Reducing noise/attenuation on adsl in the home

I've been subscribed to AOL Broadband via ADSL on a BT phone line for several
months but have recently been having problems with "no signal" indications
corresponding to losing my connection or being unable to connect.
The AOL live help service advised me to reinstall software which I have
repeatedly done, but the fault seems to come and go regardless.
As I live in an area which was originally considered too far away from the
exchange I suspect that there may be issues with signal degradation through
noise/attenuation which is causing loss of sync.
I can do nothing about the quality of the line to the house, but I wonder if I
can get some marginal improvement by minimising attenuation and noise in the
house.
A few things which spring to mind are: replacing the master socket with
directly soldered connections, trying to get a better quality filter,
installing the Voyager 105 modem at the master socket and using a longer USB
lead to the pc, replacing the modem with a better one with its own power supply
again located at the master socket..

Has anyone been down this route? And also is there an easy way of measuring any
improvement in the signal quality without special test gear ?

Any comments would be much appreciated.

John

USB only functions properly over a short distance. Extending a USB lead is
not a good idea. Try and borrow a router and use an RJ45 connection to
establish if the problem is with the modem. You will aslo need a network
card in the PC if you don't have one already. What operating system are you
using?

On 24 Nov 2004 09:49:15 GMT, (E-Mail Removed) (JT1uk) wrote:

>A few things which spring to mind are: replacing the master socket with
>directly soldered connections, trying to get a better quality filter,
>installing the Voyager 105 modem at the master socket and using a longer USB
>lead to the pc,

you can't replace the master socket - its not yours. You can take the
face off it and use the test socket behind to see if the signal is
better. That elminates your wiring.

If you double click the systray icon for the modem and get the little
control panel up then press Ctrl/F1 you get access to line statistics
like Noise margin, Attenuation. You already have the testgear !

If working out of the master socket is better for lower noise margin
then get a filtered faceplate and run a Cat5 RJ45 extension to the PC
with an RJ45 female/female coupler to plug the modem into (RJ11 plug
fits RJ45 socket).

http://www.yarwell.demon.co.uk/longlines.html

Phil
--
spamcop.net address commissioned 18/06/04
Come on down !

Thanks for the reply. I'm using Win98se and AOL9.0

John