Is this a possible ADSL fault?

For a couple of years I've had a Draytek 2900Gi connected to ADSL via
a D-Link 300G+ ADSL modem.

It has worked perfectly with Clara and later with Zen.

The other day, after about a year with Zen (whose service has always
been exemplary) the connection went totally dead. The modem
diagnostics reported a "physical line fault".

The ADSL is on a dedicated analog line, not used for anything else.
The line itself has always worked, as far as I could tell.

I reported it to BT who wouldn't touch it saying I should tell Zen,
which I did.

A day later the ADSL came back but many packets were being lost or
severely delayed. A ping to any URL would report times from 40ms to
over 1 second.

I reported it again. This variable delay has now stopped but I get
periods when there is no traffic. Going to a regular website loads
half the page and then stops. Checking emails fails about half the
time. Rest of the time it works perfectly. It is as if somebody pulled
the plug for a few seconds and then put it back in.

I have reset the equipment regularly, to enable the modem to
reconnect.

Is this a viable "outside the house" fault?

On 5-Jun-2006, Peter <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> Is this a viable "outside the house" fault?

Probably. Useful to have a substitute (cheap USB)
modem (try eBay) that you can swap in. If that doesn't work
you can say it's the same with two different modems.
Try
Run -> pathping www.google.com (or any dotted quad IP address)
Should show where everything goes pear shaped.

"Peter" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> For a couple of years I've had a Draytek 2900Gi connected to ADSL via
> a D-Link 300G+ ADSL modem.
>
> It has worked perfectly with Clara and later with Zen.
>
> The other day, after about a year with Zen (whose service has always
> been exemplary) the connection went totally dead. The modem
> diagnostics reported a "physical line fault".
>
> The ADSL is on a dedicated analog line, not used for anything else.
> The line itself has always worked, as far as I could tell.


You say the line is a dedicated broadband line, have you plugged a phone in
to check. Key a digit, is the there any noise?
Fred

"The Simpsons" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>> For a couple of years I've had a Draytek 2900Gi connected to ADSL via
>> a D-Link 300G+ ADSL modem.
>>
>> It has worked perfectly with Clara and later with Zen.
>>
>> The other day, after about a year with Zen (whose service has always
>> been exemplary) the connection went totally dead. The modem
>> diagnostics reported a "physical line fault".
>>
>> The ADSL is on a dedicated analog line, not used for anything else.
>> The line itself has always worked, as far as I could tell.
>
>
>You say the line is a dedicated broadband line, have you plugged a phone in
>to check. Key a digit, is the there any noise?
>Fred
>

Yes, the line seems to work fine with a phone.

One explanation which a colleague has suggested is that somebody else
in the vicinity has been allocated the same IP, and is stealing my
packets.

Incidentally I am on a fixed IP on that ADSL service (not the one this
post is coming from, BTW) although AIUI that is still set up as a
dynamic IP and the ISP's router just happens to allocate the same
dynamic IP each time.

However, the total service failure in recent days is too much of a
coincidence; I think the two problems are probably related. Could
excessive noise on the line (water in a junction box) explain this?

Peter wrote:
> "The Simpsons" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>>> For a couple of years I've had a Draytek 2900Gi connected to ADSL
>>> via a D-Link 300G+ ADSL modem.
>>>
>>> It has worked perfectly with Clara and later with Zen.
>>>
>>> The other day, after about a year with Zen (whose service has
>>> always been exemplary) the connection went totally dead. The modem
>>> diagnostics reported a "physical line fault".
>>>
>>> The ADSL is on a dedicated analog line, not used for anything
>>> else. The line itself has always worked, as far as I could tell.
>>
>>
>> You say the line is a dedicated broadband line, have you plugged a
>> phone in to check. Key a digit, is the there any noise?
>> Fred
>>
>
> Yes, the line seems to work fine with a phone.

The question is, it it noisey, crackling or hissing, noise spikes etc,
not whether it works or not.
>
> One explanation which a colleague has suggested is that somebody
> else in the vicinity has been allocated the same IP, and is
> stealing my packets.

Not an impossibility, but very improbable, also you would be receiving
some of their traffic showing on your log, far more likely to be a lot
of lost packets or errors on your connection
>
> Incidentally I am on a fixed IP on that ADSL service (not the one
> this post is coming from, BTW) although AIUI that is still set up
> as a dynamic IP and the ISP's router just happens to allocate the
> same dynamic IP each time.

Nope if it's fixed, it's fixed, if it's dynamic, true you may get the
same address most of the time, but it is liable to change any time the
ISP does any work on it's servers..

>Could
> excessive noise on the line (water in a junction box) explain this?

That's why it was suggested that you pick up your phone dial a digit &
listen, then you would hear whether the line was noisey or not but
ingress of water is one of the many things which could be affecting
line. If you've ruled out your modem form being faulty & there is
nothing else on the line, try another filter (yes they do go wrong &
are throw away items), if it's still not working then all you can do
is report the problem to your ISP, who's job it is to chase the report
up thru the various companies until you get either an Openreach ADSL
trained engineer or a lines man to fix your _possible_ line fault.

H

"kráftéé" <kraftee@dontspamkrafteeunless you know
what'sgoodforu.pus.com> wrote:

>The question is, it it noisey, crackling or hissing, noise spikes etc,
>not whether it works or not.

It's clean.

>> One explanation which a colleague has suggested is that somebody
>> else in the vicinity has been allocated the same IP, and is
>> stealing my packets.
>
>Not an impossibility, but very improbable, also you would be receiving
>some of their traffic showing on your log, far more likely to be a lot
>of lost packets or errors on your connection

Where would I find this log? I don't have logging enabled on my
router.

>> Incidentally I am on a fixed IP on that ADSL service (not the one
>> this post is coming from, BTW) although AIUI that is still set up
>> as a dynamic IP and the ISP's router just happens to allocate the
>> same dynamic IP each time.
>
>Nope if it's fixed, it's fixed, if it's dynamic, true you may get the
>same address most of the time, but it is liable to change any time the
>ISP does any work on it's servers..

I gather from the last few ISPs I've used that a fixed IP is
implemented as a dynamic IP but their DHCP dishes out the same IP each
time. I pay extra for the fixed IP, obviously.

>>Could
>> excessive noise on the line (water in a junction box) explain this?
>
>That's why it was suggested that you pick up your phone dial a digit &
>listen, then you would hear whether the line was noisey or not but
>ingress of water is one of the many things which could be affecting
>line. If you've ruled out your modem form being faulty & there is
>nothing else on the line, try another filter (yes they do go wrong &
>are throw away items), if it's still not working then all you can do
>is report the problem to your ISP, who's job it is to chase the report
>up thru the various companies until you get either an Openreach ADSL
>trained engineer or a lines man to fix your _possible_ line fault.

I have reported it to Zen but nothing has happened yet. I tried
another filter too, and tried it with and without an analog phone
connected.

The strange thing is that pings work OK. There is a very occassional
lost packet, say out of 1000 1024-byte pings I see 2 lost ones. I
don't know if this would explain the problem; the actual problem is
much more common.

Peter wrote:
>
> I gather from the last few ISPs I've used that a fixed IP is
> implemented as a dynamic IP but their DHCP dishes out the same IP each
> time. I pay extra for the fixed IP, obviously.

Why?

I have a fixed IP with Zen and don't pay extra for it.

--
Old Codger
e-mail use reply to field

What matters in politics is not what happens, but what you can make people
believe has happened. [Janet Daley 27/8/2003]

"Old Codger" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>I have a fixed IP with Zen and don't pay extra for it.

OK, with some ISP's it comes standard, or at no extra cost. I was just
trying to avoid the apparent confusion shown by the other respondent
who thought I was on a variable IP and just happened to get the same
IP each time.

An Update on this:

I found the problem. It was a bug in the Draytek 2900Gi router. It has
an ISDN dial-up backup option. This can be enabled or disabled in
about 4 different places in the config: there is a global ISDN port
enable/disable, there is a packet trigger type, there is a
64k/128k/none selection, etc. It turns out that merely disabling say
the ISDN port doesn't do it; it still dials out randomly. One has to
disable ISDN in all four places. Easier to just pull out the cable in
fact.

The firmware isn't the latest but it isn't the original either; that
had *zero* ISDN functionality (they obviously never tested it).

I had enabled the ISDN dial-up when the ADSL connection failed
completely, but it remained not fully disabled after ADSL was fixed.
And if you dial-up into Zen using ISDN, it clobbers the ADSL service
for a few minutes.

This was discovered when I finally phoned up Zen and the man
immediately told me he could see a lot of dial-ups...

Draytek make good products with loads of features, but one can't rely
on them all to be fully working.

On 08 Jun 2006, Peter <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>I found the problem. It was a bug in the Draytek 2900Gi router.

>This was discovered when I finally phoned up Zen and the man
>immediately told me he could see a lot of dial-ups...

>Draytek make good products with loads of features, ...

Thanks for the explanation. Definitely worth knowing. Never
touched a Draytek, might never do, but still v. useful info.