ADSL & Burglar Alarms

aodh_rua

I've just bought a house in Kildare and I was hoping to get adsl in (I have IOLBB at the moment and I don't think I could live without it). The line is fine, but I've noticed something on their FAQ's thats worrying....

Please note that we are temporarily not accepting orders from users who have an alarm system connected to their phone line.

Anyone know if this is a standard caveat or just something Esat have added. It's an answer to an FAQ on alarms and ISDN, and while I understand the added complication of ISDN lines, I didn't think an alarm would be a problem.

shamalive

aodh_rua wrote:

I've just bought a house in Kildare and I was hoping to get adsl in (I have IOLBB at the moment and I don't think I could live without it). The line is fine, but I've noticed something on their FAQ's thats worrying....

Please note that we are temporarily not accepting orders from users who have an alarm system connected to their phone line.

Anyone know if this is a standard caveat or just something Esat have added. It's an answer to an FAQ on alarms and ISDN, and while I understand the added complication of ISDN lines, I didn't think an alarm would be a problem.

This refers to folks who use Eircon's alarm phonewatch service.

Ripwave

aodh_rua wrote:

I've just bought a house in Kildare and I was hoping to get adsl in (I have IOLBB at the moment and I don't think I could live without it). The line is fine, but I've noticed something on their FAQ's thats worrying....

Please note that we are temporarily not accepting orders from users who have an alarm system connected to their phone line.

Anyone know if this is a standard caveat or just something Esat have added. It's an answer to an FAQ on alarms and ISDN, and while I understand the added complication of ISDN lines, I didn't think an alarm would be a problem.

The problem is that, depending on how the circuits are wired, a burgular alarm may interfere with your DSL (though if your burglar alarm goes off, and interuption to your DSL probably isn't your forst concern). But it might also be the case that your DSL might interfere with the burgular alarm, and you probably wouldn't be happy to come home and find that your burglar alarm didn't go off, especially if your house insurance depended on it.

Given the demand that ESAT are currently experiencing, they don't have time to deal with these issues, so they're not accepting orders from these customers.

Blaster99

Your mileage may vary, but I have Phonewatch with ADSL and I didn't get it rewired and I've verified that it works. It seems that the signal goes through without requiring a filter.

Krusty_Clown

I too have not had any problems.

I haven't verified that the Phonewatch alarm will call the monitoring centre when activated while the the router is powered-on, but I can't see it causing problems..
Will check tonight (only got my BB yesterday).

nagero

Can they tell if you have Phonewatch or is it up to you to tell them?

thanks

nagero

Redshift

shamalive wrote:

This refers to folks who use Eircon's alarm phonewatch service.

This actually refers to ANY monitored alarm system from any company be it installed in a home or business. There is zero differance between Phonewatch and other companies in this regard.

@Nagero there is no way Esat can tell you have Phonewatch short of you telling them.

nagero

Redshift wrote:

@Nagero there is no way Esat can tell you have Phonewatch short of you telling them.

Thanks, that sounds promising. So all I need to do is re-wire phonewatch as per the sticky.

nagero

tinyjim

I presume it is also possible to disconnect alarm/phone connection, self install broadnband and then reconnect line to alarm??

peema

On a related note,

Our exchange was enabled last month, and of course while lines all around me passed, mine failed.

Fair enough, I unplugged the second extension and my modem, leaving Phonewatch and the primary extension and waited.

So far, no pass. Does anybody have any hints on how to get it to pass? The lore seems to say that the line recheck goes in every 4 weeks to 1 month, so I don't know if the recheck has happened yet.

tinyjim

My line failed week after week while another line nearby (not needing Bband) passed. Guess what? last night MY line passed and the other one failed!! So I shot in and ordered before whatever crazy system is used changed its mind again!
Moral of the story: Keep trying!! Tiocfaidh do líne!

PS Just remembered, disconnected my SKY box (12 months is well up) the other night, maybe that was the missing link. Still doesn't explain how the other line failed though :cool:

Redshift

If your line is failing there is a reasonable chance that something in your house, Like a fax machine, Digibox, crappy old winmodem or just plain dodgy wiring is causing you to fail. On a couple of occasions I have helped out friends who were failing by disconnecting everything; leaving just a plain ordinary phone connected into the master socket and lo and behold the line passes sometime later. Granted it's a little inconvienient for a while but if you want DSL that badly it's worth it. Of course you can reconnect everything one your DSL in.

callmescratch

dsl connections have a tendancy to set off monitored alarms.
heard tell of people having the cops call round every time they tried to set up their BB connection.

or maybe thats just a call centre legend.

Redshift

callmescratch wrote:

dsl connections have a tendancy to set off monitored alarms.
heard tell of people having the cops call round every time they tried to set up their BB connection.

or maybe thats just a call centre legend.

Complete Rubbish, I don't know where you heard this but it is not technically possible. I am an Alarm engineer BTW

peema

Redshift wrote:

If your line is failing there is a reasonable chance that something in your house, Like a fax machine, Digibox, crappy old winmodem or just plain dodgy wiring is causing you to fail. On a couple of occasions I have helped out friends who were failing by disconnecting everything; leaving just a plain ordinary phone connected into the master socket and lo and behold the line passes sometime later. Granted it's a little inconvienient for a while but if you want DSL that badly it's worth it. Of course you can reconnect everything one your DSL in.

Hmm, this leads me to ask a few things:
Given that phonewatch is hardwired into place and I've reduced the rest of the configuration to a single extension (with a DECT phone, is that a problem?) does that mean that there's no more I can do?
Does anybody know when line checks are performed? i.e. Is it in the middle of the night, or is it more normally run during the day?
Is the line test a sliding scale thing where you need to be above a certain score to pass?

Redshift

Yep, get rid of as much wiring and equipment off your line as you can, obviously there is not much you can do about Phonewatch but that shouldn't really affect your line test in anycase. Ideally you should just use a plain old telephone like eircom supply themselves, but if you have a good quality dect it should be OK, Just make sure it's not a phone that draws power from the line to light the keypad or anything else like that.
The quality of the phone instrument is important because unless you have a brand new eircom socket then the line is tested all the way to the phone, In the new type sockets there is circuitry that allows eircom to test the line to their socket only which is where their responsibility for the line ends.
Which leads me to another possible solution for people who are failing and that is to accidently cause your old eircom socket to break due to wear and tear, then just act dumb and report an intermittant fault on your line. When eircom replace the defective socket it will be with a new type NTU which will give you the best possible chance of a pass

peema

Redshift wrote:

Yep, get rid of as much wiring and equipment off your line as you can, obviously there is not much you can do about Phonewatch but that shouldn't really affect your line test in anycase. Ideally you should just use a plain old telephone like eircom supply themselves, but if you have a good quality dect it should be OK, Just make sure it's not a phone that draws power from the line to light the keypad or anything else like that.

Nope a Siemens Gigaset 3015 as purchased from Eircom themselves. I stripped out a lot of excess stuff out of the install. I want the Internet, I wind up unplugging the phone and plugging in an extension.

Redshift wrote:

The quality of the phone instrument is important because unless you have a brand new eircom socket then the line is tested all the way to the phone, In the new type sockets there is circuitry that allows eircom to test the line to their socket only which is where their responsibility for the line ends.
Which leads me to another possible solution for people who are failing and that is to accidently cause your old eircom socket to break due to wear and tear, then just act dumb and report an intermittant fault on your line. When eircom replace the defective socket it will be with a new type NTU which will give you the best possible chance of a pass

Hmm. The socket is an old Telecom Eireann one from 1995 or earlier. Apart from scary maneouvers, is there any way of laying my hands to a current version of it?
I'm guessing that the standard answer is not, but hope springs eternal...

Redshift

Go to an exchange and ask one of the lads really nicely for one, most of them are sound. Or if you see an eircom engineer out and about ask him.

BTW you will need a krone tool to install it, you can get cheapo ones in PC world and the like.