BT Help line

[Michael Rolls]

41
No I wasn't charged - even though the damage to the cable was my fault, which was a pleasant surprise. I'm afraid I don't understand the rest of your post - as I said, on matters electrical I am a total ignoramus.
Mike

[Diasi]

41
No - that's my type of socket, but the top socket - non-phone one - isn't used. The cable to the router exits from the bottom of the socket and inside it disappears into the internals of the socket behind a screw fastened plate. The data cable is at least twice the diameter of a normal phone extension cable and has, according to the engineer, considerably lower internal impedance. Sorry if I am unclear - anything electrical beyond an on/off switch is pretty much black magic to me!
Again, thanks for the advice - it is much appreciated.
Mike

If that's your set-up you've got a free 'get out of jail card' because if the Openreach engineer wants to charge you tell him / her you'll be asking his  / her bosses to explain the hard wiring.

Are you on FTTC or just plain ADSL?

[Michael Rolls]

If that's your set-up you've got a free 'get out of jail card' because if the Openreach engineer wants to charge you tell him / her you'll be asking his  / her bosses to explain the hard wiring.

Are you on FTTC or just plain ADSL?

Haven't a clue - like I said, I'm ignorant in such matters
Mike 

[Diasi]

Haven't a clue - like I said, I'm ignorant in such matters
Mike 

What sort of download speeds do you get on a good day?

Which telephone exchange are you connected to?

[fortyone]

If that's your set-up you've got a free 'get out of jail card' because if the Openreach engineer wants to charge you tell him / her you'll be asking his  / her bosses to explain the hard wiring.

Maybe maybe not but could get lucky. I'm amazed there was no charge the first time. Perhaps as it was wheelchair damage the bloke had a bit of compassion and put it down as something else.

[Michael Rolls]

Nowadays 10-12. Before the guy installed the data cable around 6, which went up to the 10-12 level instantly  - magic in my eyes!
Mike

[Diasi]

Nowadays 10-12. Before the guy installed the data cable around 6, which went up to the 10-12 level instantly  - magic in my eyes!
Mike

10 / 12 Mbps is a good speed for ADSL but a very poor speed for FTTC so I'd guess that you're on ADSL & not far from the exchange (line distance).

You can check the capability of your telephone exchange in the link below.

You just need to enter your phone number & click' submit', you don't need the ID or UPRN boxes.

http://www.dslchecker.bt.com

[Michael Rolls]

Yes - looking at the filters they are marked ADSL - what is FTTC? The exchange is about 2 miles away (I believe), not totally sure, can't be any nearer because there is nothing commercial nearer that that in the direction the telephone lines run. I am on the edge of a lot of farm land.
Engineer came this morning and all is back to normal - but he was as mystified as I was. He ran a few diagnostic checks, connected everything up again - and it worked! The only possible explanation that he could come up with was that it was a line fault of some sort, overcome by unknown means (!). Anyway - everything now works, thankfully, including my community alarm.
Incidentally, over the weekend I used my 'Internet with legs' device which uses the 3 mobile phone network and it was a godsend. Gave 7-8 mps, not all that short of my BT router, although its range is limited - the laptop in the kitchen - 20 feet of signal distance and two walls in the way, was a good bit slower that the one in the office (didn't actually check what the speed was, but it was very slow getting websites, etc.) from which the device was only inches away.
Mike

[fortyone]

It must be an intermittent short so it will probably be back. Possibly the next time you walk over that router cable.

Fibre To The Cabinet is when the wires part of your internet is delivered from your local cabinet which has a fibre link back to the exchange and on from there to the internet backbone in some huge datacentre somewhere.

FTTC top speeds are up to 76Mbps but often the slower packages are sold 38Mbps being the next step down apart from BT who offer 51Mbps to compete with VMs slowest offering. 12Mbps is fine for just surfing and a bit of streaming - it's around what I get on 4G at the caravan and for browsing is not noticeably slower than my connection here at home where I have 76/20 FTTCmostly because I need the 20Mbps upstream that offers for my home webserver. Anybody using a server supplied over the typical 1Mbps or less ADSL upstream would find it very slow.

If you are rural there is a distinct possibility that FTTC either wouldn't be available or wouldn't be anywhere near the headline speed. Diasi's link will probably give info on that.

[Michael Rolls]

Now you mention it, BT did announce with much fanfare a couple of years or so back 'fibre is coming to your locality' Maybe yes, maybe no - depends on how you define locality - the only fibre around here is Weetabix!
The engineer reckoned that whatever the cause was, it wasn't my side of the main socket.
Mike

[Michael Rolls]

76 mps - I can but dream! Still, to be fair, the speed I have is fine for what I do. I don't, as yet, stream films, but catch-up via BBC I-player, YouTube, etc., works fine on the smart TV - never tried on the computers nor would I wish to.
Mike

[Diasi]

Yes - looking at the filters they are marked ADSL - what is FTTC? The exchange is about 2 miles away (I believe), not totally sure, can't be any nearer because there is nothing commercial nearer that that in the direction the telephone lines run. I am on the edge of a lot of farm land.

Mike

Although we use the term ADSL, you'll be on ADSL2/2+.

ADSL2/2+ will give a maximum speed of about 24 Mbps when virtually next to the exchange so if you're getting 10 / 12 Mbps you've got a downstream attenuation of about 36db which would equate to a line length of 1.6 miles.

Of course you may have a line that has little noise with being in a very rural area so it's just possible you could be 2 miles away from the exchange.

How mind-numbing is this post? 

Now you mention it, BT did announce with much fanfare a couple of years or so back 'fibre is coming to your locality' Maybe yes, maybe no - depends on how you define locality - the only fibre around here is Weetabix!
The engineer reckoned that whatever the cause was, it wasn't my side of the main socket.
Mike

I can't speak for fortyone but it's made me laugh.

The engineer couldn't identify the fault but knew that something he couldn't identify wasn't on your side of the master socket.      Lol.

Did he not try the test socket & find that he had a good line?

[fortyone]

My bet is that the obviously intermittent fault is down to the router cable. Using twisted pair cable where it can be pinched isn't any too smart. I could easily be wrong on that but if this were mine that is what I'd check first.

The only intermittent faults on an actual line I've come across are corroded joints which can get better and worse depending on how wet they are. I've seen lots of people complain that their BB takes a nosedive when it rains.


I took an interest in the workings of ADSL years back and have spent quite a while on forums dedicated to sorting it out and optimising performance.

[Diasi]

My bet is that the obviously intermittent fault is down to the router cable. Using twisted pair cable where it can be pinched isn't any too smart. I could easily be wrong on that but if this were mine that is what I'd check first.

The only intermittent faults on an actual line I've come across are corroded joints which can get better and worse depending on how wet they are. I've seen lots of people complain that their BB takes a nosedive when it rains.

I took an interest in the workings of ADSL years back and have spent quite a while on forums dedicated to sorting it out and optimising performance.

Yes, I had that in the early days of ADSL but it didn't knock out the phone line.

On the forums did you find it was hard mentioning the term backhaul without it sounding perverted? Lol 

[fortyone]

I recently had it again on VDSL. More recently still I had a no dial tone and permanent engaged on my phone while the Internet was still running full tilt. The bloke who came out to fix it mentioned that the cabling back to the exchange was unreliable as it was aluminium laid in the 70s.


On ADSL I gave up on BT infrastructure  for this house and took VM instead. They are a horrible horrible company who take forever to sort out the local congestion cable is very prone to so when FTTC arrived I took it only to have two no shows on the install and a rebook weeks after my VM cancellation date so I remained with VM for a year and tried again.