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[mywifeshusband]

Now I’m not technical in a telephone or Broadband sense but  I was a building services maintenance manager and engineer in my past and I do know a bit about systematic fault finding. I can also learn. I have needed to!

BT & I are at loggerheads over my BB service, which since the middle of December has persistently dropped out on most (but not all days). I have had 6 or is it 7 BB & Openreach engineers all visiting, doing their tests, and with the exception of one, saying they cannot find any faults with my equipment, the BT apparatus, or the Openreach cabling. I concede that the stats seem to corroborate this.

One engineer early on in the saga speculated that it might be my phone causing the problem , but it was only a guess. (But on the strength of his reporte BT have charged me £127.99 for his visit, despite not fixing my problem)

Guess or not I went out and bought a brand new BT Phone and answer machine, but of course the fault persisted: and it is now more than 5 weeks old.

The BT Home Type A I have found out has a history I believe of wireless connection problems and its transformer power supply certainly makes a great deal of noise at 610khz. This is the router, which I’m using at present, but in the past I have had similar problems with other routers. If my problem is REIN noise from this source why do I get some good days when the BB connection stays in sync perfectly well.

Whilst listening to the Rein noise from the Power supply the last engineer demonstrated how the sound of the router trying to re sync could be heard on the 610khz tuned speaker.

Now is this significant? The engineer thought it might be but was not prepared to speculate in his official report. If carrying out a 17070 – quiet line test at the same time, there is sometimes, but not always, a hint of a sound which seems to coincide with the flashing of the BB lamp on the router. I thought the engineer said that this was an indicator for an HC fault. Now HEC faults I know about  and these are consistently nil / a very low number seldom above double digits and often zero.  I did look up HC faults on the web and found a reference under iBurst which frankly I did not understand and seemed irrelevant anyway. My wireless connection being 802.11 not 802.20.

I’m grasping at straws here but if anyone can explain in words of one syllable first why my connection keeps dropping out, failing to reset until I use the phone to make a call, AND defeats the army of BT & Openreach engineers who are working on the problem I’d be very please to hear what you have to say. I am at the end of a long copper and aluminium line with a line att of 63dB & 31.5db pretty consitantly because I’m on a fixed BB at 0.97kbps the line being incapable of sustaining anything better.

[waltergmw]

Hi MWH,

I suggest trying Routerstats or Routerstats lite to record the modem's performance which please then post here.
You might also glean a little more by using the diagnostics page on a 2Wire 2700HGV which you can use to begin with without entering your user data and just looking at the synchronising data.
Here's the instructions if you want to try this method:-

http://bt2700hgv.tripod.com/002.htm

I've found this modem to be very good at holding on to a connection where others drop as you'll see here:-

http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/topic,8641.0.html

Kind regards,
Walter

[BritBrat]

First thing I would do is plug router into master socket and have no phones for a day and computer wired to router, log the results with Routerstats.

Then plug a filter into the test socket attach the router and the new phone and test for another 24 hours.

Then report back here with router stats as they are now and when it was just the router connected then with the router/phone connected.

Sometimes you have to have some pain or you get no gain, I would also do 17070 option 2 and ringback a few times on the 2nd 24 hour test noting how routers stats reports at the time.

And while you have the master socket face plate off look behind to make sure there are only two wires connected to A B.

If that still fails I would try another router and all new/replacement leads and filters.  You can get routers quite cheap on Ebay just make sure you get a good one. Netgear DG834GT are quite good.

But at the end of the day if the BT line is very old and in a poor condition you are stuck, but as Walter said try the BT 2700 router but they are a liitle more complicated to set up.

How is the power supply holding up Walter

[razpag]

Now I’m not technical in a telephone or Broadband sense but  I was a building services maintenance manager and engineer in my past and I do know a bit about systematic fault finding. I can also learn. I have needed to!

BT & I are at loggerheads over my BB service, which since the middle of December has persistently dropped out on most (but not all days). I have had 6 or is it 7 BB & Openreach engineers all visiting, doing their tests, and with the exception of one, saying they cannot find any faults with my equipment, the BT apparatus, or the Openreach cabling. I concede that the stats seem to corroborate this.

One engineer early on in the saga speculated that it might be my phone causing the problem , but it was only a guess. (But on the strength of his reporte BT have charged me £127.99 for his visit, despite not fixing my problem)

Guess or not I went out and bought a brand new BT Phone and answer machine, but of course the fault persisted: and it is now more than 5 weeks old.

The BT Home Type A I have found out has a history I believe of wireless connection problems and its transformer power supply certainly makes a great deal of noise at 610khz. This is the router, which I’m using at present, but in the past I have had similar problems with other routers. If my problem is REIN noise from this source why do I get some good days when the BB connection stays in sync perfectly well.

Whilst listening to the Rein noise from the Power supply the last engineer demonstrated how the sound of the router trying to re sync could be heard on the 610khz tuned speaker.

Now is this significant? The engineer thought it might be but was not prepared to speculate in his official report. If carrying out a 17070 – quiet line test at the same time, there is sometimes, but not always, a hint of a sound which seems to coincide with the flashing of the BB lamp on the router. I thought the engineer said that this was an indicator for an HC fault. Now HEC faults I know about  and these are consistently nil / a very low number seldom above double digits and often zero.  I did look up HC faults on the web and found a reference under iBurst which frankly I did not understand and seemed irrelevant anyway. My wireless connection being 802.11 not 802.20.

I’m grasping at straws here but if anyone can explain in words of one syllable first why my connection keeps dropping out, failing to reset until I use the phone to make a call, AND defeats the army of BT & Openreach engineers who are working on the problem I’d be very please to hear what you have to say. I am at the end of a long copper and aluminium line with a line att of 63dB & 31.5db pretty consitantly because I’m on a fixed BB at 0.97kbps the line being incapable of sustaining anything better.

Your last paragraph is the one that has me replying to you. You say the Hub will only "reset" when you make a phone call Assuming the previous engineers have ensured your internal installation (ie- all wiring,sockets and filtering) is up to the required standard, then I would say your fault is one of 2 things.

1) A 'HR Dis' fault. This is a High-Resistance fault that means the wire is corroding or trapped in a PCP door or something along those lines, whereas the poundage (Thickness) of the wire isn't what it should be. This has a 2-way effect on the circuit. It can cause the DSL Hub/Router to DROP synch when the phone is in use, or it can as in your case, bridge the gap the HR fault is causing by drawing more current by using the phone, and thus allowing your router to re-synch.

2) A 'Lift & Shift' is required. This is where the SP's DSL equipment has gone faulty.

If I were a betting man, my money would go on No.1 and I would ask the engineer to use his HAWK/MOLE/JDSU/AXXO tester (whichever he's got) to test back to the exchange for a 'HR Dis'. If the engineer is worth his salt, he will be able to find the problem.

As an aside, I've customers on higher attenuated cables than yourself who enjoy better speeds. This is why I do think it is a HR fault and once cured, you should see at least double what you are getting at the moment.

Disclaimer -- As in any type of 'remote faulting'. I can only offer advice on what you are stating in your posts above, and am not always going to be on the money as there are other spurious faults that can cause problems. Still,  I'd ask for a SFI engineering visit ASAP. Make sure you are on-site when he visits and mention the 'HR Dis' fault to him/her.

[waltergmw]

@ BB,

Very well indeed thank you. I must have been responsible for about 15 of these modems on our diabolical long lines with manky aluminium and that power supply is the only failure so far.

Kind regards,
Walter

[mywifeshusband]

Thanks for al the information. I work my way through it so I might be gone for a while.

HR= High resistance: - and I thought it was something technical
See above

Quote
1) A 'HR Dis' fault. This is a High-Resistance fault that means the wire is corroding or trapped in a PCP door or something along those lines, whereas the poundage (Thickness) of the wire isn't what it should be. This has a 2-way effect on the circuit. It can cause the DSL Hub/Router to DROP sync when the phone is in use, or it can as in your case, bridge the gap the HR fault is causing by drawing more current by using the phone, and thus allowing your router to resync.
Unquote - Note. How do you do a nice blue extract from a previous post without getting the whole thing?

There is absolutely no doubt that this is the major problem but I'm seeing what appears to be a turf war between BT and Openreach with regard to my problem. Open reach only seem to come on the days in which I'm having a better connection. (As it happens on a Friday)  I have never had any problems on a Saturday, but just wait until the start of the week Mondays and particularly Tuesdays are absolutely terrible.
The upshot is that Openreach report nothing wrong, which is quite correct until the next Monday morning.  So my guess is HR + traffic on the line + radio noise = my fault. Now if only BT / Open reach would learn simple algebra!
Thanks again.

[BritBrat]

The point of my post was to make 100% sure the fault is not on your equipment.

For me that is the first port of call as if it is you can get charged but more importantly knowing it is not your fault means you can argue against any charge they try and put on you, I would normally say even look for damp in the master socket and get an hair dryer on it to make sure but all that is just to avoid BT saying it is your fault.