Demystifying VDSL DLM

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#1616259 23-Aug-2016 12:13

hio77:

make sure to note the voice line fault there, that is a clear indication of a fault to look into.

If you can constantly cause that to happen, you will be onto a winning example for when the techs show up.

Not sure if it's a red herring or not at this stage. It's the first time we've had a disconnection after a phone call since switching to VDSL (although we don't get a lot of landline calls these days). I just tried a couple of calls from my modem to our landline, and was unable to reproduce the disconnection.

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#1616334 23-Aug-2016 14:15

dclegg:

hio77:

make sure to note the voice line fault there, that is a clear indication of a fault to look into.

If you can constantly cause that to happen, you will be onto a winning example for when the techs show up.

Not sure if it's a red herring or not at this stage. It's the first time we've had a disconnection after a phone call since switching to VDSL (although we don't get a lot of landline calls these days). I just tried a couple of calls from my modem to our landline, and was unable to reproduce the disconnection.

That's a shame, may have just been a coincides then!

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Jase2985

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#1616346 23-Aug-2016 14:48

@chorusnz, think its about time this got sorted properly

dclegg

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#1616391 23-Aug-2016 16:05

Chorus Faults just called me directly. They've arranged for a higher class of technician to come and take a look. They are booked in for tomorrow, so that probably means no SVOD for the second night running (FTA TV! Oh the humanity!).

While it is good to have more movement here, the technician that visited yesterday was meant to be (in Spark's words) a "different class of technician", with the intent that they'd find the cause where others wouldn't venture much past a port reset & successful line test. So I'm not breaking out the champagne just yet.

@sbiddle made the valid point via Twitter that it may well be that the copper in our area is just crap, and a solid connection may not ever be possible at all. Based on factors including past ADSL performance, initial few days of VDSL performance, and age of house & subdivision, I'm hoping this isn't the case. But I guess I can't discount it. I would've also thought that the Chorus techs would have the ability or data to determine whether this is the root cause.

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#1616393 23-Aug-2016 16:08

dclegg:

Chorus Faults just called me directly. They've arranged for a higher class of technician to come and take a look. They are booked in for tomorrow, so that probably means no SVOD for the second night running (FTA TV! Oh the humanity!).

While it is good to have more movement here, the technician that visited yesterday was meant to be (in Spark's words) a "different class of technician", with the intent that they'd find the cause where others wouldn't venture much past a port reset & successful line test. So I'm not breaking out the champagne just yet.

@sbiddle made the valid point via Twitter that it may well be that the copper in our area is just crap, and a solid connection may not ever be possible at all. Based on factors including past ADSL performance, initial few days of VDSL performance, and age of house & subdivision, I'm hoping this isn't the case. But I guess I can't discount it. I would've also thought that the Chorus techs would have the ability or data to determine whether this is the root cause.

When i had a fault much like yours, it took a upper at visionstream faults getting involved to get things rolling and sorted the correct way.

See how it goes, worst case Chorus may have just opened up your in to follow up. Cuts the middleman out, but generally that's not how it is meant to work.

it is frustrating that you really have to push yourself through a cheese grater to get action to actually happen on some faults.

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#1616410 23-Aug-2016 16:32

Rebooted the modem just over 30 minutes ago (after Chorus tech no. 3 last week advised there should be no issue doing this frequently, despite advice I'd been given previously not to do that).

Stats currently sitting at 19Mbps/800Kbps. Not perfect, but hopefully snappy enough so that I don't have to watch the latest dross being served up to us as FTA "entertainment".

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#1616416 23-Aug-2016 16:43

dclegg:

Rebooted the modem just over 30 minutes ago (after Chorus tech no. 3 last week advised there should be no issue doing this frequently, despite advice I'd been given previously not to do that).

Stats currently sitting at 19Mbps/800Kbps. Not perfect, but hopefully snappy enough so that I don't have to watch the latest dross being served up to us as FTA "entertainment".

You should be okay, its that upstream that will hurt.

the Ack congestion that could appear there....

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#1616634 24-Aug-2016 09:30

Chorus tech no. 5 has just left, and already I'm feeling much better about things. Within a minute of being here, he found issues with how VDSL was installed, including very poor practises used when installing the master splitter.

But more importantly, he found what he described to be a very obvious fault with the phone line itself, which he is able to resolve at the nearby terminal. He has full confidence that he will be able to resolve this permanently, with the speeds of around 51Mbps/10Mbps as being the probable ending point once DLM has done its work.

Of course, this begs the question of why the previous seven Chorus technicians (4 with this VDSL issue, and 3 for previous ADSL callouts over the last four years) never noticed an issue with our line. The background hum that he pointed out to me has been there ever since we've been in this house. VDSL Chorus tech no. 3 even asked if there was ever any background noise on our phone line, and it was mentioned to him then. But he felt it wasn't serious enough to consider as a contributing factor.

Perhaps @ChorusNZ needs to revisit their training processes to ensure obvious line faults like this are more readily identified.

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#1616843 24-Aug-2016 14:03

heres hoping for a better outcome this time

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#1616846 24-Aug-2016 14:06

Jase2985:

heres hoping for a better outcome this time

Like I said, for the first time I'm actually pretty optimistic we may finally have this nailed. This is the first Chorus tech to identify and fix an obvious line fault. He also took the time to tidy up what he considered to be a sub-optimal master splitter install.

All around he seemed very knowledgable, and was more than willing to impart that knowledge. Chorus needs to clone this bloke, and deploy him throughout the country. :-)

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#1616900 24-Aug-2016 15:24

Frustrating experience to go through, Certainly not the first person or the last that will have this issue too!

I do wish all chorus techs were on the ball, but sometimes it simply takes another tech to think outside of the small box others think in to realise hey look there's an issue in the roadside joint! - Pretty sure i called a loose joint back in the first page of this thread even..

I really do hope it is indeed resolved for you now, Good on you for pushing onwards with it rather than just accepting as is!

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#1618650 28-Aug-2016 11:51

Well you havent posted for a few days so i take it its going a little better?

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#1618767 28-Aug-2016 16:27

Jase2985:
Well you havent posted for a few days so i take it its going a little better?

Yep. I've had no issues or disconnects since the last Chorus visit. The only reconnection I've had was today, as a result of reintroducing my router into the mix, and using the Spark supplied Huawei in bridge mode.

My sync rate is around 51Mbps/9Mbps, which I'm more than happy with.

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#1618794 28-Aug-2016 16:45

nice, hope it stays that way

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#1618809 28-Aug-2016 17:33

Jase2985:
nice, hope it stays that way

I think we're finally all good now. I'm reasonably confident we've finally resolved the underlying line fault.

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