New Member - Ex Nildram

[Rik]

Hi Dave

Welcome to the forum, have a karma.

I'm concerned by your noise margins. The d/s is high, so it looks like your target margin has been set at 15db in an attempt to stabilise your line. The u/s is low at 5db. It may be that your local phone wiring, ie inside the house, is adding to your noise and limiting the speeds you are getting.

Can you tell me please, how many extension sockets (if any) you have, are you running any flat extension leads, do you have the ring wire connected, what is connected to the line other than your Netgear?

[daveluff]

Hi Rik and thanks for your time.
I have a 3 cordless phones so only one phone plugged in.
I believe the BT line in is upstairs and has no device plugged in.
I have two other sockets, one of which I use for my Broadband connection and telephone via a filter that I changed approx. 6 months ago with no effect, and the last socket which again is not in use.
I have checked the sockets wiring and removed wires so that I only have conections at pins 2 & 5, however one of the sockets is weird as it has thick black wire and I did not touch this. I seem to remember that a BT engineer told me about 10 years ago that this was the line in but I am not sure.

Thanks in advance for any help

Dave   

[Rik]

Hi Dave

If it's only a single wire, I am puzzled, but it certainly could be part of the incoming 'exchange pair'. Does that socket have a large capacitor in it?

[daveluff]

Rik

I have opened up the socket to check and confirm I have 2 black wires connected at pins 2 and 5. There is also a large yellow capacitor as you suggest.

Thanks again for any help you can provide.

Dave

[Rik]

Are there no 'outgoing' wires, Dave, to the other sockets (usually blue/white and white/blue)?

[daveluff]

No other wires at all Rik.

[Rik]

Odd. How feasible would it be to open up each socket and photograph it, Dave?

[daveluff]

Easy Rik, will just need to upload the pics somewhere.
I'll go take them now

[Rik]

You can add two pics per post here, Dave, just hit additional options at the bottom of the reply/post box (it doesn't work if you use the quick-reply), max size 512k each. It sounds to me like that master socket isn't connected to the rest, so I'm really trying to identify what wiring is running between the sockets.

[daveluff]

You are right Rik, just plugged a phone in to test the one with the two black wires and it is dead. (sorry for the confusion)
That leaves me with the two sockets both wired to pins 2 & 5 only.
I assume you don't need pics now 

[Rik]

No, but does one of those sockets have a capacitor etc? Also, is the wiring paired, eg blue/white and white/blue?

[daveluff]

Yes Rik looks like blue/white & blue on each and green/white & Orange/white that I disconnected for testing.

[Rik]

How about the capacitor? I'm wondering whether you have another master hidden away.

[daveluff]

Thanks Rik
Yes a capacitor is on the socket that I have my DSL filter connected to.

[Rik]

Shouldn't be too much of an issue then. Could you try moving the DECT base unit to the other socket, or even powering it down for a while and see if the noise margin improves at all?

[daveluff]

OK Rik I will give it a go.

Thanks

[Rik]

If things improve, the DECT unit is giving off the noise, Dave. If they don't, do you have a MW transistor radio that you could wander about with. If so, de-tune it so it's just giving off white noise, and follow the phone line as best you can. If the noise increases, that's the point where the interference (if it's internal) is happening.

[daveluff]

No Improvement moving the phone or reverting to a corded phone Rik.
Reported to Vmy ISP who confirm there is something wrong and they feel it is my BT exchange and looking into it.
Thanks for all the help.

Dave

[Rik]

Glad we could narrow it down a bit, Dave - do let us know what happens with BT.

[Sebby]

Yes, do let us know, Dave. It's always nice to hear when problems are resolved.

[daveluff]

Hi
Well my latency is excellent now
Pinging www-v.nildram.co.uk [195.149.33.68] with 32 bytes

Reply from 195.149.33.68: bytes=32 time=10ms TTL=56
Reply from 195.149.33.68: bytes=32 time=11ms TTL=56
Reply from 195.149.33.68: bytes=32 time=10ms TTL=56
Reply from 195.149.33.68: bytes=32 time=10ms TTL=56

What a difference! I am told that they removed interleaving and that is all.

Thanks again for taking the time to help all.

Dave

[Rik]

Interleaving is reckoned to add 20ms to pings, but as my pings tend to be around 24ms with interleaving on, clearly that's not always the case (in fact, there are various levels of interleaving, and I reckon I must be on the lightest one). Glad you got a result, Dave.

[Niall]

Interleaving in theory would double your ping, or near enough. When I had it on with Nildram (despite asking for the opposite) my ping did double. Gaming servers I was getting 30 pings to were now 60, and the same was for anything else I tested it with, be it 14-20 pings increasing to 28-40; it was always double the normal ping.

When I asked for an explanation of interleaving I was told that effectively the data is sent twice to avoid bad packets.

[Rik]

Kitz has a good explanation of interleaving:

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/interleaving.htm

[Niall]

Ah, that's a good link. Ta Rik. That actually shows it properly and explains what the person I spoke to was trying to say, albeit badly. It's just possible they resend the bad bits, not the whole thing. When I was getting double pings, it was most likely just coincidence