Our BT telphone line comes into our hallway by the front door and travels across the hallway and then through the wall to a junction box in our front room. This is where our desk top computer is.
The junction box is on the east wall in the front room, but the computer is by the west wall and is joined by about ten metres of telephone extension cable which runs around the wall. The splitter (DSL filter) is plugged in at the junction box end, not the modem end.
The internet connection keeps dropping down, but comes back up readily enough if i use the on/off switch on the back of the netgear DGN2200 modem router. And sometimes just reconnects by itself after a few minutes.
After spending time with netgear technical helpline, they want to try the connection by moving the pc next to the junction box and so eliminate the 10 metre extension cable. Because its a small room and because of the layout, i am loath to move the computer to that side of the room, if at all possible.
Is it at all likely that this 10 metre extension cable would be causing these disconnections? They seem to happen once every two or three days. Our house is a semi, is there anything that our neighbour might be doing to cause a disconnection? Someone has suggested that it would be better to move the modem close to the junction box and then buy a 10 metre LAN cable to connect to the computer. Would this be a good idea?
Even if the phone extension wire is 'shielded' it will be prone to picking up interference from any electrical appliance in the vicinity.
That's OK. What else is using the phone line? (Phone, fax, answering machine, ...).
There may be a fault on the telephone line between your house and the exchange, or at the exchange, or on the ISP's DSL system. You need to eliminate any possibility of a fault inside your house, though, before calling out the telco or ISP engineers - they'll charge a lot if they find the fault is in your equipment not theirs, and probably not be able to fix it either.
I'd recommend putting the DSL 'modem' as close as possible to the 'master' phone socket. Ethernet LAN cable is much better at carrying data signals than most indoor phone extension leads are.
As DSL filters are relatively cheap, and they can go wrong, it's worth trying a new one to see if that helps. More expensive DSL filters may work better and for longer - and look nicer too.
Modems and routers can go wrong too, and I've noticed that some units work better than others with a particular internet connection or ISP.
BT sell (or give away) a gadget they currently call "the BT Broadband Accelerator" which can sometimes improve DSL performance by filtering out some interference from the (usually redundent these days) bell wire on hard-wired extension circuits.
Sure. Also check the modems internal webpage and look under the settings for the modems logfile. It will tell you something about why the connection is dropping. Line noise is usually the culprit though in cases like yours.
Anything that cuts down the length of the telephone cable and number of connectors is a good thing in these sort of connections as adsl is really a bit of a bodge at the best of times. However, does your telephone line outside run overhead or underground?
You would be better to ask this at uk.telecom.broadband where you will get good help from people who really do understand what they are talking about. I have taken the liberty of cross-posting it for you.
What sort of "junction box" are you talking about - is it a BT-type master socket and, if so, does it have a removable faceplate? Are there any other phone extensions wired off it? What is the construction of the extension cable, and what sort of plugs does it have at each end?
Is there any correlation between these disconnections and voice calls being made on the telephone?
Answers to those questions will help us to understand the possible issues better.
Having said that, a disconnect every 2 or 3 days is not particularly unusual - and may have nothing to do with your setup.
For some reason I am not seeing your OP in utb but fortunately Roger quoted it intact.
The questions he asks are what I would ask. In particular can you be clear what this telephone extension cable is, it sounds more like a long RJ11-RJ11 cable than a conventional telephone extension cable.
Is your description of the wiring complete? ie no other sockets, even if unused?
Curious - I don't see the original post (this is viewing with SeaMonkey)
However:
As others have asked, we need to know more about the junction box.
Siting the router adjacent to this junction box and connecting it to the PC with a long Ethernet cable would be a good plan.
Please tell us the loop attenuation, SNR margin, and data rate reported by the router. Do these figures vary - particularly the SNR margin - at about the time the connection fails?
Please tell us the ISP - if they are any good they may be able to help resolve the problem.
That's because Woody quoted it *below* his signature - so most newsreaders would regard it as part of the signature, and strip it off from replies. I had a hell of a job to capture it when I replied!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ thanks to all. sorry for the delay in replying. The telephone comes in from a wooden pole overhead.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ thanks to all. sorry for the delay in replying. The telephone comes in from a wooden pole overhead.
Just for diligence, the modem doesn't connect to the outside line through the splitter, right?
On assumption your modem is otherwise operating normally, xDSL modems are built to monitor signal quality and automatically adjust internal equalization to achieve 'best' signal-to-noise, and thus 'best' bit error rate. If signal quality falls too low, the signal is dropped.
That is -possible-, but depends on line quality, connector quality, and so on. From your description, the more likely scenario is the extra 10m is pushing overall SNR below a usable limit, on certain days. If you move the modem and PC next to the junction box (no extra 10m), and still see a problem, it ain't the extra 10m line.
Probably not. Ordinary telephone lines are 'unshielded twisted pair' and thus subject to some level of pick-up from external radio sources. But for ordinary residential applications all of that is largely out-of-band, very low level, and not likely to have much effect on xDSL service.
Category-5 ("LAN cable") does return much better signal quality over much wider bandwidth than UTP. That choice won't hurt, but may do much to fix your problem, if the connection between (say) your residence and the Central Office is generally in bad shape.
Our BT telephone line comes into our hallway by the front door and travels across the hallway and then through the wall to a junction box in our front room. This is where our desk top computer is.
The junction box is on the east wall in the front room, but the computer is by the west wall and is joined by about ten metres of telephone extension cable which runs around the wall. The splitter (DSL filter) is plugged in at the junction box end, not the modem end.
The internet connection keeps dropping down, but comes back up readily enough if i use the on/off switch on the back of the netgear DGN2200 modem router. And sometimes just reconnects by itself after a few minutes.
After spending time with netgear technical helpline, they want to try the connection by moving the pc next to the junction box and so eliminate the 10 metre extension cable. Because its a small room and because of the layout, i am loath to move the computer to that side of the room, if at all possible.
Is it at all likely that this 10 metre extension cable would be causing these disconnections? They seem to happen once every two or three days. Our house is a semi, is there anything that our neighbour might be doing to cause a disconnection? Someone has suggested that it would be better to move the modem close to the junction box and then buy a 10 metre LAN cable to connect to the computer. Would this be a good idea?
I changed the telephone extension lead as advised and it is now definitely better. I do have one BT extension phone socket ending up in the kitchen, but just cannot find where the wires to it come from. So for the moment will leave it in place.
I still get a drop off every couple of days or some, but as someone has suggested to me this could be kind of normal?
Was just looking at the BT accelerator (as advised since I have this additional extension phone socket )on the BT website and stone me if they didn't ring up at that very moment asking would I like to sign up for their optical cable connection broadband service. They have my details...could they know what I'm doing on their site, I ask myself?
Going optical would mean increasing my monthly payments of £14 for the 'Be' provider to £18 with BT and he said he would *guarantee* up to 40 Mbytes. Having just forked out for a new netgear modem router I'm not sure about all this.
My son downloads the occasional film but apart from that I only surf and email, so would all the extra palaver be worth it I ask my self? And I dot know if I could connect the optical cable to the other computers in the house?
Life's not easy not knowing much. Thanks to all for the help. The new Ethernet cable has made a big difference.
1) Fit a faceplate microfilter to the master socket, such as:
formatting link
Also shown at:
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part number: ADSL-NTEFACE-SOL
This of course begs the question of exactly where the master socket is, and how the extension wiring to the kitchen is achieved.
2) Locate the router near to the mster socket, and connect it using the short cable supplied with it to the "ADSL" socket on the faceplate microfilter.
3) Connect the router to your computer using a convenient length of Ethernet cable.
If you see a disconnection every couple of days this would be entirely normal for an ADSL service provided by BT. If you migrate to a professional ISP you should only expect disconnections caused by nearby lightning strikes during a thunderstorm. An ISP such as Zen Internet should be able to improve the reliability. If you choose Andrews & Arnold you should be able to ring them about every disconnection as it occurs and ask them why it happened.
From the prices and speeds you quote it appears the salesperson was talking about BT Infinity, this is not fibre to the premises (FTTP)but fibre to the cabinet (FTTC).
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The fibre cable runs only from the exchange to your nearest BT junction box and the connection from there to your home is via the normal BT line, no optical cable comes near your house.
I had Infinity installed a couple of months ago, a painless 1 hour process. Here is the result of a speed test I ran just now.
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If you were to order Infinity, the only change would be that the engineers would replace the master socket and install a modem and BT Home Hub 3 router to which your pc's connect as usual via either wifi or wired via the 4 available network sockets.
You actually missed something which could be of importance and that is that the master socket can be moved to where the service is required, bed room, backroom, extension etc etc etc. It does not have to be installed where the present master socket lives (it's normally easier to move the master than to play around trying to crimp RJ11 plugs, designed for flat cables onto the 'new' digital extension cable, which is twisted and hence round and then having to run that cable to where ever the service is required).
No, 'normal' is as you'd expect, no drop-outs, apart from events outside their control -- storm, power outage, failure-to-pay, so on...
"Bytes" or "bits"? It's usually the latter, usually per-second.
It's not likely you'd need to worry. Commonly, there are two possible scenarios, fiber-to-remote-terminal and fiber-to-the-curb. The first still has Unshielded Twisted Pair to the house (mentioned by someone else); the second has fiber to a point either on the building or very close. For the first you still use your xDSL modem. For the second, you'll need more details -- you -may- need new hardware or the ISP will provide it. I'd bet it's the latter.
I had similar problems with a router when I first used ADSL. It was cured by placing a spike suppressor on the power supply to the router. I think the most likely culprit in my case would have been the fridge thermostat turning on and off. Is the fridge or freezer on the same mains ring as the router?
The spike suppressor was just a large plug with some electronics in. (A capacitor I think). There are things on the market today called surge suppressors, whether they are the same, better, or worse I don't know.
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