ADSL continual disconnect -> connect loop.

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redarrow

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Port Elizabeth, South Africa
About 3 weeks ago our line developed a fault, the phone was very noisy for a few days and then went completely dead, no dialling tone nothing, ADSL continued to work but only synced at 1Mbps so was pretty slow (it's a 10Mbps line).

It took a long time to get Telkom to come attend, but anyway, this Thursday the tech finally arrived and after a couple hours fixed the line, apparently it was a pretty bad piece of wire and he had to bypass a whole section. So anyway, it worked fine then although the line was only syncing at 6Mbps, but no prob he said the system would gradually up the speed. It worked fine for the rest of the day and up until around yesterday afternoon. Since then the modem has been stuck in a kind of loop, it connects for about 10 seconds and then disconnects, after about 10 more seconds it reconnects and so on. When it is connected it now syncs at 10Mbps and for those 10 seconds it runs perfectly fine.

I thought maybe it was my modem but I tried another one and it does exactly the same thing so I'm pretty sure it's an issue on Telkom's side. The odd thing it the phone works fine (or at least it seems to, don't get many calls), it doesn't stop the dialing tone or make scratchy noises.
When connected the up/down SNR is around 7db/8db - I know these aren't the greatest but, they've always been around there in the past so I don't think it's the issue either.

I have obviously informed Telkom about this development but considering how long it took them to deal with the first issue I don't have high hope of it being fixed in a hurry.

Anyone else experienced similar issues and any ideas what might be going on?
 
You self described your issue.

Telkom had already been there and you await a second visit. {Others in this forum indicate you should report voice problems with your line, when they solve this DSL will be solved. Not sure who this will help since this is party done}

The issue. You have a bad line.
<= 8dB, DSL will fail, on the boundary of DSL failing.
What is the attenuation?
The only way to solve this is to get the line to be better {less noise}.

Options:
a. Replace the phone line inside your property {best to replace all the way to "Telkom pole"} with good cable / cat5.
This worked in past, this is not allowed by Telkom. Try and get the Telkom person to do this for you.
Ensure there are no electricity, motors, microwave ovens, particle accelerators, etc near the phone line.

b. Not sure what router /s you used, since your line SNR is so poor, best you can do is test with a Cisco router. {hard to get unless you know someone.}

c. See if other connection options are available.
For this we need the location +- 0.5- 1km accurate.
 
Thanks fundutzi,

Today it appears to have stabilised.. It's now syncing at 7.5Mbps, for what it's worth I should have mentioned that in the past it usually synced at around 8Mbps, what's confusing me is why it would insistently try to sync at 10Mbps for something like 36 hours if the signal isn't good enough for that, I think I should perhaps just get Telkom to downgrade me to a 8Mbps line as that way it'll never try sync faster in the first place (back when I signed up there was no 8Mbps option).

The modem is a D-Link DSL-2500U (in bridge mode, actual data connection is via a Mikrotik). Attenuation Up/Down is 23db/42db.

As for other options, well there really are no other options, small holding area so no Fibre and only MTN/Voda/Cell-C 3G in the area, no Telkom LTE or Rain or any other wireless provider that I'm aware of.
 
Glad it is working at least.

Re Your line feedback.
We assume you +- 3 km from exchange as per DSL calculators a and b.
Perhaps because it keeps syncing at < 8 Mb, the D-Link linked with ADSL {ITU G.992.1} not ADSL2 or 2+. If you check the modem status we will know what it is syncing with. See Wiki link here. Only a matter of interest since 2 and 2+ may link that slow as per DSL tables.
Fact remains, only way to make this better is to:
a. Make the line better {replace line that is on your property,at least inside house, ensure no interference to copper} or,
b. Better modem.
I bet on line as best option to spend energy on here.

Re options in first post.
These all stand. No matter the weather.

If anything works, the conversation stops as the objective is satisfied.
If not, we consider different paths.
The D-Link is not so good. The Mikrotik is good, but no help with the issue as the D-Link is doing the modulation on the copper line.
Not sure how long you will keep using the DSL, if for some years, perhaps an option to at least try with good modem such as Cisco.

The location, send in PM/ DM if you want. Happy to look for options.
Internet is as important as water from a tap.
 
So it was running just fine the whole week up till this afternoon, then noticed a tech working on the line nearby and right about then the phone once again went completely dead and the ADSL is now syncing at 800Kbps.. Sort of assumed that the guy was just busy fixing stuff and it would go back to normal but then he just drove off and left it. :X3:

So great, right before the weekend, already know there's practically no chance they're gonna fix it before Monday at the earliest. Why'd they have to go and break it when it was working? :rolleyes:
 
Not good.

Are these persons not targeting you?
Perhaps to to eat the ostrich eggs while you are offline?
If something breaks once we can understand, a few times in a row and I do not want to sit near when thunderstorms are about.
 
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