Advice please! DSL Broadband epic fail!

baconsoft

Hi
If anyone can help with advice or who to contact I would really appreciate it. Here goes.... For the last 6 months our internet connection has dropped immediately when we make outgoing landline phone calls or receive incoming calls. It also drops intermittently for no apparent reason. We have:

1. Changed all DSL filters numerous times
2. Changed modem/routers
3. Had the house alarm guy out to check if it was the problem.(Its not apparently, he also changed the filter on it)
4. Had Vodafone and Eircom technicians out to the house who postured and poked around but were about as much use as fart in a spacesuit. (We are still with Vodafone, Lord knows why)
5. Endless fruitless calls with Vodafone who love to ask us to check what colour the dancing lights on our router are and to tell us how many 'faults' there are on our line. Needless to say after about 20 calls we are no nearer a solution.

We are at the end of our tether with this (hence this post) but would really appreciate advice from anyone who has experienced same or has knowledge in this area and knows what might be going on. We are going to change to a different broadband solution if we cant fix this (dish?!).

Thanks for reading.

Sponge Bob

could be crosstalk on the line. lots of people had stable service until NGB came along

MrO

Where you able to reproduce the issue when the technicians arrived i.e. incoming or outgoing call, caused the DSL connection to drop?

baconsoft

MrO wrote: »

Where you able to reproduce the issue when the technicians arrived i.e. incoming or outgoing call, caused the DSL connection to drop?

Yup were able to reproduce, they didnt seem to know what the problem was other than 'its an internal issue' ....as i mentioned fart in a spacesuit.

Cork981

how is the quality of the phone line? any crackling ?
maybe disconnect the phone and get someone to ring it and see whats happens?

weird problem all I can think of off hand is could the phone base station be faulty and pushing out some high frequencies outside of its pots range.

Never heard of this but worth a try anyway.

Sponge Bob

Could be the voltage drops , have you any UK spec phones ( from Argos or Currys) and can you specifically disconnect those and any sky box in the house and see what happens.

baconsoft

Cork981 wrote: »

how is the quality of the phone line? any crackling ?
maybe disconnect the phone and get someone to ring it and see whats happens?

weird problem all I can think of off hand is could the phone base station be faulty and pushing out some high frequencies outside of its pots range.

Never heard of this but worth a try anyway.

The phone does frequently have crackling. I have already tested disconnecting all phones (just keeps ringing at the end of the line). The problem is when i connect a phone, internet connection drops when i answer or make an outgoing call. I have tested this with all phones in the house. ie connect one phone at a time and test internet. Still no nearer a solution, i dont know whats going on

baconsoft

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Could be the voltage drops , have you any UK spec phones ( from Argos or Currys) and can you specifically disconnect those and any sky box in the house and see what happens.

Have disconnected everything and tested. As long as no phone calls are connected its fine but thats not really a decent solution for me

Sponge Bob

What happens when you a) disconnect the phones and b) ring the house number from your mobile, you will hear 'ringing' on your mobile but is the internet affected??

baconsoft

Sponge Bob wrote: »

What happens when you a) disconnect the phones and b) ring the house number from your mobile, you will hear 'ringing' on your mobile but is the internet affected??

Have tested this. Hear ringing, but since the call cannot connect the internet connection is not effected.

Cork981

If you get a chance can you post line attentuation, snr margins, sync speeds and line error fec crcs etc ?
If you monitor these when phone is ringing and answered.
You will have to refresh rapidly or set a low refresh interval on the modem interface

baconsoft

Cork981 wrote: »

If you get a chance can you post line attentuation, snr margins, sync speeds and line error fec crcs etc ?
If you monitor these when phone is ringing and answered.
You will have to refresh rapidly or set a low refresh interval on the modem interface

Hi Cork
Thanks for your message. I have attached a screenshot of attenuation etc and also an extract from the system log when I made an outgoing phone call and it disconnected. Any info you have, would appreciate it

Cork981

No problem.
From looking at them stats id be fairly confident that there is physical damage to your copper pair between your house and the exchange which is causing cross talking/interference.

Eircom would be responsible for dealing with this problem since you are paying line rental to them and sine Vodafone techs don't have access to Eircom ducts/cabs and overhead cables.
(Eircom are responsible for maintaining the phone cable to the first termination point of your house.)

My reasons for this conclusion are as follows. (Which you can give to tech support to hopefully get a solution)

1. Your line attenuation is very good at 24db which allow you to get speeds above 15-16Mbs; this attenuation will increase at higher sync speeds but not by much.

2. Your noise margin is low at 3 which would indicate your line is barely holding sync at the 2mbs you have currently, this is strange combination to have a low attenuation, low noise margin and low speed.
Usually you sacrifice snr margin for higher speed. (i.e. higher sync but lower noise margin, a modem would generally disconnect and an snr of 1- 1.5, you have 3 which doesn't give you much to play with.
You could be asked to be put on a poor stability profile which would give you a target snr of generally 12 or 15 even more stability but your sync speed will drop severely likely below 1Mb.

3. Another strange thing is the attenuation on your upstream is a higher than your downstream attenuation this is usually the other way around since your upload speed is generally low your upload line should attenuate a lot. I could wrong here but I have never seeing a upstream attenuation higher than downstream.

If you could get 2nd level tech support to look at those stats they would certainly see an issue and would log a fault with Eircom.

If you can maybe post line errors such as fec, crcs and hec errors this would also help clarify your problem.

baconsoft

Cork981 wrote: »

No problem.
From looking at them stats id be fairly confident that there is physical damage to your copper pair between your house and the exchange which is causing cross talking/interference.

Eircom would be responsible for dealing with this problem since you are paying line rental to them and sine Vodafone techs don't have access to Eircom ducts/cabs and overhead cables.
(Eircom are responsible for maintaining the phone cable to the first termination point of your house.)

My reasons for this conclusion are as follows. (Which you can give to tech support to hopefully get a solution)

1. Your line attenuation is very good at 24db which allow you to get speeds above 15-16Mbs; this attenuation will increase at higher sync speeds but not by much.

2. Your noise margin is low at 3 which would indicate your line is barely holding sync at the 2mbs you have currently, this is strange combination to have a low attenuation, low noise margin and low speed.
Usually you sacrifice snr margin for higher speed. (i.e. higher sync but lower noise margin, a modem would generally disconnect and an snr of 1- 1.5, you have 3 which doesn't give you much to play with.
You could be asked to be put on a poor stability profile which would give you a target snr of generally 12 or 15 even more stability but your sync speed will drop severely likely below 1Mb.

3. Another strange thing is the attenuation on your upstream is a higher than your downstream attenuation this is usually the other way around since your upload speed is generally low your upload line should attenuate a lot. I could wrong here but I have never seeing a upstream attenuation higher than downstream.

If you could get 2nd level tech support to look at those stats they would certainly see an issue and would log a fault with Eircom.

If you can maybe post line errors such as fec, crcs and hec errors this would also help clarify your problem.

Thanks for your input. I will pass this information on and hopefully they will act upon it. Unfortunately when the eircom tech was out here he wouldnt do much once he found out we were with vodafone. Maybe ill just have to shout a bit louder and outline a probable physical problem between the house and the exchange. Thanks again.

lucernarian

baconsoft wrote: »

Hi
If anyone can help with advice or who to contact I would really appreciate it. Here goes.... For the last 6 months our internet connection has dropped immediately when we make outgoing landline phone calls or receive incoming calls. It also drops intermittently for no apparent reason. We have:

1. Changed all DSL filters numerous times
2. Changed modem/routers
3. Had the house alarm guy out to check if it was the problem.(Its not apparently, he also changed the filter on it)
4. Had Vodafone and Eircom technicians out to the house who postured and poked around but were about as much use as fart in a spacesuit. (We are still with Vodafone, Lord knows why)
5. Endless fruitless calls with Vodafone who love to ask us to check what colour the dancing lights on our router are and to tell us how many 'faults' there are on our line. Needless to say after about 20 calls we are no nearer a solution.

We are at the end of our tether with this (hence this post) but would really appreciate advice from anyone who has experienced same or has knowledge in this area and knows what might be going on. We are going to change to a different broadband solution if we cant fix this (dish?!).

Thanks for reading.

The prodecures in place for dealing with this still involve going to Vodafone who then liase with eircom over fixing the problem. If they have sat on their hands and are leaving a phone line with crackling on it (in breach of eircom's public service obligation) then I would report the issue to ComReg immediately. Before you do that, you need to lodge an official complaint with Vodafone first.

The relatively similar levels of attenuation for upstream and downstream suggest that there is a more straightforward cable problem, i.e. an intermittent short from water in a junction box or else a dodgy connection/join somewhere on the line.

Xcellor

Report that you are having problems hearing people on the other end of the phone. This is intermittent but sometimes its really bad, crackling etc. Say the phone line is unusable as is. Eircom are obliged to give you a proper phone line. They are not obliged to offer you proper broadband.

As suggested it sounds like there is a problem with the physical line itself. If they fix the issue to resolve the voice issue the DSL issue should also fix itself.

Back in the days of dialup I had a fault on my line and it was giving really **** 28,000kps instead of 56k. They refused to do anything. I then reported that the line quality was very poor, crackling etc, they sent an engineer up the pole. Not sure what he did but after that was able to connect to net at 49k

Cork981

49k :S couldn't imagine using a connection so slow!
My first connection was a 512k chorus connection, looking back now I taught it was amazingly fast.

sharkbite1983

baconsoft wrote: »

Hi
If anyone can help with advice or who to contact I would really appreciate it. Here goes.... For the last 6 months our internet connection has dropped immediately when we make outgoing landline phone calls or receive incoming calls. It also drops intermittently for no apparent reason. We have:

1. Changed all DSL filters numerous times
2. Changed modem/routers
3. Had the house alarm guy out to check if it was the problem.(Its not apparently, he also changed the filter on it)
4. Had Vodafone and Eircom technicians out to the house who postured and poked around but were about as much use as fart in a spacesuit. (We are still with Vodafone, Lord knows why)
5. Endless fruitless calls with Vodafone who love to ask us to check what colour the dancing lights on our router are and to tell us how many 'faults' there are on our line. Needless to say after about 20 calls we are no nearer a solution.

We are at the end of our tether with this (hence this post) but would really appreciate advice from anyone who has experienced same or has knowledge in this area and knows what might be going on. We are going to change to a different broadband solution if we cant fix this (dish?!).

Thanks for reading.

As stupid as this may sound, I had a DSL problem with Vodafone, changed modems, filters etc, & somebody suggested it could be a build up of static on the line.

I unplugged everything from all phone points in the house, & left it over night, next day everything was running faster!!!

Might be a long shot but worth a try!

orwellg84

Cork981 wrote: »

No problem.
From looking at them stats id be fairly confident that there is physical damage to your copper pair between your house and the exchange which is causing cross talking/interference.

Eircom would be responsible for dealing with this problem since you are paying line rental to them and sine Vodafone techs don't have access to Eircom ducts/cabs and overhead cables.
(Eircom are responsible for maintaining the phone cable to the first termination point of your house.)

My reasons for this conclusion are as follows. (Which you can give to tech support to hopefully get a solution)

1. Your line attenuation is very good at 24db which allow you to get speeds above 15-16Mbs; this attenuation will increase at higher sync speeds but not by much.

2. Your noise margin is low at 3 which would indicate your line is barely holding sync at the 2mbs you have currently, this is strange combination to have a low attenuation, low noise margin and low speed.
Usually you sacrifice snr margin for higher speed. (i.e. higher sync but lower noise margin, a modem would generally disconnect and an snr of 1- 1.5, you have 3 which doesn't give you much to play with.
You could be asked to be put on a poor stability profile which would give you a target snr of generally 12 or 15 even more stability but your sync speed will drop severely likely below 1Mb.

3. Another strange thing is the attenuation on your upstream is a higher than your downstream attenuation this is usually the other way around since your upload speed is generally low your upload line should attenuate a lot. I could wrong here but I have never seeing a upstream attenuation higher than downstream.

If you could get 2nd level tech support to look at those stats they would certainly see an issue and would log a fault with Eircom.

If you can maybe post line errors such as fec, crcs and hec errors this would also help clarify your problem.

Great answer, can I come to you when I have a technical issue:cool:
Our experience was similar to OP but related only to phone line. Unfortunately due to a quirk of faith we are connected through 8kms of cable to a subexchange rather than the main exchange 3 kms away - but that's another story. The issue is we had a problem of physical damage on the line and were put through the hoops to get Eircom to admit the problem. Eventually after everything else was ruled out the problem was traced to underground cables requiring diggers and a bunch of guys to fix. We were the only line to be affected so you can imagine why we were being put off. Keep pushing, make your self into the biggest pain in the world, it's the only way to get things done these days - unfortunately.