2 phone lines each with adsl (ADSL performance degrades?)

Are there any pitfalls?

I currently have a single BT phone line with ADSL that has proved very
reliable for nearly 10 years.
Now, BT have a deal where you can get a second line installed for free**
until the end of June. Assuming I make it clear that the second line is for
ADSL and also assuming that the line will be provisioned at my end by using
a spare unused pair in the incoming ground-based (not telephone pole) cable,
are there any known issues with having 2 ADSL services on an adjacent pair
of wires running out to the street in the same cable and then beyond, if
they happen to connect them to physically adjacent pairs for the entire
route to the exchange.

It would be a disaster if it took out the reliability of the original ADSL
line too.

I may end up contending for bandwidth with myself across the 2 ADSL lines,
but I'm more concerned about a reduction in speed or unreliability due to
any interference. Speed here for a 2 M-bit line is very high, so, I guess
there is not much contention around here.

Thanks,


**Unrelated to my question: only for those interested in the BT second line
install: if you don't make the requried 30 calls (free or not) on your
second line per quater, then you'll get a line installation charge slapped
onto your next bill as soon as you don't - so, if you only using the line to
bond 2 ADSL lines together and don't intend to use the phone service, you'll
get stung.
I asked BT if I could call my first line 30 times for 1 second on the first
of each month and they said that would be fine (of course you'd want to do
this during the free period at the weekend depending on the tarrif. But
there are 8p per call connection charges if you only on the weekend free
tarrif - so, that will cost £28 by the end of a year).

On 11 May, 20:37, "Ato_Zee" <ato_...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > It would be a disaster if it took out the reliability of the original ADSL
> > line too.
>
> > I may end up contending for bandwidth with myself across the 2 ADSL lines,
>
> > but I'm more concerned about a reduction in speed or unreliability due to
> > any interference. *Speed here for a 2 M-bit line is very high, so, I guess
> > there is not much contention around here.
>
> Unlikelt to be any problems, unless there is a line problem, like a
> dry joint, or water ingress into the street cables/underground plant.
> If so the fault would need to be fixed.
> Make sure your internal wiring is twisted pair.
> You are in the same position re contention, noise and crosstalk,
> as you would be if a neighbour had ADSL installed.
> In many areas there are multiple ADSL circuits running over
> the same 200 pair, back to the exchange.


here in deepest wales I have two adsl lines both 9.2km from the
exchange.. speed isnt great but we have some redundance and eventually
i will get to install a load shareing switch.

we use Idnet for one and BT Broadband for the second.

ian H

"Ato_Zee" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:CMcOl.3239$(E-Mail Removed)2...
>
> On 12-May-2009, ianh <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>> here in deepest wales I have two adsl lines both 9.2km from the
>> exchange.. speed isnt great but we have some redundance and eventually
>> i will get to install a load shareing switch.
>>
>> we use Idnet for one and BT Broadband for the second.
>
> Will two different suppliers be optimal for load sharing?
> Different routes/routers, different latency, two different
> IP domains, etc.
> Main advantage of two lines is redundency if one ISP
> fails, an infrequent event. If there is a failur it is more
> likely to be exchange localised, when all suffer the outage.

I have two separate lines into the premises, sharing the same dropwire to a
junction on the pole at the corner of the garden. Am 5.5km from exchange,
and about 1km of that is overhead.

I use two dirt cheap Edimax routers in bridge mode connecting to a Vigor
2910 router to achieve load balancing. Primary reason for this is that the
Edimax routers achieve much better speeds than the modern Vigor ADSL routers
(although the oldest V2600 models with the long line firmware are
reasonable). The ISPs are Demon and Zen. Note that the load balancing
needs some careful setup if you use websites that lock your IP address as
part of their security. You need to set the router to always use one
specific ISP to ensure such websites work OK. A professional ISP may be
able to bond two ADSL channels together so that your router has a single IP
address, but I've never investigated. However you would lose the
reliability that having two different ISPs offers.

A problem I have seen elsewhere is where one line into the premises had an
ADSL service, which was not actually used and therefore did not have a
router connected to it (this for reasons to do with the ISP's poor
performance) and the other line was in use with a router connected. The
router on the second line reported fairly regular bursts of errors. The BT
technician who attended at the insistence of the ISP thought it was
crosstalk from the unused ADSL service which regularly sent large signals in
the vain hope of communicating with a router. We connected a spare router
to the unused service and the noise bursts went away.

--
Graham J

On 12 May, 14:51, "Graham J" <gra...@nospam.zen.co.uk> wrote:
> "Ato_Zee" <ato_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:CMcOl.3239$(E-Mail Removed)2...
>
>
>
> > On 12-May-2009, ianh <i...@beaconsveggieboxes.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >> here in deepest wales I have two adsl lines both 9.2km from the
> >> exchange.. speed isnt great but we have some redundance and eventually
> >> i will get to install a load shareing switch.
>
> >> we use Idnet for one and BT Broadband for the second.
>
> > Will two different suppliers be optimal for load sharing?
> > Different routes/routers, different latency, two different
> > IP domains, etc.
> > Main advantage of two lines is redundency if one ISP
> > fails, an infrequent event. If there is a failur it is more
> > likely to be exchange localised, when all suffer the outage.
>
> I have two separate lines into the premises, sharing the same dropwire toa
> junction on the pole at the corner of the garden. *Am 5.5km from exchange,
> and about 1km of that is overhead.
>
> I use two dirt cheap Edimax routers in bridge mode connecting to a Vigor
> 2910 router to achieve load balancing. *Primary reason for this is thatthe
> Edimax routers achieve much better speeds than the modern Vigor ADSL routers
> (although the oldest V2600 models with the long line firmware are
> reasonable). *The ISPs are Demon and Zen. *Note that the load balancing
> needs some careful setup if you use websites that lock your IP address as
> part of their security. *You need to set the router to always use one
> specific ISP to ensure such websites work OK. *A professional ISP may be
> able to bond two ADSL channels together so that your router has a single IP
> address, but I've never investigated. *However you would lose the
> reliability that having two different ISPs offers.
>
> A problem I have seen elsewhere is where one line into the premises had an
> ADSL service, which was not actually used and therefore did not have a
> router connected to it (this for reasons to do with the ISP's poor
> performance) and the other line was in use with a router connected. *The
> router on the second line reported fairly regular bursts of errors. *The BT
> technician who attended at the insistence of the ISP thought it was
> crosstalk from the unused ADSL service which regularly sent large signalsin
> the vain hope of communicating with a router. *We connected a spare router
> to the unused service and the noise bursts went away.
>
> --
> Graham J

Sorry to hijack the thread..

I use two adsl nation Xmodems -- on the basis that they
worked....prior to a extended outage with our BT service we used a BT
voyager220 for 2 years.

I am hoping to configure a Lynksis/cisco RV042 as a load balance but
havn't quite got it working yet ---( actually cant get it working on
one WAN let alone two)

The Idnet ---(can Highly recomend service) is a fixed IP and the BT is
not, but seems quite constant....

Regards

Ian