Pesuading BT to check a line???

Hi Folks,

One of my sites has had a stable 512K broadband connection for about 3
years, but all of a sudden it's starting to drop and reconnect in a
regular basis - like 2-3 times a minute throughout the day. Sometimes it
has good periods of perhaps 30-45 mins and then it starts to play up again.

The site's some 45 miles from me and I've not been there yet, but when I
managed to make a remote connection to the router, the first thing that
set alarm bells ringing was the S/N ratio - it's between 1.5-3dB.
(attenuation is around 47db). There's no other devices on the line.

My first action was to ask one of the people on site to power the router
down for 3 mins and unplug/replug the phone cord to clear any possible
mucky connections (the router is well out of anyone's reach and so
unlikely to have been disturbed for ages).

When this didn't make much difference, I asked the line provider (it's a
BT line contracted out to another phone company) to do a line test which
they said came back OK.

I next asked the ISP to check their figures and do whatever
ADSL-specific tests they could do; they came back and said the line
'passes' but sort of hinted it was not brilliant.

Someone on site had plugged a phone into the filter and made a call,
which they say sounded OK.

My gut feeling is that it's the line at fault, but I can't get anyone
interested in taking things further - I appreciate that it may be the
router or its power supply or the ADSL filter, but can anyone suggest
any specific 'magic words' that may encourage either the ISP or company
managing the line to do some more signal testing before I have to make a
90 mile round trip?

Cheers!

Linker3000 wrote:

> My gut feeling is that it's the line at fault, but I can't get anyone
> interested in taking things further

That's because it's a BT line contracted to another provider. BT will have
little interest in it. Why should they ? You'll have to ask your ISP to sort it.

Graham

In message <45db9aa0$0$28969$(E-Mail Removed)>, Linker3000
<(E-Mail Removed)> writes
>Hi Folks,
>The site's some 45 miles from me and I've not been there yet, but when
>I managed to make a remote connection to the router, the first thing
>that set alarm bells ringing was the S/N ratio - it's between 1.5-3dB.
>(attenuation is around 47db). There's no other devices on the line.
You need to visit the site unless you *absolutely* unconditionally trust
the people on site to be able to tell you that there's nothing wrong.
External non connected devices can add interference to telephone lines,
there could be a noisy PSU near the line, maybe someone has installed a
metal halide lighting or compact fluorescent lamps or some other
interference causing device. Anything that generates RF fields can cause
problems. It could be a dodgy router PSU, switch mode power supplies can
cause all sorts of problems and 3 years is just about the time I'd be
expecting to be having problems with one if the router has one.

>My gut feeling is that it's the line at fault, but I can't get anyone
>interested in taking things further - I appreciate that it may be the
>router or its power supply or the ADSL filter, but can anyone suggest
>any specific 'magic words' that may encourage either the ISP or company
>managing the line to do some more signal testing before I have to make
>a 90 mile round trip?
Unfortunately, I think the only way to get this done is to visit with
another router or 'modem', 'phone the ISP from site and explain the
tests you have carried out with the replacement device. If you find
someone who has an inkling of knowledge, they'll accept your word. Of
course, if it's LLU'd then good luck. BTW, are you sure it's not been
maxed and the profile is wrong?
>
>Cheers!

--
Clint Sharp

> One of my sites has had a stable 512K broadband connection for about 3
> years, but all of a sudden it's starting to drop and reconnect in a
> regular basis - like 2-3 times a minute throughout the day. Sometimes
> it has good periods of perhaps 30-45 mins and then it starts to play
> up again.
> The site's some 45 miles from me and I've not been there yet, but
> when I managed to make a remote connection to the router, the first
> thing that set alarm bells ringing was the S/N ratio - it's between
> 1.5-3dB. (attenuation is around 47db). There's no other devices on
> the line.
> My first action was to ask one of the people on site to power the
> router down for 3 mins and unplug/replug the phone cord to clear any
> possible mucky connections (the router is well out of anyone's reach
> and so unlikely to have been disturbed for ages).
>
> When this didn't make much difference, I asked the line provider
> (it's a BT line contracted out to another phone company) to do a line
> test which they said came back OK.
>
> I next asked the ISP to check their figures and do whatever
> ADSL-specific tests they could do; they came back and said the line
> 'passes' but sort of hinted it was not brilliant.
>
> Someone on site had plugged a phone into the filter and made a call,
> which they say sounded OK.
>
> My gut feeling is that it's the line at fault, but I can't get anyone
> interested in taking things further - I appreciate that it may be the
> router or its power supply or the ADSL filter, but can anyone suggest
> any specific 'magic words' that may encourage either the ISP or
> company managing the line to do some more signal testing before I
> have to make a 90 mile round trip?

The magic words are "We will pay" because you need somne facts rather than a
gut feeeling that it is wrong. Have they used the test socket? Have they
tried another filter?

Peter Crosland

I work for an ISP on the 2nd line department dealing with IP stream and LLU customers. As such I have dealt with BTW before.

The process that you need to follow, to get to the test is as follows.

call the first line department, they will ask you the following wuestions

Are you at the master or test socket? (test socket being the one behind the front plate of the NTE5 master socket)
Have you removed any extension cable and are you using the supplied RJ11 line cord that came with the modem/router (this should only be aprox 1 metre in length)
have you swapped the filters?
have you removed anyother PSTN devices from the line?
has this been tested with the above done for 24 hours.

if you pass allthese tests then you should get put through to the 2nd line team (they have access to the system that you need)

you should then explain the problem to them, and subject to there being no line changes (LLU upgrade...etc) you should then get your fault logged on the BTW system as a dropping Sync issue.

the test that you need to ask for is a Whoosh test. this however will either come back as inconclusive or pass, deppening on whether or not the modem/router is in sync (on very rare occasions, i have seen it come back as "fault found withing the BTW network").

Buit failing that, the 2nd line team should progress the fault with BTW anyway.

when you talk about the WLR part of the BTW network, I could well agree that they don't really want to help, but OfCom have now made it their "mission" to get BTW to stop "hindering" the resolving of WLR faults.

and on a final note, just because you can make a voice call on the line, dows not mean it will take broad band, besides, if you are far enough away from the exchange to warrent a 512Kb/s connection, then you should really count youself lucky that you have had 3 years of perfect service

Regards

Rob