topic Re: What are faulty tie pairs at the exchange ... in Broadband

What are faulty tie pairs at the exchange ...

avatastic — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 12:28:13 GMT

... and how long do they take to fix?
If i'm going to be without internet for any additional time after waiting 3 weeks (and paying £150ish for the privilage!) for BT to reconnect my new phone line I'd like some advanced warning, mostly so I can secure myself a hardware (read: unix friendly) dialup modem and an 0808 account while I wait.
--
'Damn and blast British Telecom .. ', said Ford, the words coming easily from force of habit - Douglas Adams

Re: What are faulty tie pairs at the exchange ...

itsme — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 15:57:36 GMT

Tie pair is the general term given to the pair of wires leaving the exchange to the customer house. How long to repair could be a few hours to months. It whether they can find the fault with the pair you are using or give you a new pair. If there are no free pairs available then new street cabling is required and this can take months.

Re: What are faulty tie pairs at the exchange ...

198kHz — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 21:20:26 GMT

Unless things have changed radically since I left the business in 1999, tie pairs are connections between frames eg between a Main Distribution Frame and an Intermediate Distribution Frame. If a circuit was down because of a faulty tie pair, it would simply be re-jumpered to another one.
I can only see this taking any appreciable time if the whole, or a substantial part, of the cable between the tie pair blocks was accidentally cut or otherwise damaged.

Re: What are faulty tie pairs at the exchange ...

avatastic — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 12:45:21 GMT

Quote from: 4Candles
I can only see this taking any appreciable time if the whole, or a substantial part, of the cable between the tie pair blocks was accidentally cut or otherwise damaged.

If that were the case, surely I'd lose voice service, (unless i grossly misunderstand telephony) which I haven't ...
Still i'm sure that prisoner number 25885683 is having fun in its pool .. but its been there since Friday and must be awfully wrinkely by now.

Re: What are faulty tie pairs at the exchange ...

James — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:34:16 GMT

Hiya,
I'm just on hold to BT about this now.

Re: What are faulty tie pairs at the exchange ...

James — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:47:28 GMT

Not good news. BTs next update is September 11th. We'll give them a ring in about a week to see if there's been any further news.
I'm just trying to sort out your dialup access now.

Re: What are faulty tie pairs at the exchange ...

avatastic — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:13:44 GMT

Thanks muchly James.
To reitterate my initial closing comments above ...
Damn and blast British Telecom

Re: What are faulty tie pairs at the exchange ...

198kHz — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:23:39 GMT

<If that were the case, surely I'd lose voice service, (unless i grossly misunderstand telephony) which I haven't ...>
Not if it's after the Patch Panel:
http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/equip.htm
Sorry to hear Jameseh's bad news. Sounds like it must be a capacity issue, and more tie pairs need to be installed.

Re: What are faulty tie pairs at the exchange ...

James — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:26:33 GMT

Yep, that's the angle I'd normally have taken, but if it were just a capacity issue, I wouldn't have expected the delays to be work related and of around a month.
Normally I'd have just expected it to have been a case of waiting for some connections at that exchange to be removed, freeing up more capacity.

Re: What are faulty tie pairs at the exchange ...

avatastic — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:34:25 GMT

The exchange checker shows capacity is green ...
WNMAC
County: Powys
Enabled: 01 Sep 2004
Colour: Green VP capacity at this exchange is currently showing as Green.
I'm blaming it on badgers eating the cables .. what with being in the middle of nowhere and all ...

Re: What are faulty tie pairs at the exchange ...

James — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:36:45 GMT

The VP Capacity is more of a speed issue than a provisioning issue.
Pesky Badgers.

Re: What are faulty tie pairs at the exchange ...

avatastic — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 08:03:14 GMT

I has been told that my order is due to complete today (a week and a half earlier than Jameseh's initial report from BT), and since my question on the ticket has been sitting stale since Friday I'll re-ask it here.
While I'm being provisioned should my router a) be connected and b) activly trying to connect to Plusnet?
I can stop b) from work .. stopping a) may be a little trickier, unless anyone knows how to disable a NetGear DM111 over telnet (i think ifconfig nas0_0_38 down should do the trick)
Thanks,
Andrew.
(Not currently being impressed with the BOT teams)

Re: What are faulty tie pairs at the exchange ...

James — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 08:19:41 GMT

Hi Andrew,
You're really looking for a solid sync light on your router to identify whether or not the provisioning work has been completed. Your router may or may not continue to authenticate with us, but often they give up after awhile (ie: stop trying to authenticate after x attempts).
Please do bear in mind that whilst I'm a little surprised that your ticket wasn't picked up (we normally have one or two provisioning staff in on Saturdays), your query wouldn't be something that they would have been able to answer.
In reply to your question, I'd go with PPPoA over bridged whilst you're setting things up.

Re: What are faulty tie pairs at the exchange ...

avatastic — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 11:40:41 GMT

Quote from: Jameseh
Hi Andrew,
You're really looking for a solid sync light on your router to identify whether or not the provisioning work has been completed. Your router may or may not continue to authenticate with us, but often they give up after awhile (ie: stop trying to authenticate after x attempts).

Unfortunatly my router and I are 20 miles apart, so the only information I have is from the modem stats page which I'm keeping half an eye on whilst I'm at work.

Quote
Please do bear in mind that whilst I'm a little surprised that your ticket wasn't picked up (we normally have one or two provisioning staff in on Saturdays), your query wouldn't be something that they would have been able to answer.

Thats fair enough, I probably shouldn't have posted on he forums on a monday morning before my 2nd coffee

Quote
In reply to your question, I'd go with PPPoA over bridged whilst you're setting things up.

If i've still had no joy with sync/connection by the time I get home tonight I'll drop the router in to PPPoA, but for now I'll keep it bridged as the FreeBSD part doing the authentication won't give up after x attempts.
Cheers,
Andrew

Re: What are faulty tie pairs at the exchange ...

avatastic — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 10:36:34 GMT

I'd just like to say thanks for all your help and BT related prodding Jameseh, my connection is alive, kicking at synching at top speeds.
Now to just wait for for my BRAS profile to update to match my new sync speed

Re: What are faulty tie pairs at the exchange ...

James — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 10:55:05 GMT

Brilliant

Re: What are faulty tie pairs at the exchange ...

avatastic — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 00:44:34 GMT

Well, I'm not happy ... my adsl stats read as:

[adw@skynet /home/adw]$ telnet 192.168.1.1
Trying 192.168.1.1...
Connected to dm111.
Escape character is '^]'.
Netgear DM111 ADSL2+ Modem
Software Version: 3.30j
Login name: adw
Password:
> adsl adslstatus
ADSL Connection Status
Link State        : Show Time
DSL Line Up Count : 2
DSL Line Up Time  : 14:08:55:58
System Up Time    : 15:07:37:06
> adsl info
adsl: ADSL driver and PHY status
Status: Showtime  Channel: INTR, Upstream rate = 448 Kbps, Downstream rate = 7616 Kbps

After all the trouble I had setting this new connection up I'd expect a loss of sync more than once a fortnight!

Re: What are faulty tie pairs at the exchange ...

techguy — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 19:19:33 GMT

Quote from: Cap
Hiya,
I'm just on hold to BT about this now.

Nice to see even a BT owned firm (which is also their customer worth a couple of hundred thou a month if you take into account the central links and ADSL circuits) has the same difficulties with them as their consumer customers
"Press 1 to kill an hour and hen get hung up on, press 2 to kill 2 hours and then be hung up on, press 3 to kill 3 hours and then get through to someone who doesn't want to be there and couldn't give a stuff about your problem and press 4 if you dont mind how long you wait which could be up to 12 months. "
Presses 4, "You are 5554th in the queue and average wait is 180 days, 5 hours, 4 minutes and 55 seconds"
So yes indeed, Douglas Adams was right
Joking aside the BT engineers I have dealt with have been ok (not sure about the exchange dwellers though unless the ones that do installations at premises also do the exchange maintenance.
The trouble with BT is the customer service or err, lack of.
Think Plusnet do a sterling customer service job and shield us from the full horror of BT, I'm so impressed with the service I have received thus far I'm seriously considering moving my home phone to them too so that they can deal with BT if I have a problem.
I'm just doing the math to see if I can save any money from doing so.

Re: What are faulty tie pairs at the exchange ...

pierre_pierre — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 20:24:15 GMT

Mitch there is also an unpublished "Legacy" item that gives you 240 min 24+ to 01, 02 and 03 nos, as against the published schemes, it can only be got by asking say JameseH, the cost without extras is £9.99 per cal month, OK if you are a low user on your home phone

Re: What are faulty tie pairs at the exchange ...

techguy — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 16:54:16 GMT

Well pierre_pierre as you have no doubt have seen I've taken the plunge and ordered home phone for the line that supports my ADSL.
£17.99 for the lot with 2GB transfer, saving me 3.50 a month and an additional standing order, great stuff.