution and covered all components beyond the PSP and that E side similarly meant the Exchange side components.
(If you are VERY patient and have the tenacity you can sometimes get BT Openreach to explain their cost calculations in relation to the actual physical network and possibly the real costs of upgrading it.)

The 2Wire will show you the number and time to the nearest second of the retrains between each re-boot (i.e. usually power failure).

I believe that crosstalk is most likely between a faulty transmitting pair and all those in close proximity to it.
On an unshielded cable the outer pairs would seem more likely to pick up external noise.
Also note that if a screened cable is earthed at both ends it can cause circulating currents which can render the screen useless.
I believe BT O use different types of twisted pair phone cables probably installed at different times in their existence.
At one stage they used a single bundle, possibly with a more gentle twist, but others use more bundles so vary the contact point possibilities. (HELP Ezzer !)

I have found around here that frustrated but co-operative people will let me install my laptop attached to their modem which can be invaluable using logmein to monitor and record modem performance from my home and thus saving time and petrol. (You'll see some results in my next thread.)

Kind regards,
Walter
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Jarviser

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Re: The REIN it REINeth every day !
« Reply #27 on: August 23, 2009, 11:25:01 AM »

I did once receive an email from a BT engineer direct to my website where he described how they discovered an electric fence discharging to the wet grass near a buried concentrator.  BT now pay the farmer to cut the grass, believe it or not and there was no reason for this guy to make it up.  He was one of the BT guys using the medium wave radio technique.

I would have thought that, damaging though such a massive discharge would be to BT cables, the frequency would be every few seconds (or the animals would not get the message) rather than several times a day. The above case was effectively  continuous noise as far as the DSLAM was concerned. . Surely REIN on a daily basis or several times a day is more likely be linked to timers, discrete events or shift patterns in local industry - for example when do they switch on the milking machines and do they use stepper transformers on the farm from 440Volt three-phase down to something thay can safely use in a damp milking parlour.  Does the electric fence get switched on and off when the beasts are in the stables?

I tried for months to locate a noise event somewhere between my house and the exchange in a town setting that happened every week day at "tea time" but got nowhere with it.  Just too many industrial sites, too many concentrators and too few BT engineers.  The felt I was getting 1 meg at worst so what was the problem? So now I am a mobile broadband dongler and that is a more stable broadband than the ADSL ever was.
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general disquiet

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Re: The REIN it REINeth every day !
« Reply #28 on: August 23, 2009, 01:35:03 PM »

In putting my 2-Wire back in service, I did something really dumb and plugged the DSL line into the phone connector!  Not surprisingly it didn't work, but I discovered something potentially useful.  javascript:void(0);

The 2-Wire seemed to act as a microphone, picking up every little electrical noise in the house.  When you tried to make a phone call (DECT phone), you could hear all this in the background - switches being thrown, the motor in the washing machine and there in the background was the steady tick, tick of the electric fence about a km away up the road.

Now I'm sure that this doesn't do the 2-Wire much good, but it seems it might be a useful diagnostic tool to get a feel for the level of electrical fug in which we all exist.  You only have 4 or 5 seconds to listen to this before the phone disconects, but enough time to get an idea.
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Ezzer

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Re: The REIN it REINeth every day !
« Reply #29 on: August 23, 2009, 02:56:58 PM »

Electric fence with a good earth; hello :hmm: that would increase the transmission of the fence dramaticaly, next point is it producing a noise that dsl can hear

None of the cabling is  screened as far as I know and ther's onlyone engineer in this area who has screened internla cabling on their van  ;)

Scp does mean secondary conection point and wouldbe a further extention to a pcp so for instance if the pcp was cab4 the 1st scp would be designated 4/1. there sometimes defined as a pillar due to the fact they're often of a pillar look. athough more typicaly a pillar would be not so much a connection point but a lightning protection unit.

E-side means exchange side, d-side distribution side. although typicaly this refers to cabling either side of a pcp  it can be used to describe a situation relative to a point of intervention by an engineer just as someone say in the north of a country would still refer to north south relative to their position.

If your very close to an exchange then you may be on an EO or exchange only cable, not running though a cabinet, although there are the odd runs for several kilometers that are EO

Incidentaly you can get a reasonable directional location using a mw radio. the reffite core antennea is a coil of wire around a pencil sized rod. the rod picks up a signal best when perpendicuar to a transmitting wire. A few months back I found REIn comming off high voltage cables off the very large pylons. I could even put the source down to one of 2 cables of 6
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