can internal wiring fault cause ADSL failure?

I had a call from BT Wholesale today in relation to my ongoing problem
with lack of ADSL and it left me a bit confused.

I have already been told by visiting engineers that I can't have ADSL
because I am too far from the exchange, but the chap on the phone seemed
to think that a 512k connection ought to work and that the real problem
was not line length (he seemed to be denying that line length in itself
could cause ADSL to fail) but a fault on my internal wiring.

He told me that the signal quality drops from 600 outside my house to
400 inside. To quote my old maths teacher: "600 what? 600 Mars bars?"
I'd be grateful if someone could explain to me what these figures might
mean.

Also, how do they measure them? I don't understand how it can be
possible to be so precise about where the fault is without actually
coming round to my house and physically testing the wiring.

Anyway, the upshot of this is that an engineer will be coming to my
house tomorrow to attempt to fix the fault and maybe I will be able to
have broadband after all. But I'm not holding my breath.

While I had him on the line, I asked a few other questions, and got some
interesting answers. It seems these figures (the 600 and the 400) have
been available to them all along, and yet for some reason they did not
see fit to make use of the information when assessing the suitability of
my line for ADSL.

What's even more confusing is that I asked one of the visiting engineers
very specifically about the possibility of internal wiring being faulty
and that being the cause of the problem, and he very specifically denied
it could even be possible.

Ho hum!

d.

davek <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in news:3umu05F12bi6cU1
@individual.net:

> What's even more confusing is that I asked one of the visiting engineers
> very specifically about the possibility of internal wiring being faulty
> and that being the cause of the problem, and he very specifically denied
> it could even be possible.

Really, every BT engineer we had out during having an annoying fault took
one look at our master socket and immediately blamed all our extensions for
causing the problem...until they spoke to me and I told them to look
closely at the wires for the extension, the *disconnected* wires for the
extension :0)

I'm not sure what the figures are though, they are normally quoted in
decibels but they don't look like that...

--
Colin
*Drop DEAD from the email address to reply*

davek wrote:
> I had a call from BT Wholesale today in relation to my ongoing problem
> with lack of ADSL and it left me a bit confused.
>
> I have already been told by visiting engineers that I can't have ADSL
> because I am too far from the exchange, but the chap on the phone
> seemed to think that a 512k connection ought to work and that the
> real problem was not line length (he seemed to be denying that line
> length in itself could cause ADSL to fail) but a fault on my internal
> wiring.

Line length is a misnomer, it's the construction of the line, the state
of the line & other external factors which afftects the signal, which is
why you can have people who live relatively close to their exchanges
being unable to have ADSL & yet you can get 1Mb connections out as far
as 7Km on other circuits (came as a shock as I have always been led to
believe that it's 10dB per Km normally, you learn something new
everyday)

>
> He told me that the signal quality drops from 600 outside my house to
> 400 inside. To quote my old maths teacher: "600 what? 600 Mars bars?"
> I'd be grateful if someone could explain to me what these figures
> might mean.

Without the labels/context it could mean anything & so are meaningless
>
> Also, how do they measure them? I don't understand how it can be
> possible to be so precise about where the fault is without actually
> coming round to my house and physically testing the wiring.

Exactly, push for a home visit, you're internal wiring could be part of
the problem, but the BT engineer (soon to be Openreach engineer, same
vans, purple overalls, yuk) should test to your NTE5. If it's succesful
there then you can make a valued decision about whether you want BT to
sort out your internal wiring (expensive) or do it yourself, takes a bit
longer but what the hell you may learn something.

>
> Anyway, the upshot of this is that an engineer will be coming to my
> house tomorrow to attempt to fix the fault and maybe I will be able to
> have broadband after all. But I'm not holding my breath.

Make sure he tests your circuit at the NTE with all extensions/burglar
alarms etc disconnected.

>
> While I had him on the line, I asked a few other questions, and got
> some interesting answers. It seems these figures (the 600 and the
> 400) have been available to them all along, and yet for some reason
> they did not see fit to make use of the information when assessing
> the suitability of my line for ADSL.

As I said, figures without labels are meaningless & if they are from
remote testing, are very often inacurrate.

>
> What's even more confusing is that I asked one of the visiting
> engineers very specifically about the possibility of internal wiring
> being faulty and that being the cause of the problem, and he very
> specifically denied it could even be possible.

Sorry but he is in error, I've known internal wiring to causes excessive
loop attenuation ( in one case the end user installed extension doubled
the loop attenuation) and also SNR problems (effectively how clean the
ADSL signal is), An extension can act as a aeriel picking up any
RF/electric noise & feed it back into the ADSL signal effectively
drowning it out.

Kraftee wrote:
> Line length is a misnomer, it's the construction of the line, the state
> of the line & other external factors which afftects the signal

So, supposing the state of my line were perfect, along its full length,
I might even get a 2mb connection? Oh for a perfect world...

> Without the labels/context it could mean anything & so are meaningless

Well, the context is phone lines, which I was hoping would be enough for
someone to work out what the labels might likely be. But they certainly
aren't likely to relate to anything from my limited knowledge of the
subject.

> the BT engineer ... should test to your NTE5.

Thanks, that's a useful tip - I shall make sure he does that. Even
though I don't know what one of those is. :-)

> Make sure he tests your circuit at the NTE with all extensions/burglar
> alarms etc disconnected.

The chap who phoned me kept going on about other things being attached
to the line, suggesting it was probably something like a burglar alarm,
but as far as I know we don't have anything like that attached to the
line - we just have the DECT base station and the wireless router
plugged into the master socket, and a short extension from the master
socket to a second socket in the kitchen. We don't even have a Sky box,
which was something else he mentioned, but I don't see why a Sky box
would cause a problem like that anyway (we had a Sky box at our last
house and it never affected our connection).

Could there be some other device on the line that I don't know about?
The only possible candidate I can think of would be the doorbell, but I
have looked and I can't see any evidence of a connection there.

>>What's even more confusing is that I asked one of the visiting
>>engineers very specifically about the possibility of internal wiring
>>being faulty and that being the cause of the problem, and he very
>>specifically denied it could even be possible.
>
> Sorry but he is in error

I should have made that clearer - he was denying it was the cause of
/my/ problem, rather than saying it could never happen, but he came to a
decision without actually testing anything, as far as I could tell.

> An extension can act as a aeriel picking up any
> RF/electric noise & feed it back into the ADSL signal effectively
> drowning it out.

This may be a daft question, but can DECT phones cause a problem? They
didn't prevent us getting adsl at our last house, but there we were much
closer to the exchange.

Thanks for your comments,

d.

I wrote:
> Even
> though I don't know what one of those is. :-)

.... but I do know now because I just looked it up. Aha!

d.

davek wrote:
> Kraftee wrote:
>> Line length is a misnomer, it's the construction of the line, the
>> state of the line & other external factors which afftects the signal
>
> So, supposing the state of my line were perfect, along its full
> length, I might even get a 2mb connection? Oh for a perfect world...
>
>> Without the labels/context it could mean anything & so are
>> meaningless
>
> Well, the context is phone lines, which I was hoping would be enough
> for someone to work out what the labels might likely be. But they
> certainly aren't likely to relate to anything from my limited
> knowledge of the subject.

Well it could be volts, ohms, nano farads, etc etc etc.... A number
without a label is meaningless & because of the values given you can't
even make an educated guess...
>
>> the BT engineer ... should test to your NTE5.
>
> Thanks, that's a useful tip - I shall make sure he does that. Even
> though I don't know what one of those is. :-)

Socket with a line across the middle, it should be the first socket on
the line, once it's inside your house/garage/loft, the actual telephone
socket would be about 3/4 of the way down the faceplate..
>
>> Make sure he tests your circuit at the NTE with all
>> extensions/burglar alarms etc disconnected.
>
> The chap who phoned me kept going on about other things being attached
> to the line, suggesting it was probably something like a burglar
> alarm, but as far as I know we don't have anything like that attached
> to the line - we just have the DECT base station and the wireless
> router plugged into the master socket, and a short extension from the
> master socket to a second socket in the kitchen. We don't even have a
> Sky box, which was something else he mentioned, but I don't see why a
> Sky box would cause a problem like that anyway (we had a Sky box at
> our last house and it never affected our connection).

If the equipment is properly filtered it should have little effect, the
problems are when they are not!

One thing which hasn't been mentioned yet, have you got a
external/seperate bell in the circuit (known to cause problems &
depending on what type it may be virtually impossible to filter)
>
> Could there be some other device on the line that I don't know about?
> The only possible candidate I can think of would be the doorbell, but
> I have looked and I can't see any evidence of a connection there.

See above
>
>>> What's even more confusing is that I asked one of the visiting
>>> engineers very specifically about the possibility of internal wiring
>>> being faulty and that being the cause of the problem, and he very
>>> specifically denied it could even be possible.
>>
>> Sorry but he is in error
>
> I should have made that clearer - he was denying it was the cause of
> /my/ problem, rather than saying it could never happen, but he came
> to a decision without actually testing anything, as far as I could
> tell.

Argh the good old wet finger hold it up in the air & make a random
diagnosis, wish some of my colleagues would stop doing that & put all
their efforts into doing what they are paid to do, that is get their
hands dirty & test the circuits
>
>> An extension can act as a aeriel picking up any
>> RF/electric noise & feed it back into the ADSL signal effectively
>> drowning it out.
>
> This may be a daft question, but can DECT phones cause a problem? They
> didn't prevent us getting adsl at our last house, but there we were
> much closer to the exchange.

If the DECT phones are correctly filtered (& aren't faulty) they should
give you no problems at all, some of the early Synergy did have problems
though so it's not unknown.