Date : Thu, 06 May 2010 03:20:38 +0200
From : rick@... (Rick Murray)
Subject: [OT] ADSL capabilities
[late posting, just got back from work, bleugh]
On 05/05/2010 17:35, Andrew Hancock wrote:
> state we are at the very end of ADSL (3609 metres),
Wow, no wonder I'm only getting 1mbit (4.4km, approx!).
> and it looks like BT are going to throw in the towel and say tough!
Come on BT, man up and fix this. It USED to work...
> other people in the Hamlet, all seem to be having no issues (there's
> only 14 houses), of approx 5 that have ADSL broadband, they all use the
> same telegraph pole in the hamlet, so we are all going to be of similar
> length, and they have no issues.
Is your (analogue) phone "clear"? Do you hear crackles or hissing? Back
in the UK I had such a problem with BT's sh*t wiring and a total
reluctance to take down the strung line (all ten-odd metres of it) and
replace it with one that worked. The wire carried a number of twisted
pairs and the engineers used to just change the pair - but there's only
so many times you can pull this trick.
PS: Business line in an urban area, so they kinda had to not fob us off,
but then that didn't mean they had to do anything useful for SIX years.
Does your exchange support running a "quiet line test". You'll need to
Google because it's been so long... I used to run them regularly as they
are "hidden engineer tests" and are logged, which provided some actual
evidence as opposed to the engineer arriving on a bright dry windfree
day when the line is clear was a bell...
> So I remember reading his post of Mike's, do you think this may help us,
> we've tried many routers, Cisco (real no Linksys), Draytek and the
> problem which is intermittent still occurs. For a tenner, this may help!
Unplug *everything* and hook the router of choice directly to the line,
if possible at the earliest junction point. You probably have one of
those "fat" socket boxes at the point of the incoming line. Unscrew the
front plate, you'll see a phone socket inside (if yours was like ours).
Plug your router in there, that's about as close as you'll get to
croc-clipping the thing directly to the line. :-)
You don't need the ring separator filter (the master socket face plate
part) and you don't need any ADSL filter. All that stuff is basically to
sort out things for analogue phones.
[this does mean, of course, your phone will be offline for the test period]
It is unlikely to be a naff ADSL filter. Seen one of those, you can hear
data bursts on the analogue phone, and you'd be lucky if the ADSL box
can get as far as connecting...
> All tests today BT did, are ALL in the GREEN. No Red or Amber warnings
> on any.
And plugging in the official BT homehub worked for how long? If it ain't
working, it ain't green.
[WTF is with colour coding now? are the engineers these days THAT dense?
the lot I remember at least knew how to read a swing-needle multimeter!
:-P ]
> Thanks guys for picking your brains.
All I can say is "good luck"!
Best wishes,
Rick.
--
Rick Murray, eeePC901 & ADSL WiFI'd into it, all ETLAs!
BBC B: DNFS, 2 x 5.25" floppies, EPROM prog, Acorn TTX
E01S FileStore, A3000/A5000/RiscPC/various PCs/blahblah...