I've had an intermittent synch loss problem for over a month.

A line fault was initially identified and fixed (corroded terminals on an
outside line box which still looks to be in awful shape and is I suspect the
source of the continuing problem). The problem then persisted but the synch
loss was less - sometimes connecting for up to 30 hours without loss (which
is better then the pre repair connection of 30 minutes).

An ISP "woosh test" then identified a "copper line failure" (probable "earth
fault"). A subsequent "woosh test" identified "inconclusive" results.

BT was finally called to investigate by the ISP but they closed the fault
without even visiting the premises because they couldn't, I assume,
*remotely* identify a line fault. The upshot is that BT seems to regard any
connection in excess of 10 hours or so as successful ADSL.

So basically it seems I'm buggered - neither my ISP nor BT is geared up to
grasp the basic concept of an intermittent as opposed to a constant line
fault.

I've bought 2 new telephones, a new Netgear modem power supply, used 4
filters (bought 3 new ones including an ADSL Nation filter and an expensive
PC World filter) and even borrowed a new modem and still the synch loss
persists.

Can anyone suggest an approach to persuade investigation of an intermittent
synch loss problem?

I just know - with near 100% certainty - this problem is connected with
faulty wiring in an old outside line box but I just can't prove it!

Gareth.

"Gareth" <hotmail.com@dgareth.spm> wrote in message
news:41be0881$0$50905$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader01.plus.net...
"Can anyone suggest an approach to persuade investigation of an intermittent
synch loss problem?"

Keep re-reporting the fault. From a BT point of view it will become a
(multiple) repeat report and this upsets the stats.

"I just know - with near 100% certainty - this problem is connected with
faulty wiring in an old outside line box"

I would not bank on that one bit. Whilst it's possible for an intermittent
earth fault to appear in external line plant (usually accompanied by rain)
it's just as likely to be on a piece of internal equipment like a modem
found in (1) an alarm panel (sky/set to box) or even ratty extension wiring.
Be sure it's none of that unless you want to pay BT £120ish quid for
visiting you this Christmas......






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Posted via TITANnews - Uncensored Newsgroups Access

Have all your tests been direct into the test socket with no other equipment
or wiring connected. If not you have not eliminated the inside wiring from
the possibility.

Peter Crosland

"Peter Crosland" <g6jns@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:328t8eF3huvupU1@individual.net...
Thanks Ed and Peter.

There is no internal wiring other than 1 internal master socket connected to
the outside line box by about 8 feet or so of wire.

I've been told that the test socket is behind the face plate of the master
socket but as there's nothing else plugged in to the master socket there
surely wouldn't be a need to use the test socket?

The lack of recent rain coincides with the near disappearance of the
problem.

Oh well, with £120 or so at risk I'll continue to wait for another (almost
certain) reappearance of the problem ;-)

Gareth.

Well I had a similar problem and eventually proved that it was the removable
faceplate at fault. Also BT will in theory only test as far as the test
socket. By the way what is the problem if the connection drops occasionally?
I can see the problem if it only lasts half an hour but 30 plus hours?


--
Peter Crosland

Peter Crosland wrote:

I get intermittent synch loss. I can recover it immediately if I pick
up the adjacent phone and key in a number (any number) or start to dial
out on my emergency PAYG connection. Does that point to the cause of
the problem?

--
DB.

<SNIP>

There is an easy way to deal with this. First of all forget about the synch
loss on the DSL. The next time it starts to happen (around the time of the
next rain) unplug EVERYTHING apart from a vanilla phone and call BT faults.
Report the line as noisy. The easiest way to do this is from the BT web site
(At home/faults). This gives you an instant job number (XXXXXXXX) and a
'promise' appointment. If the line has an earth fault is is usually
accomponied by a hum in the background, but not always. If this earth fault
is cleared then your dsl fault will go away ;-)

You never said if you were overhead or underground fed to you home. A common
fault causing earth and noise (and dsl sync loss) is often on the end of the
underground cable where it meets the lead in. Typically this will be in a
grey box or cover at about calf height on the house. Some of the cables used
in the past (most notably the dry armoured cables) allow moisture in and rot
in the butt. The cure is often to strip back 3-4 inches and reterminate.

Hope this helps, just attack it a different way. Report the line as faulty
for voice. If the engineer should ask tell him/her you get a intermittent
hum on the line when it rains AND that it knocks out your DSL. That will
yield you better results in getting it fixed ;-)





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Ed Start wrote:
Be nice if this was true but go on anyway.....
True, but 3-4 inches goes below ground level .....
If only, if only.................

If it is a cable pair fault, the chances are all that will happen is that it
will be swapped, this often will be onto another pair with other problems
associated with it(experience has shown this to be normally SNR problems).
Remember if one pair in a cable is faulty, how long before more go the same
way, until the whole cable is blown (or should I say joint is full of
water). If they swap it on the Eside then you can get put onto another
cable with far higher line losses than you originally have.

The ONLY way to get this deffinitely cured, is to keep plugging at the ISP
to keep getting a ADSL engineer to site so that the line is fully tested,
not just electronically (battery/earth./low etc...). The ADSL engineers
will eventually get the message, as the repeat faults will cost them money
(last time I bothered to check it's £15 but I gave up keeping track a long
time ago & have the attitude that a job takes as long as job takes, one
recent one took 3 days, knew what it was on day one, just took the rest of
the time to convince the powers that be to get the DSL card changed).

"kraftee" wrote in message
news:41c08037$0$9319$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader02.plus.net...
Plants not good on your patch then.... Most are 18'' out of the ground in
capping, but I guess you know better ;-)

" If it is a cable pair fault, the chances are all that will happen is that
it will be swapped"

Fortunately not all BT engineers work to the FRS 'lets grab the points and
bollux to the customer' pair swapping method you clearly know well. Some
actually get in roadway boxes and fix faults, uplifting joints and bringing
the network up to standard. Others, as you clearly know, swap and run and
really need sacking.

The fault sympon described localises the fault to around the area of the
66/101 if UG, this is somewhat supported by the lack of other local
complaints.

To drag out an adsl engineer in his white 'I'm not going to get dirty'
gloves is a hiding to nothing. If it's not a socket or a piece of six wire
they just charge and run.

If I were in this guys shoes I get the intermittent earth fault dealt with.
There is a slim chance it's on the E side, but from what the OP is saying
it's closer to home.





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Ed Start wrote:
You obviously DON'T know the majority of the ADSL engineers on my patch
(mind you you have got a couple to a tee with your discription, you did
forget the afternoons spent in the pub bit though), most of them are UG
skilled & if not do ask for UG assists if & when required.

The bigggest problem is when you go into the pristine office off a large
conglomerate to fix/install an ADSL circuit after spending the last 5 hours
up to your knees in black mud down some manhole/cable box fixing the
previouse one............

If the ADSL engineer does his job properly & if there is an earth fault
there is no excuse but to deal with it, or get help to deal with it & with
the newer testers being as accurate (in the main) as they are there is no
excuse to miss something as fundamental as an earth fault, if indeed there
is one & the problem is not induction being caused by something else.

In article <3299m3F3jcl60U1@individual.net>,
DB. <dbircumshaw@btinternet.com> wrote:

I'm wondering whether this could be a poor joint in the cable. As soon
as you send a current down the wire - by taking the phone off-hook - it
effects a temporary cure. Does it get cured if you take the phone
off-hook and then replace it without dialing? Do you get any crackles
on telephone calls?

I once (some time ago) had terrible, but intermittent, noise on my phone
line. I reported it several times and had a series of BT linesmen who
tried various ineffective remedies (like changing the linebox).
Eventually one of their more senior engineers came and said he was
going to find the problem. He came back later to say he had found a
dry joint a couple of streets away and temperature variations caused the
wire to move, and the combination of temperature and humidity were what
caused the effect to vary so much. Since then I've had perfect calls -
including V90 modem and now broadband :-).

--
John F Hall

"kraftee" <kraftee@spamoff& die.com> wrote in message
"You obviously DON'T know the majority of the ADSL engineers on my patch"
I think it was you that brought up pair swapping, which, without being rude,
speaks volumes mate. Also, you seem to think all subs leads are less than
2-3 inches out of the ground. Are you sure you actually do this for a
living?????

I spend my days going behind ADSL enginners, all of which are UG skilled,
all of which throw any job back that would require opening anything other
than a JB23.
I must nominate you and your team as customer champions then as being the
only BT UK ADSL wholesale (as opposed to retail CSE who think they are DSL
engineers) Staff to actually do the whole job that you are paid for. That, I
am sure will have hundered of BT engineers up and down the country wetting
their pants and longing to meet you, you hero!






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Ed Start wrote:
I can even take you to sites where the block 66 is partially buried & you
also are forgetting if you cut back on a cable you have to move the block,
now how are you going to connect the internal/leadin as it hasn't got any
slack on it, let alone 2-3 inches so you can re-route to a new position.

Yes I do know about pair swapping, I have to go along aftwards to sort out
the following problems, but what can you expect from a workforce who has had
a piece work system virtually forced upon them.

Then you throw the jobs back at them as they have the skilling they should
be doing the job properly. If you're not ADSL trained then how can you
fully test the line (get my drift). It's also a failure of the managers who
should be investigating their repeat faults & asking why the UG skilled ADSL
engineers aren't doing it right first time, at least my lev.1 is interested,
pity yours doesn't appear to be. We all make mistakes, even me & you, but
if, as you are so emphatic about, these engineers are just bodging &
scarpering then they should be investigated & rightly so...

Nope the majority think I'm a mug for firstly doing ADSL in the first place
& secondly for actually sticking with a job to the bitter end (& some of
them are very bitter ends with very little thanks & sometimes bollockings
for taking so long, even on higher level complaints where I'm liasing with
board members the local 'virtual' manager isn't happy). Remember I'd get
easier jobs & more money (under FRS) just being a socket jockey, as it is I
only get the team bonus most weeks (not unless I do any overtime days)...

Just remember that not all ADSL engineers run around in suits, some actually
wear overalls & (shock horror) get dirty (sometimes very!!!), they know how
to joint & often do & above all try to give a quality service to the end
users, despite what your local crew may be getting up to.

"kraftee" <kraftee@spamoff& die.com> wrote in message
news:41c1f5b2$0$9333$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader02.plus.net...
<BIG SNIP>
Then I stand corrected and in disbelief................





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Posted via TITANnews - Uncensored Newsgroups Access

John F Hall replied:


Thanks for your reply.
No, it doesn't get cured if I simply take the phone of the hook but it
*always* does if I dial a number. And yes, I *do* get crackles on phone
calls. You've pointed me in the direction of a dry joint, and I'll go
through my internal wiring before raising the matter with BT, if
necessary.
Thanks again.
--
DB.

Ed Start wrote:
Of what?

Little hint, leave in what you are replying to, as messages don't get
propogated around usenet at the same speed all the time & some readers may
not have seen what you are replying to...

I've had some good news, well actually it's bloody annoying really, but at
the same time good for the end users, the main wasters/slackers/shirkers in
my area have been confined to an office because they're poorly sickly
(everybody say argh....bullshit) which at least gives the guys who want to
do the work a fighting chance.

In article <32fr7aF3lh241U1@individual.net>,
DB. <dbircumshaw@btinternet.com> wrote:

The line should be quiet. It sounds as though you can pursue the
crackles as a phone fault with BT as well as your ADSL problem with the
ISP. Perhaps others could advise on the relative merits, but to me it
sounds as though it may be the easier to find. You may however have to
be persistent. As I said I had to report my fault several times over
quite a long period before BT put a serious effort into finding it.

If you have a "linebox" you should be able to disconnect all the
internal wiring and plug a phone directly into the incoming line - they
contain a concealed plug and socket. I made a point of doing that when
I was reporting my own earlier fault so that BT could hear the noises
and have no doubt they were external. Whether you can test your ADSL
that way depends on how your microfilters are organised.

--
John F Hall

"Ed Start" <lost@inspace.com> wrote in message
news:41c00e6c$0$14490$a8266bb1@news.titannews.com. ..
I tried this a number of weeks ago - and I'm regretting it ;-)

The BT engineer identified a "loop induction" problem via the 17070 line
test when I first reported the problem direct to BT some weeks ago. He fixed
it or at least the 17070 line test didn't register the fault anymore (I
could still hear a "hum" on the line but he claimed that was normal for ADSL
lines).

Synch loss then improved but still occurred intermittently (instead of 29
minute connections I could then achieve sometimes 24 hour plus connections -
sometimes a couple of hours and sometimes 1 hour).

I now find that whilst the ISP "woosh" test either indicates a "copper line
test fail probably earth fault" or "inconclusive" BT isn't really
interested: they can't find a fault remotely and just close the job when
it's allocated.

The underground cable that feeds the home via an old outside line box was
the cause of the last fault that was picked up by the engineer using 17070.
I'm sure that this fault has the same cause but obviously I can't prove it
and because the BT remote line test doesn't identify a fault I can't seem to
get anything done.

Oddly despite using several different filters (4 different ones in total) I
find that the synch loss is most apparent when the phone is being used or
even just when the phone rings (the ringing current seems to affect the
synch). I notice also that the modem line noise measure drops to as low as 2
(or even lower judging by the synch loss) when the phone is in use or just
merely ringing. Is there an explanation for this?

Still, I'm starting to think that I shouldn't bother reporting the problem.
Something seems to be better than nothing.

Gareth.

In article <41c73fee$0$30735$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader01.plus.net>,
hotmail.com@dgareth.spm (Gareth) wrote:

It's not - report it as a fault and ask for compensation... that seems to
concentrate the mind

--
Paul Cummins - Always a NetHead
Wasting Bandwidth since 1981

"Paul Cummins" <agree2pay4uce@spam.vlaad.co.uk> wrote in message
news:memo.20041220215431.4060n@paul.vlaad.co.uk...
I think I'm on to a loser with getting the problem solved let alone getting
compensation.

Basically I have a telephone service that is perfectly capable of carrying
voice calls (the thing that it was designed to do) but is not really up to
the job of providing a high quality DSL service (the thing it wasn't
designed to do). I have an okayish ADSL service (up time of between 2 to 28
hours) and I wonder whether or not I should just be happy with that. It's a
pain in the arse when playing PGR2 or Halo 2 and the connection drops at an
important moment but that's just tough luck.

Gareth.