Help Please: How to diagnose wiring issues.

Forums › LAN (ethernet/Wifi/routers/Bluetooth) › Help Please: How to diagnose wiring issues.

muppet

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#68222 17-Sep-2010 06:55

We've just moved into our new home and are having major issues with ADSL sync speeds.

It was "fine" once we moved in, we were getting sync speeds of around 2M down and 1M up. We're now getting around 300kbps down, still getting 1M up though. I have no idea what's changed - we haven't made any wiring changes or anything similar.

I got TelstraClear onto it, thinking it was their problem. They got Chorus out who told me that they were getting a good 8Mbs outside the house so any issues were inside.

I've tried all the obvious things like unplugging all other devices, testing different jacks in the house (there's about 7 in the house, odd right?)

The house has an alarm, which probably isn't helping.

So this weekend, I'm going to try and get up in the roof and do a bit of diagnoses. I'm wondering what tools people use to do this? I'd rather not end up paying someone to come and sort all the wiring out, I should be able to do it myself, but not sure what tools/procedures to use.

Any one have any debugging tips/tools they use?

Cheers!

Tim

Audiophiles are such twits! They buy such pointless stuff: Gold plated cables, $2000 power cords. Idiots.

OOOHHHH HYPERFIBRE!

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#381059 17-Sep-2010 09:11

Hi Tim, sounds like your wiring is an issue. I presume your leadin wire is an aerial one and there is a ETP box (whitebox) up under the eave or bargeboard where Telecom would have tested your line, correct.

If I were you I would get yourself a hard wired central filter you can get these from Cory's or Mastertrade, PM me and I will help you get one at a reasonable price as the overcounter retail price is outrageous. Also get your self a hand full of scotchlocs and enough cat5e cable to make a new run to whereever you modem is, alternatively you can use the existing cabling in the house to connect a clean run to the outlet that DSL is to appear at with no other sockets connected to it, this may be the easist if you can work out what cables go where and what can be cut off and not needed. If you were super clever you can create a clean run of a single pair to the desired outlet within the current cabling without running any new cables, this requires a bit of investigative work and is helped if you have a toner device to trace the cables.

Anyway the ideal is to place the filter in the ETP, however you should not enter that, but if you can intercept the cable directly after the ETP then all is good, if you ever there is a double termination in the ETP and two or more lines leaving the ETP to the house then the filter must go in the ETP.

The idea is to place the filter in the direct line before any branches or devices (including alarm) hit the line, at that point connect the filter in with the inbound line splitting to the filter and modem (ie modem line is the same point as the inbound line) and the rest of the house wiring connecting to the output of the filter. IF you use a new VDSL2 filter then it has a third modem outlet, if you use a older MM3200B then you will need to split the inbound line to get a feed to the filter and modem.

Cheers
Cyril

muppet

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#381063 17-Sep-2010 09:20

Thanks for the helpful info Cyril.
I'm not actually sure where the Telecom person tested to, it was my wife who spoke to him. It was somewhere outside the house. You're right in that there is an aerial cable coming into the house, past that I'm not sure what's there as it's all up in the roof and I haven't got up there yet.

I'll have a good look around over the weekend and post an update when I can get some idea of what's going on.

Thanks very much for your assistance, really appreciate it.

Audiophiles are such twits! They buy such pointless stuff: Gold plated cables, $2000 power cords. Idiots.

OOOHHHH HYPERFIBRE!

jonherries

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#381065 17-Sep-2010 09:21

If you are particularly comfortable with this:

1. Ensure your alarm people won't freak if your alarm does call backs even when not alarmed

2. Isolate the entry point of the connection, and disconnect it from the house.

3. Connect your adsl modem to the incoming wires using a bread board or if you have one a crimping tool and appropriate rj connector (or one of your jack points in a pinch), and then connect a lappie to the ethernet out on the modem.

4. Test speed.

5. Often with older houses additional phone jacks are "daisy chained" off each other, as back in the day the quality of the call was not particularly affected by this practice.

A much better arrangement these days is a star configuration with a central Command and control centre (likely some sort of patch panel), with Cat 5 running to the nodes on the network.

A side note: This is the reason there has been a lot of discussion about the Service Delivery Points (SDPs) being touted by Chorus.

I would say seven jacks is pretty excessive, and is likely to be the issue. You can always make do with one. and use wireless DECT phones.

Obviously remember that there is some juice in these cables so be careful. And remember as this is a forum, so I have likely sent you in the wrong direction. Therefore you may want to wait for some additional posts (and hopefully some consensus).

If in doubt call the pros and get an SDP.

Have fun in the ceiling.

Jon

jonherries

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#381067 17-Sep-2010 09:23

Apologies for double post, but I forgot the filter.

Jon

muppet

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#381069 17-Sep-2010 09:26

jonherries: And remember as this is a forum, so I have likely sent you in the wrong direction.

This made me laugh a lot. Thanks for the advice/tips. I'll see how I get on!

Audiophiles are such twits! They buy such pointless stuff: Gold plated cables, $2000 power cords. Idiots.

OOOHHHH HYPERFIBRE!

webwat

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#381206 17-Sep-2010 12:35

I would say that 2 megs is not a great speed at all for the modem sync but hard to say why its changed so suddenly. Alarms cause heaps of issues, and the 7 outlets wont help either to that master filter is required for starters.

Problem is that you will need a good quality link from the ETP to your modem location, and if you have older wiring or your modem cant go at the closest outlet to the ETP then you need a new cable run to a new modem outlet. The master filter should be wired to create an unfiltered line for the modem and filtering for all existing house wiring, so it creates a split between filtered and ADSL lines.

Time to find a new industry!

muppet

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#381691 18-Sep-2010 20:49

Ok, whew, what a day!

I've been up crawling around in the roof. It's really dodgy, you have to put planks down because if you walk anywhere else, you'll fall through the roof.

So what I found is two big thick wires running in, then breaking off onto two different copper pairs. The big black wire appears to be the same sort that's connected to the front of the house. So I don't think there's any box or anything, it's just copper all the way.

A quick bit of investigative work showed me that of the pairs split off, one pair ran out to the shed (where there's 3 jacks) and one ran the house (also 3 jacks)

So I removed the house point and tried to connect out in the shed. Still 700kb/s. So I disconnected the shed and reconnected the house. Excellent, I got 2Mb/s and was happy.
Until it died about 5 minutes later and wouldn't reconnect, no matter what I did. It'd sometimes come up for a minute, but then die again as soon as I tried to transmit any data.

So I've just got up in the roof again and totally disconnected anything and just cabled up a small phone jack. I've lugged the router up there in the dirt and the crap and now I'm getting 3mb connection (just ADSL, I didn't drag the ADSL2+ modem up there)

The connection seems steady and working OK.

So I'm assuming this means I should just totally recable the house? Can anyone tell me if the following stats are "OK"? I'm still wondering if the cable running into the house is dodgy.

ADSL Dying Gasp is Enabled.
ADSL Line 0 Upstream: 736 kbits/s; Downstream: 3008 kbits/s
Training rate statistics:
Total no of training: 2
Downstream rates:
Above and equal to 8000kbps: 0
Between 7000 and 7999 kbps: 0
Less than and equal 6999 : 2
Upstream rates:
Above and equal 768 kbps: 0
Less than and equal 767 kbps: 2
Adsl CPE side modem

ADSL Near End Operational Data
Upstream Relative Capacity Occupancy : 100
Attainable Bitrate : 65535 kbits/sec
Noise Margin Upstream : 9 dB
Output Pwr Downstream : 18 dBm
Attenuation Upstream : 21 dB
Downstream Fast Bitrate : 0 kbits/sec
Downstream Interleaved Bitrate : 3008 kbits/sec

Near-end defect bitmap : 0x0

ADSL Far End Operational Data
Downstream Relative Capacity Occupancy : 84 %
Attainable Bitrate : 65535 kbits/sec
Noise Margin Downstream : 13 dB
Output Pwr Upstream : 12 dBm
Attenuation Downstream : 35 dB
Upstream Fast Bitrate : 0 kbits/sec
Upstream Interleaved Bitrate : 736 kbits/sec

Far-end defect bitmap : 0x0

Audiophiles are such twits! They buy such pointless stuff: Gold plated cables, $2000 power cords. Idiots.

OOOHHHH HYPERFIBRE!

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muppet

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#381696 18-Sep-2010 21:07

EDIT: Spoke to soon. The line has now just disconnected and retrained back to ~700k.

This has to be something else, surely? It comes and goes. The cable is pretty much directly into the modem.

Audiophiles are such twits! They buy such pointless stuff: Gold plated cables, $2000 power cords. Idiots.

OOOHHHH HYPERFIBRE!

tardtasticx

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#381706 18-Sep-2010 21:43

Did you try a different modem? Just didn't see anything about that in the posts. Try that if you haven't already just so its out of the way. Why not rewire the house now anyway if you have the money? Future proof it while your ahead

muppet

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#381711 18-Sep-2010 21:50

tardtasticx: Did you try a different modem? Just didn't see anything about that in the posts. Try that if you haven't already just so its out of the way. Why not rewire the house now anyway if you have the money? Future proof it while your ahead

Yes, I should point out I've got two modems. I have an ADSL2+ stand alone modem, and I have the ADSL modem built into my netscreen firewall. Both of them give similar crap results.

We just bought the house and there's a few other things we need. So yes, getting the house rewired will probably happen, but I'm hoping to avoid it if possible.

The fact that I'm getting such terrible performance pretty much directly connected to the street (though the cable from the outside of the house to where I have the modem connected *could* be a problem) makes me think it's something outside the house still.

Audiophiles are such twits! They buy such pointless stuff: Gold plated cables, $2000 power cords. Idiots.

OOOHHHH HYPERFIBRE!

tardtasticx

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#381713 18-Sep-2010 21:54

Why not get chrorus / your ISP in to look at the lines again and show them the set up (with the modem direct to the street line) and see if that helps? they should be able to test the line between street and the bit running to the roof or wherever it is. Maybe they could just replace that? Weather might have damaged it or something. Too many possibilities.

muppet

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#381715 18-Sep-2010 21:56

tardtasticx: Why not get chrorus / your ISP in to look at the lines again and show them the set up (with the modem direct to the street line) and see if that helps? they should be able to test the line between street and the bit running to the roof or wherever it is. Maybe they could just replace that? Weather might have damaged it or something. Too many possibilities.

Chorus came and tested to the street and claimed to be getting 8mb from there. I wonder though, I think I will relog it as a fault and get the guy who turns up to show me what he gets on entry into the house. If he gets 8mb there, then I'll admit it's a house problem!

Thanks for your suggestions :)

Audiophiles are such twits! They buy such pointless stuff: Gold plated cables, $2000 power cords. Idiots.

OOOHHHH HYPERFIBRE!

tardtasticx

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#381717 18-Sep-2010 22:01

We're kind of in the same boat as you. Except not as bad so i'm not bothering. Meant to get about 2MB/s (which we used to get constantly) but now we get 1MB/s at max. Still not complaining, helps me keep withen 40GB limit :D. Let us know what happens. Interested to see what they do

muppet

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#381735 18-Sep-2010 23:08

I should also point out the two big black wires I mention are one wire each of the pair coming in.

So this is what was there:

====outside-house===inside house====SPLIT

I've plugged in here:

====outside-house===inside house===MODEM

Audiophiles are such twits! They buy such pointless stuff: Gold plated cables, $2000 power cords. Idiots.

OOOHHHH HYPERFIBRE!

tardtasticx

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#381779 19-Sep-2010 09:35

Well try getting them to replace the wires coming into your house. because if they're getting 8mb or whatever at the road, then its most likely something from there. So the wires to the house would be the next thing it goes through and you still get those crap speeds direct to those wires. Either that or your being traffic managed by your isp?

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