Interesting broadband problem

Have you checked all the junction boxes indoors? We had a similar problem a few years back, there was a junction box on the skirting board just inside the front door that (somehow) had got wet inside and all the terminals were corroded. The engineer confidently told us it was cat piss, but we didn't have a cat, unless the local Tom was doing it through our letter box. Anyway, he begrudgingly replaced it and our problems went away.

In article , newshound writes

As you've got an intermittent fault I'd recommend setting up a recording of it by dialling 17070 and selecting select quiet line test option. If you record it from the beginning you'll get announcement of your number, selection of the test and the crackles on the line. Will come in handy if the results come back no fault found and they try to charge you for the call outs. If you want to ice the cake you can do a voiceover before dialling of the date and time of the test.

The symptoms aren't that unusual, see uk.telecom and uk.telecom.broadband

Or a flooded hole in the ground.

Could still be internal wiring, next time it goes noisey plug a known good phone into the test socket behind the lower half of the NTE (master socket). If it's still noisey it shouldn't be internal as removing the lower face plate should disconnect all internal wiring. But it's not unknown for things to be wired incorrectly and extensions added before the NTE...

Assuming it is still noisey report the fault so the nice person in India can hear it and make sure they make a note on the fault report that it is intermitent.

When Openreach turn up, be nice (offer T and biscuits...) and politely inform them it's the second visit, it's intermittent and has been going on for x period. They are human and respond much better if treated nicely...

They may well have to put a TDR on the line to find the poor connection if the fault isn't present when they call. Once the crackly voice lince has been sorted out the chances are the ADSL will come back but might take a while (up to 3 days) to fully recover. There is a possibilty that it could get stuck at a low speed, in which case you need to get onto Plusnet for them to reset the line (re run the 10 day training period).

Sounds like you might be right, but also some of the underground terminations are not that watertight either. Its getting to it when its doing it and tracing it before it goes away again that is the tricky part of course. Brian

And sod's law that when you finally get them to send someone out, it doesn't play up.

- That's already happened once.

There is only the master socket, and that's been replaced, and I have done tests with the faceplate off and no phone handset on the line at all.

Didn't know about that one, thanks, will give it a try. But there's not much of a phone problem, whereas the net problems are continous when it rains. It's been dry all afternoon and has more or less recovered over the past couple of hours, see extract from log file

Date Fault start Fault duration

Fair point (although wouldn't that more likely affect numbers of users?)

Already done that

They just say it isn't showing a fault now. (Will run the test suggested by another poster)

What's TDR?

Sometimes you can get a quicker fix by reporting just a voice fault if it is an obvious one. It means they can just call out Joe audio line fixer rather that Billy broadband who is more specialised and is in great demand.

Less likely to be of benefit with your ISP as (despite my dislike of them generally) they have quite a good reputation at fault management.

We've had a fault where there was a water leak *in the exchange*. It actually affected the voice circuit only and the broadband was unaffected. Different from your case but it illustrates the possibilities.

May or may not, the cable joints in holes are still in "waterproof" bullets but it also depends on how well (or not) the "jelly beans" that join the indidual wires have been crimped or if there is enough jelly in 'em to keep the wet out.

Time Domain Reflectometer. Sends a signal down the line and looks for any reflections from impedance mismatches, broken wires etc. Good bit of kit a good clean line won't have any reflections or impedance mismatches. An iffy joint should show up with an impedance mismatch and by measuring how long it takes the reflection to arrive you know how far away it is, within a few meters...

Good luck. It took 2 years before BT finally found the fault with our line. Every time it rained, the same;

Rain Crackly line BB dies Speech dies Call BT Rain stops Speech starts up again BB starts up again Line goes quiet BT "engineer" arrives No fault found

Over and over and over and over again.

Time Domain Reflectometry. If there's a discontinuity in the line, it will show how far away it is.

The old style exchanges have separate racks for the voice and the DSL so its possible the water got onto the voice rack. However as the St Vincent exchange continued to operate after the roof was torn off by a hurricane I doubt it would have much effect.

Thanks, I know the technique, just didn't recognise the acronym. I've got a 100 MHz storage scope, where did I put my soldering iron.....

That's rather what I am worrying about. Dried up a bit overnight, only

Time to threaten cancelling contract, and price up 3G.....