Where-to when your ISPs and TDR can't help?

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DonGould

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#564889 5-Jan-2012 16:17

Seems to me that it's time to run a length of outdoor cable out to the road as a temp job to sort that out.

The copper is going to be gone in a decade. Seems to me that over investment in fixing stuff like this is silly.

Am I alone in thinking that we really need some checklists for sorting this stuff out?

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RunningMan

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#564928 5-Jan-2012 17:51

How many pairs are buried in the one location - just the two you are using, or are there some other spares to try?

Given whatever the problem appears to affect both pairs you are using, there could be some interference from something else buried alongside in the same trench (like a power cable supplying the neighbour's MIG welder), or something that has physically damaged both cables like moisture ingress or something cutting the line.

Trying a temporary cable would obviously isolate whatever is buried as being the issue, or alternatively someone with the correct test equipment could no doubt diagnose an issue in that short segment of cable.

Talkiet

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#564937 5-Jan-2012 18:23

ChillingSilence: [snip]What's cool though is both have interleaving turned on, yet the Naked connection has 12ms to my colo server, whereas my main internet takes 28ms to it. Quite the difference :D

What interleaving parameters are on the Naked DSL connection? Cos at 12ms, there's going to be barely any there.

Interleaving can be on both upstream or downstream, and can have various 'depths' which all impact the latency effects.

It's very likely that the 2 lines have quite different interleaving profiles so that's not a fair comparison.

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KiwiNick

11 posts

Geek

#565971 8-Jan-2012 00:50

DonGould: I only drew 1 cabinet, but I did draw a number of road side distribution frames (what I'm guessing you're calling a CT).

CT's are small (20cm) grey boxes that terminate about 15 pairs, usually mounted on power poles, in the suburbs where power lines are overhead (or on telephone poles). The line into the residence is usually overhead, but not always. I'm thinking suburbs like Newtown, Kelburn, Kilbirnie - in Wellington. There's nothing wrong with a CT, but sometimes they overlap 5 or so pairs with the next CT down the street. So ... CT A has pairs 1-14, B has 10-24, C has 20-34, etc. And it was quite likely the pairs themselves would run to the end of the cable, too (all bad for ADSL). Cross-connection cabinets weren't common in these suburbs, at least prior to ADSL.

DonGould: I'd like to know how you test a bit of copper to see if it's got T's on it without doing a physical inspection.

Testing of copper for T junctions would involve Time Domain Reflectology, or you can use a Tone Source. TDR (explained here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-domain_reflectometry ) tells you about taps and other discontinuities. Alternatively, a Tone Source is put on at on at the exchange or other suitable point, and a tone probe is used at various points to check for tone (if you open up the cable, you can probe the exact pair).

DonGould: As I understand it, the problem is 'digital echo' from the far end of the pair which causes the problem.

That's about it.

ChillingSilence

301 posts

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#566009 8-Jan-2012 09:59

I'm unsure what interleaving is on both, I just know that both routers on both lines report "Interleaving ON". When Interleaving was off entirely I was getting 7-8ms to my colo server. I'd suggest you're right, considering they were trying to make my line as "reliable" as possible I can imagine that they've not 'toned down' the interleaving, or however you want to technically describe it, on my main line, due to the disconnection issues.

I have no idea how many pairs are buried there, I'm presuming there's more than one due to the fact they were using the first wire on one pair and the second cable from another pair. Had a chat with my mate and he's not keen on the idea of messing with their kit, and rightfully so. I guess this means I'm going to have to try and follow the official channels, which is significantly easier said than done, mostly due to the fact the disconnections don't occur 10x every single day. Some days it's more, some days it less.

One thing I've noticed is over the holiday period the disconnections have eased up a little, but this was prior to the second connection being put in. I'm unsure about the connectivity of this second line because I've not been using my 3rd machine which I have hooked up to the Naked DSL line, but I know that the primary connection has still been dropping off a couple of times a day.

EDIT: I'm figuring this won't matter coz they can just check the authentication logs :)

ChillingSilence

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#566594 9-Jan-2012 18:09

So, I'm in the middle of a DotA2 game, and main internet connection goes down. Super :(
Switch over to point to the new Slingshot internet connection IP Address as my gateway and I'm back, only there's a bit more packet loss. Still, it seems as though the Naked one is fine, the regular line is not... Odd indeed?

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ChillingSilence

301 posts

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#567301 11-Jan-2012 12:13

The Naked connections been good for the last 3 days I've been actively using it, while the wife and the rest of the network uses the old connection (Which is still disconnecting).

Aside from the fact I'm syncing under 10mbps, and I appear to be thrown into the "Unlimited" data-pool of users (So speeds wildly fluctuate at peak times), I've not seen any disconnections, which is progress!

webwat

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#568770 14-Jan-2012 13:32

ChillingSilence: The Naked connections been good for the last 3 days I've been actively using it, while the wife and the rest of the network uses the old connection (Which is still disconnecting).

Aside from the fact I'm syncing under 10mbps, and I appear to be thrown into the "Unlimited" data-pool of users (So speeds wildly fluctuate at peak times), I've not seen any disconnections, which is progress!

Both those connections are coming in on the Cat5e you originally mentioned? Just checking...

How about turning off the original modem and comparing reliability of the naked DSL with and without the other DSL running. But it does sound like the new DSL has been more successful than the original, and I would suggest that the slower sync under 10Mbps might be more stable considering the problems you've had.

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