Internet connection

[Andy Burns]

Oh, I thought you said it was fixed now?

[The Natural Philosopher]

If you are getting bad bandwidth with the phone off hook, then there is a bad connection somewhere.

Any kind of weirdness will show up on a reflectometer. When I finally got my house back after the ex had fished destroying it, there were *5* line faults found.

It took a year to get them *all* fixed. And than I got fibre!

Persist.

[Fredxx]

Could you try a different micro-filter and see if the problem persists>?

[Tim Lamb]

In message [e-mail]>, Tim Streater [e-mail]> writes

Or I could phone their landline. It was only hypothetical as there must be lots of infrequent phone users between here and the exchange. That particular one stands out as it is fed from the same overheads.

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[Tim Lamb]

That is what I keep being told! Now on the third go around.

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[Tim Lamb]

Umm. All the testing is done with the router disconnected. We have a Panasonic wi-fi set up for the landline.

I did manage to get some *quiet line* crackles during the yesterday evening outage using a conventional phone.

I have Plusnet leaving the *question* open until next Wednesday to see if things settle down.

I plan to get my wife to call her while I monitor our connection.

[Tim Lamb]

This is a 4 year old telephone connection with two socket outlets. There is no external filtering before the router although I have one fitted at the home phone connection.

No criticism from 3 different phone engineers.

>

[Tim Lamb]

In message <unbok7$l10a$ [e-mail], Graham. [e-mail] writes

I don't know that the pairs were uninsulated. I think they meant the cable outer was stripped back and that the pairs were wet.

I'm not sure my aged hearing would pick up a low level buzz or hum. Conventional calls have not been affected. When this issue began, I dug out an old phone to use for 17070 quiet line testing. Yesterday evening I got a few audible crackles but nothing severe. I see the download is now 11.5Mb

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[The Natural Philosopher]

It sounds like you are getting a burst of crap that is knocking the system off its perch, probably due to rainfall, and then it slowly improves

[Tim Lamb]

Hmm. Dry overnight. Sat. evening it had dropped from 10.75Mb to 0.15Mb at 10.30. Sun. 7.30am 0.07Mb down and 0.15Mb up!

Router reset 9.00 am and initial reading 0.24 and 0.35

second reset 9.30 reading 0.17 and 1.56

9.45am now giving 0.23 and 0.37

At what stage does one suspect the router? Or computer software bearing in mind this issue coincided with me installing an MS rollup upgrade for W7?

[Andy Burns]

Use pingplotter (free trial) to graph your connection over a few days, does it always disconnect at same time it happens?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Never.

If you have *any* line crackles at all, you have a bad line and that's that.

You should go into the router's diagnostics and look for the line

*attenuation* and *signal to noise* ratio readings.

This will give you a fair idea of the line condition. You can screen capture or cut and paste these as evidence if you like.

If you have moderate attenuation but very poor S/N then its a bad joint somewhere. Could be in the overhead to your house - wind and rain don't play nice with overheads.

If you have bad attenuation, it's a broken wire.

All the time I had ADSL, corroded joints were the issue, then a little bit of crosstalk to neigbouring pairs. Plus a few dB fluctuation after dark when MW/LW radio signals increased.

Or computer software bearing

not relevant

Again, don't look at the computer stats. look at the *router* stats.

That will show you that its the link to the DSLAM, not your link to the computer.

[Tim Lamb]

I don't think I am that clever:-( There have now been 3 telephone engineers plugging in their diagnostic tackle to the internal line termination. All connections made by Open Reach. I only laid in a length of cable through the loft in readiness for the original installation.

I'll see if I can get some local help.

I'm using a commercial *on line* speed check service.

[Tim Lamb]

I'll have a look later.

I have not seen any pattern in disconnections apart from the good operation over Christmas.

I have a neighbour with the necessary skills to look at the router stats as TNP suggests. Sadly he is very busy renewing his central heating system following a major house renovation!

[The Natural Philosopher]

Surely you know how to log into the router with a web browser?

Whatever. Openreach engineers often stop after they fix the first or easiests fault they came across.

If its a BT POS router, there are a zillions how tos on you tube, and the admin password is on the back...

Choose "Advanced Settings" on the bottom right and you'll see the option for "Technical Log".

That has SNR/Attenuation in it

That tells you end to end. Not where the problem is in that chain of links.

[Spike]

Once upon a time our ADSL started playing up, due to noise on the line. An engineer did a time-domain test on the line, and diagnosed a fault 57m from our phone point. Pacing out the line’s route revealed that the fault was under the reinforced concrete road… He offered to put in a drop connection from a to be installed pole, the only one in the street. I declined the offer.

Instead, eBay supplied a router designed for long and noisy lines, a BT HGV7000 (?). It worked perfectly, no more dropouts and I don’t recall any speed drops.

I don’t know if these or similar ones are available.

[Spike]

It was a router by 2-wire badged as a BT HGV2700.

[The Natural Philosopher]

sounds like a vigor 2700. Or modification thereof. They cant solve a shit line problem

[Andy Burns]

No, as said they were re-badged "2Wire" devices, a friend that worked for BT gave me one, it didn't manage any improvement on my longish line.

[Spike]

EBay has them, e.g.

Anyone trying one of these would have to get into the secret menu to reset the ISP information (as mentioned by kitz) and find a way of stopping automatic resets by BT (if they still do that).