I posted here recently, hoping to solve my awful broadband continuity
problems. I typically find I can't connect to anything on the internet
via broadband dsl after around 8.30pm.

I called my ISP today and finally got somewhere, but not all the
way... The tekkie on the phone tested my line and came back saying
that the test results suggested a wiring fault within my house. He
asked me to unscrew the cover on the primary BT socket and plug my
microfilter into the hidden socket inside. I did that. He phone me
back and reported that he had tested the line again and now the
problems were gone. He concluded that the fault is in the wiring in
the BT socket's cover, and that the solution is to get the cover
changed.

However.... all is not solved! I left my microfilter plugged into the
hidden socket, but his evening, at the usual time (around 20:00 hrs, I
find I cannot connect to anything on the internet as usual!  The only
difference is that now, my voip service remains fuctional, whereas
before, it used to be unable to connect whenever my PC was also unable
to connect to the net.

Does this shine any light on what teh problem may be?

Also, I should mention, even during the day when my broadband
connection is fine, I sometimes find the line goes silent, in the
middle of a voip conversation. Is that a common phenomenon with voip?

Many thanks,

Jake D

There is one difference, however... Now

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

PS... Later the same night, (at 5.30am) I tried again to access the
net via braodband. This time, neither my PC nor my Vonage device can
connect. And when I tried to get access via dialup, I find that access
to web sites is extremely slow and I keep losing the connection.

(This is all with my adsl filter still plugged into the hidden socket
inside the cover of the BT master socket.)

Looks like the 'faulty master socket cover' diagnosis was not the
solution....

Cheers,

Jake D

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

"JakeD" <JakeD@jdjdjvvdjdjdj.com> wrote in message
 news:2hpme3l8c9u59kab81b518m8aa25bs4aec@
4ax.com...
>
>
> PS... Later the same night, (at 5.30am) I tried again to access the
> net via braodband. This time, neither my PC nor my Vonage device can
> connect. And when I tried to get access via dialup, I find that access
> to web sites is extremely slow and I keep losing the connection.
>
> (This is all with my adsl filter still plugged into the hidden socket
> inside the cover of the BT master socket.)
>
> Looks like the 'faulty master socket cover' diagnosis was not the
> solution....


It's not so much to eliminate the faceplate itself,

it's more to do with eliminating any extension wiring connected

to it.

If you remember I started to take you down that route,

but there was no point in pursuing it once you had confirmed

there was no other wiring.

The trouble is that the helpdesk are ticking boxes on their script

rather than analyzing your individual situation.



You plugged the microfilter into the hidden socket,

but did you plug the router directly into the filter

eliminating the 20m extension lead?



Here is something to think about. The fact that the

problems are mainly in the evenings an at night may well

point to an increase in line noise during these times.

I might be worth thinking if the problem coincides with

anything electrical being switched on in the house,

eg. TV, fluorescent or CFL lighting etc.



--

Graham.

%Profound_observation%

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

"Graham." <me@privacy.com> wrote in message
news:fcg6tl$pvh$1@registered.motzarella.org...
>
> "JakeD" <JakeD@jdjdjvvdjdjdj.com> wrote in message
>  news:2hpme3l8c9u59kab81b518m8aa25bs4aec@
4ax.com... 
>
>
> It's not so much to eliminate the faceplate itself,
>
> it's more to do with eliminating any extension wiring connected
>
> to it.
>
> If you remember I started to take you down that route,
>
> but there was no point in pursuing it once you had confirmed
>
> there was no other wiring.
>
> The trouble is that the helpdesk are ticking boxes on their script
>
> rather than analyzing your individual situation.
>
>
>
> You plugged the microfilter into the hidden socket,
>
> but did you plug the router directly into the filter
>
> eliminating the 20m extension lead?
>
>
>
> Here is something to think about. The fact that the
>
> problems are mainly in the evenings an at night may well
>
> point to an increase in line noise during these times.
>
> I might be worth thinking if the problem coincides with
>
> anything electrical being switched on in the house,
>
> eg. TV, fluorescent or CFL lighting etc.
>
>
>
> --
>
> Graham.
>
> %Profound_observation%
>
>


.... Equally, if it is not of the aforementioned nature, then it could be
due to timing, potentially an issue of congestion on your ISPs side.

Anyhow, what I really want to say is modular swap out fault testing.

I think you are getting to many things confused here. The previous poster
Graham appears to be clearly on the right track.

Still, it is a case of either learn the tech and modular swap out fault
testing yourself; get someone in; have someone (e.g. on here or a
knowledgeable tech friend by phone, etc.) hold you hand the whole way
through to thoroughly / completely test and evaluate everything and isolate
and determine the origin of the fault; or go the service provider routes
(your ISP and / or line provider, etc.) - which can be very tough, slow and
not necessarily get anyone (almost ever - although ultimately it should end
up fixed one day - with no guarantee of cost, etc.).

The preferred options would be one of either the first or third option
(unless the second is equally easy and free for you).

Anyhow, I am sure someone here will be able to help you work through it all.


Best wishes,



News Reader


P.s. It is just a bit of a shame that those who are supposed to be
knowledgeable so often aren't - i.e. service providers and tech support
people, etc. leading you and others up garden paths.

P.p.s. In short, you want to eliminate your equipment (ADSL equipment); your
PC; your internal phone wiring; your phone line; your ISP. Evidently, you
will not be able to eliminate all of them, the one you are left having
proven as the culprit is the problem! Hence you would for example, try your
equipment at a friends house with their ADSL connection; try your equipment
at your house as is, with a different PC; try with / without extension
cables; try different ADSL equipment (borrow a friends) at your house on
your line, etc., etc. Hope some of that helps at least vaguely. Sorry, I
deal quite often with this (as we all probably have to with quite a lot of
things), and sadly providers, etc. provide woefully to little education or
information about their products and services and how they work, etc. and
also often fail quite dismally to provide practical, useful, efficient or
effective support or assistance in the event of difficulties.

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

"News Reader" <no@email.invalid> wrote in message
news:MHRGi.29611$ka7.20394@newsfe4-gui.ntli.net...
>
> "Graham." <me@privacy.com> wrote in message
> news:fcg6tl$pvh$1@registered.motzarella.org... 
>
>
> .... Equally, if it is not of the aforementioned nature, then it could be
> due to timing, potentially an issue of congestion on your ISPs side.
>
> Anyhow, what I really want to say is modular swap out fault testing.
>
> I think you are getting to many things confused here. The previous poster
> Graham appears to be clearly on the right track.
>
> Still, it is a case of either learn the tech and modular swap out fault
> testing yourself; get someone in; have someone (e.g. on here or a
> knowledgeable tech friend by phone, etc.) hold you hand the whole way
> through to thoroughly / completely test and evaluate everything and
> isolate and determine the origin of the fault; or go the service provider
> routes (your ISP and / or line provider, etc.) - which can be very tough,
> slow and not necessarily get anyone (almost ever - although ultimately it
> should end up fixed one day - with no guarantee of cost, etc.).
>
> The preferred options would be one of either the first or third option
> (unless the second is equally easy and free for you).
>
> Anyhow, I am sure someone here will be able to help you work through it
> all.
>
>
> Best wishes,
>
>
>
> News Reader
>
>
> P.s. It is just a bit of a shame that those who are supposed to be
> knowledgeable so often aren't - i.e. service providers and tech support
> people, etc. leading you and others up garden paths.
>
> P.p.s. In short, you want to eliminate your equipment (ADSL equipment);
> your PC; your internal phone wiring; your phone line; your ISP. Evidently,
> you will not be able to eliminate all of them, the one you are left having
> proven as the culprit is the problem! Hence you would for example, try
> your equipment at a friends house with their ADSL connection; try your
> equipment at your house as is, with a different PC; try with / without
> extension cables; try different ADSL equipment (borrow a friends) at your
> house on your line, etc., etc. Hope some of that helps at least vaguely.
> Sorry, I deal quite often with this (as we all probably have to with quite
> a lot of things), and sadly providers, etc. provide woefully to little
> education or information about their products and services and how they
> work, etc. and also often fail quite dismally to provide practical,
> useful, efficient or effective support or assistance in the event of
> difficulties.
>
>
>


P.s. By the way, it is pretty very unlikely that the ATA vs. usual internet
access use will be different in any way. I.e. if you are experiencing
connection problems with the ATA and with your PC (even if at different
times, etc.) then the problem is likely to be further up the chain and be
something universal to both - i.e. either your ADSL equipment or the line /
ISP, etc. In short, as it is unlikely to be something specific and different
in relation to your ATA vs. your usual PC internet browsing, don't let the
two separate uses of the same one internet connection confuse or distract
you.


P.p.s. Specifically, in your post above, you talk about the dial-up
connection failing. If you plug a phone into the filter (itself plugged into
the test socket of the master socket), is the line nice and clear, or can
you hear all manner of crackling, etc. (note, this may be worth checking
several times at different times of the day, etc.). Have you tried using a
different ADSL filter?

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

"News Reader" <no@email.invalid> wrote in message
news:MHRGi.29611$ka7.20394@newsfe4-gui.ntli.net...
>
> "Graham." <me@privacy.com> wrote in message
> news:fcg6tl$pvh$1@registered.motzarella.org... 
>
>
> .... Equally, if it is not of the aforementioned nature, then it could be
> due to timing, potentially an issue of congestion on your ISPs side.
>
> Anyhow, what I really want to say is modular swap out fault testing.
>
> I think you are getting to many things confused here. The previous poster
> Graham appears to be clearly on the right track.
>
> Still, it is a case of either learn the tech and modular swap out fault
> testing yourself; get someone in; have someone (e.g. on here or a
> knowledgeable tech friend by phone, etc.) hold you hand the whole way
> through to thoroughly / completely test and evaluate everything and
> isolate and determine the origin of the fault; or go the service provider
> routes (your ISP and / or line provider, etc.) - which can be very tough,
> slow and not necessarily get anyone (almost ever - although ultimately it
> should end up fixed one day - with no guarantee of cost, etc.).
>
> The preferred options would be one of either the first or third option
> (unless the second is equally easy and free for you).
>
> Anyhow, I am sure someone here will be able to help you work through it
> all.
>
>
> Best wishes,
>
>
>
> News Reader
>
>
> P.s. It is just a bit of a shame that those who are supposed to be
> knowledgeable so often aren't - i.e. service providers and tech support
> people, etc. leading you and others up garden paths.
>
> P.p.s. In short, you want to eliminate your equipment (ADSL equipment);
> your PC; your internal phone wiring; your phone line; your ISP. Evidently,
> you will not be able to eliminate all of them, the one you are left having
> proven as the culprit is the problem! Hence you would for example, try
> your equipment at a friends house with their ADSL connection; try your
> equipment at your house as is, with a different PC; try with / without
> extension cables; try different ADSL equipment (borrow a friends) at your
> house on your line, etc., etc. Hope some of that helps at least vaguely.
> Sorry, I deal quite often with this (as we all probably have to with quite
> a lot of things), and sadly providers, etc. provide woefully to little
> education or information about their products and services and how they
> work, etc. and also often fail quite dismally to provide practical,
> useful, efficient or effective support or assistance in the event of
> difficulties.
>
>
>


Hi,


Some further bits for you.

Focusing on your original post:

- your VOIP continuing to work when the PC does not is pretty unusual, and
basically cannot be very obviously explained. It is probably just anomalous.
I.e. from what I can tell you have a line fault. If your VOIP happens to
work or keep working when the PC does not it is probably just pure chance or
luck. I expect if you properly tested the VOIP when the PC is not working
you would find it in fact is not working. I.e. a "connected light" on the
VOIP ATA does not necessarily mean it is working. It may only check its
connection every 10 minutes or so; so it may hit a lucky or fluky connection
and not realised that almost immediately after that it was in fact
disconnected and would not reveal this for the next ten minutes; equally it
may be that it is just managing to register "connection" status but could
not actually support voice traffic over the connection; equally if you kept
trying with the PC when the ATA "appears" to be working, you will probably
find that you will just about mange to get half a page to load. I don't know
how you are evaluating that the VOIP is continuing to work. If you test it
by actually placing a reasonable length test call and evaluating the audio
in both directions, then you would most probably find that it is either
essentially not working at all or barely working (if the PC is not working
at the same time). Or equally, if the VOIP is just about holding together
(some audio cutting out, etc.), then you should find perseverance with the
PC will yield that just about working (i.e. pages timing out, nearly half
loading, etc.). In short, whatever is happening with the VOIP should be the
same fate suffered by the PC - it is probably just sending you red herrings!

- VOIP should not cut out at all - full stop. VOIP should support perfect
continuous audio and service the same as the best landline you have ever
used. Their are some caveats, but all other things being equal the
aforementioned holds true. (If for example you are downloading a lot of
large files at the same time as trying to use your VOIP connection the audio
may suffer as it is having to fight to fit down the connection along with
the download and their is not enough room for both). Equally, if you have a
bad connection that will cause VOIP to drop out the same as it causes file
transfers on your / a PC to slow down or drop out.

- your dial-up experience - if your dial-up is very slow, that is probably
to be expected - dial-up is very slow (lol - sorry!). If you are comparing
it accurately to normal dial-up performance experienced in similar
conditions and it is a lot slower then I would suggest the line may be bad
(again try the listening test - previous post[s]). It would be useful it
 you
could give us some figures or statistics - e.g. connection speed. However,
if your dial-up connection is dropping out this again suggests a line
problem. It is worth making sure by double checking any wiring and filters
again.

- REAL DEAL - getting to the meat of the subject - if your ISP has performed
a line test, and has found a wiring fault - this really should be like a red
rag hanging in front of the face of a bull - i.e. SOMETHING IS CLEARLY
WRONG! ... lol...in your case, the fact that what you usually get is
intermittent problems, it is not really any surprise that the fault suddenly
"appeared" to clear up and then actually return a few hours later. Equally,
intermittent faults will generously spew red herrings, etc. all over the
place and cause odd phenomenon's such as ATA working for a minute whilst the
PC appears not to and vice versa. The reality is, ISP performed test and got
wiring fault reported; if you have changed nothing and are still directly
connected to the master socket test socket (without using any extension
cables and you have tested using either different ADSL equipment and tested
using a different ADSL cable from your existing ADSL modem / router to said
master socket); then their is a wiring fault - but not in your house or
anything on your side - it is anywhere from where BT take responsibility for
the line (back of the master socket) to the exchange. But in short, it
sounds like it is unequivocally a line fault!

Examples could be a road work crew have half severed a cable so it is
intermittently connecting; water is getting into a cable and making it
intermittently misbehave, etc.


Hope some of that helps.

Feel free to feed back further information.


Best wishes,



News Reader

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

After serious thinking JakeD wrote :
> My second confession is that I have now discovered that ther *IS* an
> extension cable hard-wired into the BT master socket... It goes to a
> loud, mains-powered (?) telephone bell only.

Without a shadow of a doubt.

> I have ordered a brand new BT master socket on eBay, which I will use

Hmm. One like this <http://www.clarity.it/telecoms/adsl_faceplate.htm>
would allow you to keep your bell.

I believe that once you disconnect the bell, you won't need a new "BT
Master"

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

(supersedes <mn.7c5e7d79a61a959f.48968@blueyonder.invalid> )

After serious thinking JakeD wrote :
> My second confession is that I have now discovered that ther *IS* an
> extension cable hard-wired into the BT master socket... It goes to a
> loud, mains-powered (?) telephone bell only.

> Should I disconnect the hard-wired extension cable going to the loud
> bell? Someone (Graham, perhaps) seemed to imply that having anything
> hard-wired into the socket might be a cause of problems...


Without a shadow of a doubt.

> I have ordered a brand new BT master socket on eBay, which I will use

Hmm. One like this <http://www.clarity.it/telecoms/adsl_faceplate.htm>
would allow you to keep your bell.

I believe that once you disconnect the bell, you won't need a new "BT
Master"

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

On Sat, 15 Sep 2007 18:40:05 +0100, Jono <nothanks@blueyonder.invalid>
wrote:

>
>Hmm. One like this <http://www.clarity.it/telecoms/adsl_faceplate.htm>
>would allow you to keep your bell.

Really? Well that sounds attractive, then. Thanks for the lead. Kind
of pricey, but if it's gonna work, it'll be worth it. Would the eay to
wire it in be self-evident? I.e., would the coloured wired go to
exacly the same places as per teh old face-plate?
>
>I believe that once you disconnect the bell, you won't need a new "BT
>Master"

So, if I use on of these filtered faceplates, should I still
disconnect thehard-wired bell or not?

Thanks for clarifying, and thanks for the input....

Jake D

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

JakeD submitted this idea :
> On Sat, 15 Sep 2007 18:40:05 +0100, Jono <nothanks@blueyonder.invalid>
> wrote:
> 
>
> Really? Well that sounds attractive, then. Thanks for the lead. Kind
> of pricey, but if it's gonna work, it'll be worth it. Would the eay to
> wire it in be self-evident? I.e., would the coloured wired go to
> exacly the same places as per teh old face-plate?

Very straight forward.
 
>
> So, if I use on of these filtered faceplates, should I still
> disconnect the hard-wired bell or not?

If you use a filtered faceplate, your hardwired extensions/bells can
stay in place as they would be hardwired to the filtered side of the
faceplate - your adsl modem/router would then plug in to the unfiltered
rj11 socket

> Thanks for clarifying, and thanks for the input....
>
> Jake D

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]