Aluminium cable problems - Help Kraftee please!!

Sorry to post this here but K is so good that one has to seek his advice.

To start I must say that I have been in the telephone lines business
(Broadcast lines) myself over many years so have some idea of the
principles and cable types involved.I have even had to lecture BT
'youths' on loaded cables, bunched pairs and the effect of mixed legs
making a pair!

The problem is our near neighbour (who we help out).

He has BT BB but neither he nor his neighbour can get anything more than
about 1 - 1.5M.
I know it's not his internal cabling as I have checked from the master
socket.
Knowing the BT cable routes around here a bit, he is no further (and
mostly on the same main route) as me and other neighbours- some of whom
are even further from (Ealing) exchange.

All I can think is that someone may have put in a bit of aluminium cable
as a mend or something. Is this likely?

He is fed up with trying to get India to do anything but a nice BT man
who finally came around agreed with the situation but said he could do
no more as faster speeds were 'not guaranteed'

Not suprisingly he is P****d off with paying the full BB wack and
ngetting any sensible speeds.

Any ideas how to progress this anyone?

Mike

m wrote on Thu, 11 Jan 2007 00:38:29 +0000:

> Sorry to post this here but K is so good that one has to seek his advice.
>
> To start I must say that I have been in the telephone lines business
> (Broadcast lines) myself over many years so have some idea of the
> principles and cable types involved.I have even had to lecture BT 'youths'
> on loaded cables, bunched pairs and the effect of mixed legs making a
> pair!
>
> The problem is our near neighbour (who we help out).
>
> He has BT BB but neither he nor his neighbour can get anything more than
> about 1 - 1.5M.

How have you determined this? What speed is the router syncing with the
exchange at? If you can post some figures from the router, it might help
determine where the problem is.

For instance, when I was changed to MAX my router was syncing at 6Mbps to
7.5Mbps, but speed tests were showing 1.5Mbps to 2Mbps. I waited over a
month, and according to the BT checker my IP profile was 5000, and I was
synced at 5500 (matched my router at that time), yet I was still seeing only
1.5Mbps to 2Mbps from speed tests (including the BT one). I ended up
contacting my ISP who "adjusted something" on my account, and now I'm seeing
5Mbps on speed tests. I can only guess that my ISP had my account settings
left at it's 2Mbps profile from before it was switched to MAX.

If you can get onto the BT speed tester you should be able to pull up the IP
profile speed and run a speed test there to see if it matches. However I've
been unable to get further than the phone number entry since the end of
November, I always get a "too busy" response from the site.
http://speedtester.bt.com is the URL, you might have more luck than me. If
the router is syncing at a decent speed, and the BT speed test site shows a
decent IP profile speed, then the problem is not the line itself - it'll be
in the BT BB account settings where for some reason the account is being
throttled. If the router is syncing high and the profile is low, it's likely
that the line is not stable at the high rate and the SNR is close to 6db,
and so over time the router will be reconnecting at lower speeds. If the
router is syncing low then it's the line that's the problem.

Until you can determine where the issue is, there's really not much point
trying to get BT to fix anything.

Dan

On Thu, 11 Jan 2007 00:38:29 +0000, m <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>All I can think is that someone may have put in a bit of aluminium cable
>as a mend or something. Is this likely?

its possible - what is the attenuation and how far from the exchange (
samknows.com may help ).

Phil

"Phil Thompson" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> On Thu, 11 Jan 2007 00:38:29 +0000, m <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>>All I can think is that someone may have put in a bit of aluminium cable
>>as a mend or something. Is this likely?
>
> its possible - what is the attenuation and how far from the exchange (
> samknows.com may help ).

Actually it's very improbable as the cable (if aluminium) would be the
original cable & the replacement would be (good old) copper.

The post above sums up the situation about sync speeds etc, but the attitude
shown by the visiting 'engineer' although it may be considered by some as
brutal & unhelpful is the company policy.

If you push the ISP hard enough they _may_ get someone out to check the
line, but it would be a case of pushing the right buttons at the right time
& I don't think that is possible (but am willing to be proved wrong) with
Tiscali