SNR Reset and long dodgy rural lines
Morning all. Some graphs.
As you can see, things stayed fairly stable until 6.45 or so, and then it started decaying and so on. A fairly slow decay compared to my other episodes but there it was. I thought I would let it go for so long until things started to drop below 6db or so and then play with the phone handset.
At gone 11 I noticed I was heading into 4db territory, so I nipped upstairs and took the phone off hook at around 11.30. You can see this quite clearly in the graph.
A few wobbles and it stabilised again. A resync at 5.30 or so, and that was that.
No noticeable noise on the LW/MW/HF bands when this was happening, but to keep things clean I tried to find the "noisiest" thing in the house and see what affect that has upon things. And that, my friends, is an egg incubator. It uses a cheapy switch mode PSU and it wipes out my radios from DC to around 25Mhz with S9 of "buzzzzzzzzzzzz".
See the last graph there, timed at 7.58. That .4 or so dip in SNR starting at 7.48 or so is the incubator blasting RF poison into the air. Off again for a bit, recovers, on again, dip, then off again. No noticeable problem with speeds, no CRCs or other effect upon ADSL, just that .3 or .4 dip in SNR.
Hmmmm.
As you can see, things stayed fairly stable until 6.45 or so, and then it started decaying and so on. A fairly slow decay compared to my other episodes but there it was. I thought I would let it go for so long until things started to drop below 6db or so and then play with the phone handset.
At gone 11 I noticed I was heading into 4db territory, so I nipped upstairs and took the phone off hook at around 11.30. You can see this quite clearly in the graph.
A few wobbles and it stabilised again. A resync at 5.30 or so, and that was that.
No noticeable noise on the LW/MW/HF bands when this was happening, but to keep things clean I tried to find the "noisiest" thing in the house and see what affect that has upon things. And that, my friends, is an egg incubator.
It uses a cheapy switch mode PSU and it wipes out my radios from DC to around 25Mhz with S9 of "buzzzzzzzzzzzz".See the last graph there, timed at 7.58. That .4 or so dip in SNR starting at 7.48 or so is the incubator blasting RF poison into the air. Off again for a bit, recovers, on again, dip, then off again. No noticeable problem with speeds, no CRCs or other effect upon ADSL, just that .3 or .4 dip in SNR.
Hmmmm.
Morning! Been away for the bank holiday weekend, and back to the grind in work.
The incubator that causes that is only used rarely, obviously when we need some eggs incubating but I know from past experience that it hammers the HF bands like nowt on earth and I was just curious as to what, if any, effect it might have had upon things. As you can see, it's worth anything up to a .4 drop in SNR.
You would be surprised what devices put out noise on those frequencies., things as innocuous as lighting. Touch lamps are a swine for it, as are energy saving lightbulbs, in particular some of the cheapy LED ones. If you have any in your home, try placing a portable MW radio near one and enjoy the noise.
As for an S9 reading on a radio, all radios are calibrated slightly differently, so relative measurment rather than absolute measurement but mine is regarded as being somewhere in the ballpark when compared to "agreed" standards such as this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S_meter
The incubator that causes that is only used rarely, obviously when we need some eggs incubating but I know from past experience that it hammers the HF bands like nowt on earth and I was just curious as to what, if any, effect it might have had upon things. As you can see, it's worth anything up to a .4 drop in SNR.
You would be surprised what devices put out noise on those frequencies., things as innocuous as lighting. Touch lamps are a swine for it, as are energy saving lightbulbs, in particular some of the cheapy LED ones. If you have any in your home, try placing a portable MW radio near one and enjoy the noise.
As for an S9 reading on a radio, all radios are calibrated slightly differently, so relative measurment rather than absolute measurement but mine is regarded as being somewhere in the ballpark when compared to "agreed" standards such as this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S_meter
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Ta Chris. All we need now is an engineer who understands the potential implications of all this data.
Hi, interesting reading your thread as I've just fixed a similar issue for a customer.
They are on an ADSL Max exchange with a very long (2+ Miles) rural overhead line. Typically they've always synced at 1.5Mbps for the past 8 years.
Recently they have had major drop outs and spent days on the phone to BT Retail (Why won't they let me move them to PN
)
Finally a POTS engineer turned up as a remote copper line test killed off the line (voice) completely.
The broadband and voice came back but the broadband still had a few drop outs.
I decided to investigate the internal wiring. As this is a big country house they have their own 20 pair DP in the cellar with NTE's coming off it via various JB's around the house. (They have about 8 incomming lines)
The ADSL line went through 2 soap boxes before terminating into an NTE 5, then onto multiple extensions.
I disconnected the extensions to the office and plugged the router into the test socket. Still 1.5Mbps.
I knew the line was estimated at about 3Mbps so I ran a new pair from the DP direct to a new master from the toolbox.
Plugged in the router and boom, 7.5Mbps!
So, reconnected the original pair to the DP, put my master in place of the soap box, removed the next NTE and crimped direct to the office extension (They weren't bothered about having this line anywhere else in the house)
Went back after a week and the line was still stable at 7.5Mbps but IP profile still 1.5MBps
So, after 3 hours talking to India I finally got the profile reset, BTW speedtest is regularly reporting speeds of 6Mbps down now
Good luck with your engineer!
Looking forward to the results
They are on an ADSL Max exchange with a very long (2+ Miles) rural overhead line. Typically they've always synced at 1.5Mbps for the past 8 years.
Recently they have had major drop outs and spent days on the phone to BT Retail (Why won't they let me move them to PN
)Finally a POTS engineer turned up as a remote copper line test killed off the line (voice) completely.
The broadband and voice came back but the broadband still had a few drop outs.
I decided to investigate the internal wiring. As this is a big country house they have their own 20 pair DP in the cellar with NTE's coming off it via various JB's around the house. (They have about 8 incomming lines)
The ADSL line went through 2 soap boxes before terminating into an NTE 5, then onto multiple extensions.
I disconnected the extensions to the office and plugged the router into the test socket. Still 1.5Mbps.
I knew the line was estimated at about 3Mbps so I ran a new pair from the DP direct to a new master from the toolbox.
Plugged in the router and boom, 7.5Mbps!
So, reconnected the original pair to the DP, put my master in place of the soap box, removed the next NTE and crimped direct to the office extension (They weren't bothered about having this line anywhere else in the house)
Went back after a week and the line was still stable at 7.5Mbps but IP profile still 1.5MBps
So, after 3 hours talking to India I finally got the profile reset, BTW speedtest is regularly reporting speeds of 6Mbps down now
Good luck with your engineer!
Looking forward to the results
Well, here's hoping!
I must admit I'm kind of hoping that they will, at least for this visit, "standardise" the wiring here from the drop to the master socket, as I've mentioned elsewhere in this thread the internal wiring is decades old and the first "soap bar" is oxidised to death. Also, an NTE5 will allow me to fit a filtered faceplate, which I find to be a bit better than pigtail filters electrically, neater physically and a bit less messing around to isolate the bell wire with.
There's a thing. Must remember to pick up a packet of hobnobs on the way home. Biscuits. The universal grease of the service industry.
I must admit I'm kind of hoping that they will, at least for this visit, "standardise" the wiring here from the drop to the master socket, as I've mentioned elsewhere in this thread the internal wiring is decades old and the first "soap bar" is oxidised to death. Also, an NTE5 will allow me to fit a filtered faceplate, which I find to be a bit better than pigtail filters electrically, neater physically and a bit less messing around to isolate the bell wire with.
There's a thing. Must remember to pick up a packet of hobnobs on the way home. Biscuits. The universal grease of the service industry.
Quote from: Uncle_Meat I must admit I'm kind of hoping that they will, at least for this visit, "standardise" the wiring here from the drop to the master socket
I hope so for your sake!
I've had engineers that hear a dial tone then CBA and others that are straight up the pole swapping connections over and all sorts!
As a matter of course when a customer has a BB fault I always eliminate everything else and connect the drop wire directly to my test NTE5 with a MK2 dsl faceplate. 90% of the time it cures the problem. Which reminds me, I'm running low on NTE5's. Off to the online tat bazaar to order some more
Quote from: Uncle_Meat Also, an NTE5 will allow me to fit a filtered faceplate, which I find to be a bit better than pigtail filters electrically, neater physically and a bit less messing around to isolate the bell wire with.
There's a thing. Must remember to pick up a packet of hobnobs on the way home. Biscuits. The universal grease of the service industry.
Uncle_Meat
If BTOR replace the NTE 5 it will be with a vdsl2 face plate, thus you not need to supply and fit your own. IIRC I thought your router was remote from the NTE 5 - have you relocated the router? If the drop wire needs to be replaced, you might be able to persuade the engineer to relocate the NTE 5 if that would be advantageous. Might depend on if the hob nobs have a chocolate coating - I prefer the dark ones in the red packet!
Kevin