Master Line Filters at houses with phone jacks in parallel

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greaneyr

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#191600 9-Feb-2016 23:06

I'm cancelling my landline at the end of the month and going naked ADSL. In doing so, I decided I'd tidy up my wiring (yes, it's in totally the wrong order, I now realise). My house has a total of 5 jacks, including the outlet I'm currently using for ADSL. I've always gotten what I feel is quite poor performance (I only see 6Mb/s on ADSL2) and have always meant to improve it. So I spent a decent chunk of the public holiday yesterday tracing phone cables under my house and in the ceiling, and now have a pretty solid understanding of what lines run where. It turns out that the outlet I'm using for ADSL is an afterthought, as it already runs on its own cable pair from the demarc.

I could just disconnect everything except for the ADSL outlet, but figuring you never really know what might happen in the future, I figured it best to put in a master line filter, to give the best of both worlds (improve ADSL, while preserving the voice copper cabling for whatever possible reason in future).

From the tracing and testing I did, it appears all my phone jacks are wired in parallel. Apart from the master jack, which only has one other jack running off it, everything else runs back to the demarc. Each jack (other than the master) only has two wires inside, and if I disconnect it, everything else still runs. So I'm assuming everything is wired in parallel, other than the one pair that feeds the master, then onto its sole child jack.

But the jacks that are connected in parallel can travel some distance to reach their destination. One of them is in my garage, about 30m away from the demarc and through an underground run. So my question is, am I still likely to see an improvement in performance? I have been recording the performance stats of my ADSL connection to help compare, and the numbers there don't look particularly bad, but the sync speeds are just terrible, so I figure there must be a reason why.

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#1488449 9-Feb-2016 23:06

Hello... Our robot found some keywords in your post, so here is an automated reply with some important things to note regarding broadband speeds.

If you are posting regarding DSL speeds please check that

you have reset your modem and router
your PC (or other PCs in your LAN) is not downloading large files when you are testing - you are not being throttled by your ISP due to going over the monthly cap
your tests are always done on an ethernet connection to the router - do not use wireless for testing
you read this topic and follow the instructions there.

Make sure you provide information for other users to help you. If you have not already done it, please EDIT your post and add this now:

Your ISP and plan
Type of connection (ADSL, ADSL2, VDSL)
Your modem DSL stats (do not worry about posting Speedtest, we need sync rate, attenuation and noise margin)
Your general location (or street)
If you are rural or urban
If you know your connection is to an exchange, cabinet or conklin
If your connection is to a ULL or wholesale service
If you have done an isolation test as per the link above

Most of the problems with speed are likely to be related to internal wiring issues. Read this discussion to find out more about this. Your ISP is not intentionally slowing you down today (unless you are on a managed plan). Also if this is the school holidays it's likely you will notice slower than usual speed due to more users online.

A master splitter is required for VDSL2 and in most cases will improve speeds on DSL connections. Regular disconnections can be a monitored alarm or a set top box trying to connect. If there's an alarm connected to your line even if you don't have an alarm contract it may still try to connect so it's worth checking.

I recommend you read these two blog posts:

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raytaylor

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#1488468 9-Feb-2016 23:21

So since you already have a dedicated DSL jack with its own wire back to the demarc, thats great.

You can install a master filter and should see an improvement.

A master filter will send all high frequency signals to your jack, and low frequency (voice band) signals to the rest of the reticulation in your house.

Ray Taylor

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richms

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#1488499 9-Feb-2016 23:26

Just cut the other ones. On the offchance someone wants a line in the future then worry about installing a filter.

Richard rich.ms

RunningMan

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#1488519 10-Feb-2016 06:13

One of the big things that impacts xDSL is reflections from all those branches in the cable so bypassing the extra wiring with a filter will help.

greaneyr

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#1491412 12-Feb-2016 21:30

Thanks for the replies everyone.

I did the installation tonight, and have increased by sync rate from 6.1Mb/s to between 8 and 9. Right now it's at 9.1Mb/s. Most of the other numbers remain unchanged, but the line attenuation has gone from 32.5 dB down to 30.5 dB, and the down S/N margin has improved by 1 dB also.

So put me down as another success story of the humble master line filter. Don't know why I didn't try it sooner!

Behodar

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#1491415 12-Feb-2016 21:42

That's still fairly low. Are you in an urban or rural area and what speeds does Chorus' site indicate you should get?

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greaneyr

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#1491441 12-Feb-2016 22:39

Chorus' site says I should be able to achieve greater than 10Mb/s. I'm in an urban area, but right on the edge of town. There obviously weren't enough houses my side of the exchange to justify putting a cabinet in, because there was only one cabinet installed from my exchange - everyone else is fed directly from it. The run from my house to the exchange is just under 2KM. It's still slower than my neighbour got though - I think theirs was around 13Mb/s. I'm still using the Thomson router I got when I first signed up to Telecom back in about 2008, but then that's what they had as well - not sure of the age.

Before I put the filter on, I did a test stripping the insulation and twisting the wires together, just to ensure I got the polarity right. At one stage, I had nothing on the line except ADSL, and even with that I was under 9Mb/s.

greaneyr

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#1491457 12-Feb-2016 23:44

FWIW, when making voice calls I do occasionally hear a small amount of crackle. I'll even get this at dial tone, so I know it's not the other person's line. I guess the question is whether Spark would be interested in resolving this as a 'fault' as I've got a working service. Given my area isn't scheduled to be upgraded to fibre until 2018/2019, I do feel like Chorus owe me a favour or two, but then they may well disagree.

greaneyr

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#1491526 13-Feb-2016 10:48

Unplugging and plugging the ADSL outlet and forcing a resync still gives me a variation in speed - it's anywhere from 8.1 to 9.5Mb/s, but at the moment, is toward the lower end.

Can I get an opinion on my current stats?

Link Information

Uptime: 0 days, 10:55:59

DSL Type: G.992.5 annex A

Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 1.081 / 8.694

Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [kB/kB]: 0,00 / 0,00

Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 12,5 / 0,0

Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 15,0 / 30,5

SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 12,0 / 12,0

Vendor ID (Local/Remote): TMMB / IKNS

Loss of Framing (Local/Remote): 58 / 0

Loss of Signal (Local/Remote): 6 / 0

Loss of Power (Local/Remote): 0 / 0

Loss of Link (Remote): 0

Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 56 / 0

FEC Errors (Up/Down): 3 / 2.587

CRC Errors (Up/Down): 3 / 0

HEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 0

RunningMan

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#1491527 13-Feb-2016 10:56

greaneyr:

[snip]the down S/N margin has improved by 1 dB also.

This should be 12dB - +/- say 0.3 - pretty stable. If there is significant variation over time, it means there is noise on the line that is also varying. If it's jumping up and down, combined with hearing noise on the line and errors being recorded in the stats, I'd suggest there is some other issue on the line like a corroded joint somewhere.

greaneyr

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#1491607 13-Feb-2016 14:45

That being the case, what are the chances of Spark actually even responding to this issue? I've always been led to believe ISPs are generally not interested in resolving ADSL quality issues unless there are actual disconnections occurring.

I could check the speed and SN margin every day and record them for variations, but I'm not sure it would do much good if they don't consider underperforming DSL to be 'faulty'.

Does anyone know of anyone successfully logging such calls before?

Dyson

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RunningMan

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#1491633 13-Feb-2016 16:50

You could log a fault based on the crackle noise audible on the line.

raytaylor

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#1491720 13-Feb-2016 19:13

RunningMan:

You could log a fault based on the crackle noise audible on the line.

That crackle would interrupt a dialup modem, and I think the requirement is you should be able to transfer data at 14kbits (fax rates) so they are obligated to fix it.

Ray Taylor

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greaneyr

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#1491782 13-Feb-2016 20:54

Unfortunately, it seems the 'crackle' I was hearing on the voice line is only audible on my cordless phone. Swap it out to a standard phone and it's not there at any stage. I swear I heard occasional clicks when I was testing a few days back, but that was probably just from a slightly loose connection as I was inserting the BT plug into the jack. Meanwhile, my SN margin on my router has crept up to 13dB this afternoon.

I guess there's a remote chance it could be a connection on my side of the demarc somewhere causing the issue. I know it's not the line to the filter, or the filter to the cable, but potentially everything between router and the wall jack could be the cuprit. But I'm not holding my breath.

RunningMan

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#1491789 13-Feb-2016 21:26

If the noise margin is moving up, it means the noise source is reducing. See if you can figure out the pattern - common correlations would be temperature, time of day, moisture, wind.

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