Boradband line reliability test

Hi,

Does anyone know of any way to test a broadband lines reliability ?

We have a customer who's line drops out three or four times a day.
They use this line for remote workers to work over a VPN from another
site.

When it drops out it causes a fair amount of disruption.

It never did this before these guys installed ADSL MAX.

They used to have regular 1Mbps connection before.

Both sites are on the same exchange and are about a mile away from
each other.

They had a new line broadband enabled for the main site with ADSL MAX.
So they still have their old 1Mbps line in action and for the time
being they have switched back to this and are having no problems at
all now.

Though they want to get back on to using the ADSL MAX line as they are
paying for this as well.

We need to check the reliability of this line before we switch them
back over and I'm wondering if there are any testing tools that could
be say loaded onto a laptop and hooked up to this line to run a test
over a seven day period.

We've been told by BT that the line is OK, but they've said that
before and a few days later the line falls back in to dropping out
again.

Thus far the line had problems with it's initial activation, BT said
is was good to go but it didn't work.

They sent an engineer round who could find no fault on site and
returned back to the exchange whereupon he apparently changed some
jumpers ? whatever that means, then the line worked.

But it has been very poor since it's comission with the ADSL speed
deterioating every couple of days or so to the point that it starts
cutting off.

We then call BT, they do something, it's then OK for a short while and
then it tails off again.

We've changed all the hardware on site several times now to no avail.
Currently we are told that it's working OK again now, but the customer
won't let us change back until we are certain that the line is OK,
which at the moment we aren't

Anyone know of any tools to check and log reliability ?
The routers tools and logs aren't very helpful.

Jim.

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Does anyone know of any way to test a broadband lines reliability ?

Have you tried looking at the noise margin and examined the router logs ?

Would you know how to interpret them ?

Graham

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Does anyone know of any way to test a broadband lines reliability ?


www.l8nc.com

L3K

"Eeyore" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>
>
> (E-Mail Removed) wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Does anyone know of any way to test a broadband lines reliability ?
>
> Have you tried looking at the noise margin and examined the router logs ?


1. Get a good router which outputs to syslog - e.g. Vigor.

2. Set up a server on your LAN to collect all the syslog reports.

3. Connect the router direct to the test point in the master socket.

4. Change your ISP for one who will understand your syslog reports - if
necessary they will then arrange for BT to correct the problem

In reality step 4 is the most important - you can't hope to get anywhere
unless you have a competent and trustworthy ISP on your side.

--
Graham J

Graham wrote:

> 4. Change your ISP for one who will understand your syslog reports - if
> necessary they will then arrange for BT to correct the problem
>
> In reality step 4 is the most important - you can't hope to get anywhere
> unless you have a competent and trustworthy ISP on your side.

Yes. TOTALLY agreed.

A medicocre ISP will just bugger you about. A rubbish one won't even care. It's
all due to 'dumbing down' and outsourcing in order to get the cheapest price. Do
expect to talk to Indians who haven't the tiniest clue about anything. So, you
can save maybe £5 on the monthly cost but in return you get a useless service
that barely works. Not clever.

In short, if you need you ADSL for business / commerce NEVER use a 'mainstream'
ISP as they're all total shit. I'm not joking. Every ISP with say > 20,000
customers is a complete waste of space.

I shall (as ever) nominate IDNet as an ISP you can trust. I do and I've not been
disappointed. The fact they come top of the performance charts on
thinkbroadband.com probably isn't by accident.

http://idnet.net/
IDNet is a specialist ISP focussed to provide high-performance broadband,
professional e-mail services, leading-edge web design, and high-security web
hosting for business.

Graham

On 6-Aug-2007, Linker3000 <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> > Does anyone know of any way to test a broadband lines reliability ?
>
>
> www.l8nc.com
>
> L3K

There is also NanoPing, just Google for it, free, and you can contact
the author, no registration needed.
Just enter the address you want to ping, set the interval, push start
and away it goes.
I use it for a wireless link that sometimes goes flakey. Could be
someone near on the same channel.

"Eeyore" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>
>
> Graham wrote:
>
>> 4. Change your ISP for one who will understand your syslog reports - if
>> necessary they will then arrange for BT to correct the problem
>>
>> In reality step 4 is the most important - you can't hope to get anywhere
>> unless you have a competent and trustworthy ISP on your side.
>
> Yes. TOTALLY agreed.
>
> A medicocre ISP will just bugger you about. A rubbish one won't even care.
> It's
> all due to 'dumbing down' and outsourcing in order to get the cheapest
> price. Do
> expect to talk to Indians who haven't the tiniest clue about anything. So,
> you
> can save maybe £5 on the monthly cost but in return you get a useless
> service
> that barely works. Not clever.

[snip]

Just heard a similar story on BBC R4 about the water authority in the
Gloucester area. Group of 8 households in an isolated village, no water
since contamination problem following from floods. Since the problem was
clearly widespread, they waited until the national news reported "100% of
households have had water supplies restored". Problem - they still had no
water. Ring water authority: "have you turned the stopcock on?" and similar
inane questions every time they rang - for days ....!! Clearly no system to
record and inform helpline staff that this was an exceptional problem and
all the obvious tests had already been carried out.

What if they get their internet from the same supplier ...?

--
Graham J

Thanks everyone for your help.


Boradband...hmm some kind of spell chequer called for I think... ;-)

Graham, here are the current SNR ? router figures.

I've had a bit of a look around and basically I gather than I ideally
need 10db SNR or better, lower being bad.

Noise margin upstream - 9db
Output power downstream - 19db
Attenuation upstream - 16db

Noise margin downstream - 8db
Output power upstream - 11db
Attenuation downstream - 27db

Is Noise margin the same the same as SNR ? I don't think it is is it ?

Router is a Zyxel Presitige P660H-D1

Jim.

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:

> Thanks everyone for your help.
>
> Boradband...hmm some kind of spell chequer called for I think... ;-)
>
> Graham, here are the current SNR ? router figures.
>
> I've had a bit of a look around and basically I gather than I ideally
> need 10db SNR or better, lower being bad.
>
> Noise margin upstream - 9db
> Output power downstream - 19db
> Attenuation upstream - 16db
>
> Noise margin downstream - 8db
> Output power upstream - 11db
> Attenuation downstream - 27db
>
> Is Noise margin the same the same as SNR ? I don't think it is is it ?

The margin is AIUI the signal level 'in hand' before problems would occur due to
noise issues. Which does indeed means it's not quite the same as SNR.

Those figures certainly look OK.

Is there any way of discovering what's going on when the connection 'drops out'
? Which ISP btw, and is it the same one on both the 1Mbps and max connections ?

Graham

The ISP in Enta http://www.enta.net

Apart from a few incidents we are very happy with their service.

We feel that the problem lies at the exchange or between the exchange
and the master socket.
Just need BT to put their finger on it I guess.

Say, when BT say that they have moved your connection onto another
card or whatever at the exchange in an attempt to resolve a connection
problem, what's to stop them moving your connection again if someone
else complains of a bad connection ?

How are the two wires connected back at the exchange ?

Are several peoples connections all terminated on one card ? if so how
many people on one card ?

Jim.