Do line spliters really => increased chance of DSL line test failure

digitaldr

I read somewhere on this forum that line splitters can make your line fail a DSL test because of the extra capacitance they introduce. As far as I know line splitters don't have any capicitors in them - mine certainly don't. However I think the little dongles that convert UK phone connections to Irish ones have capacitors and I know that when I used one a few years ago it slowed down my dial-up.

BigEejit

what do you mean by line splitters?, the little plastic jobbies that convert one phone port to two or three? .. or the pairgain box that they put outside to split your line with someone else?...

If its the first one then no, it shouldnt - but there is a higher likelihood of failing with a lot of crap attached to the line like sky boxes and answering machines.

The second one (pairgain) will cause you to fail.

Pataman

The capacitor in the uk/irish converter is only to make the bell ring, no other function, so it shouldnt affect the dial up.

bk

Originally posted by Pataman
The capacitor in the uk/irish converter is only to make the bell ring, no other function, so it shouldnt affect the dial up.

However, dodgy built equipment can cause you to fail, it did in my case.

However digitaldr, when we talk about line splitters, we normally don't mean the little thing in your house that allows you to plug a phone and fax/internat into one line.

What we normally mean is a pairgain or DAC. It is a device that Eircom use on the lines to split your telephone line into two seperate phone lnies (different phone numbers), you will normally find them as a black box on the telephone poll outside your home.

These devices effectively split the frequency on the line in two, greatly degrading the quality. It is normally ok for voice, but awful for the net.

Gonzo

Do Eircom still install pairgains knowing that they are stopping future broadband customers? I read recently somewhere that BT had stopped this practice a few years ago and were ordered to remove any existing pairgains.

spongebob

pairgain installations in large urban areas have slowed down to a degree.

they are standard practise in rural areas

crap on the line in the house or bad internal wiring of extensions by chancers of all sorts including eircom engineers, are also a live issue in many cases.

crap external work, bad joins and split legs also affect the test results as does the great Irish line test variable. RAIN

if the line is marginal (fail/pass/fail/pass over time) then get it tested after a 3-4 week dry spell and get BB in pronto, once its in Eircom have to fix the line to keep it working .

In a nutshell, if you have BB its their problem, if you don't have BB it is yours.

HTH

M

digitaldr

Does dial up performance (mines very good) give any indication of line quality wrt DSL?

spongebob

stable high speed analogue connections are a good indicator .

Modems can also report the Db levels on the conects (after you diconnect) , with a Lucent Modem you get a stack of line quality data by sending it an ATI11 command) . This was discussed earlier this year on this Board somewhere and late last year Here . Most modems have a Lucent or a Conexant chipset .

M