ADSL Incredibly unstable

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Sparkz0629

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Hey guys,

My adsl line has been giving me problems for the past 2 or 3 months, and its seriously getting on my nerves. Its constantly losing connection, and i'm having to repeatedly restart it, after which it keeps connection for a little while, then drops again. Last night i finally found out where i can check noise levels etc on my router, and this is what i got:

http://mybroadband.co.za/photos/showphoto.php?photo=14302&cat=500

Keep in mind that my line is supposed to have a downstream of 4096, not 896...:confused:

My download speed use to go to full speed(+- 420kb/s) recently, and now i just don't have a connection...

Please help....

Oh, my ISP is telkom, but i have tried my africa online account too, same problem...
 
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hey man, try having yr line synced to 3mb and see if the problem still happens, if it does go to 2mb and see , i had the same problem, i also called my isp and they tested the connection and found high noise levels was in the 90's, i called telkom gave them the figure they tested and found it aswell and did a fix from the connection , and now i'm getting 3mb stable not 4mb.
also remember telkom tells us they guarentee min 1mb not 4mb

good luck
 
can this be done just by calling them? do they do it immediately? The thing that confuses me is that it used to be perfectly fine, now all of a sudden its a issue....
 
and if it can't be done immediately, how long willl it take, cos we all know how awesome telkoms service is
 
Sparkz0629 said:
can this be done just by calling them? do they do it immediately? The thing that confuses me is that it used to be perfectly fine, now all of a sudden its a issue....
Click to expand...

If it was fine before, then something's broken and needs to be fixed. Call Telkom and log a fault. Explain to them that it was working previously and try get them to send a technician out to check either your line or the exchange.

A couple of years ago I had a problem where my line was synching at about 512kbps after months of blissful 4Mb speeds. It took almost a week to convince Telkom that my line was capable of 4Mpbs speeds and eventually they sent a techie out and he fixed it in a couple of hours.
 
yes it is done immediately.

your problem appears to be line related, so report it and ask them to check for dry joints.
 
Maybe you should try a new adsl pots filter on the line. My one went some time ago and I experienced similiar problems until we replaced it.
 
Does a broken pots filter influence your internet aswell?
 
Yeah it does, my first one rusted to hell and gave me unbelievable problems with the net. New one sorted it out np.
 
Also another thing, if u dont have a pots filter on can that also cause internet problems?

Actually if the pots filter was the problem, my internet would always be buggered, but its just buggered after 7pm..
 
hey man, try having yr line synced to 3mb and see if the problem still happens, if it does go to 2mb and see , i had the same problem, i also called my isp and they tested the connection and found high noise levels was in the 90's, i called telkom gave them the figure they tested and found it aswell and did a fix from the connection , and now i'm getting 3mb stable not 4mb.
also remember telkom tells us they guarentee min 1mb not 4mb
Click to expand...

I called telkom, and asked if i can limit my line speed to a 3mb, and he says that he isn't aware that that can be done.
He says they only offer 3 speeds, (384, 512 and 4mb). Did i ask the quesion incorrectly, or did i just have the pleasure of speaking to someone that knows nothing bout their work???
 
Sparkz0629 said:
He says they only offer 3 speeds, (384, 512 and 4mb). Did i ask the quesion incorrectly, or did i just have the pleasure of speaking to someone that knows nothing bout their work???
Click to expand...

the techie/help desk person you were talking to is clueless...i have a similar issue with my line and they have often synced it at various speeds of 1 meg increments 3meg/2meg/1meg. you can even check on your router at what speed they have set it... dont know what modem you are using, but on the netgear its pretty simple.
 
it a netgear DG843G. So should i be asking them to change limit my line, are to sync at a different speed? Do i have to call, or can i set it on my router?
 
I'm getting so bugged with telkom now:twisted::twisted::twisted:.... they bouncing me from one center to the next, with the queue times more than 15 min for each one.... And when i ask them bout the sync speeds, they can't help me.... Will decreasing my sync speed also decrease my noise levels? ans attenuation?
 
It is something they have to set..
I am surprised, not sure if you are phoning the 1021something number or the 0800375375 one... when you use the 0800375375 number, you can ask them to reset your port and you can ask them to reduce the sync speed... i have never had a help desk person that wasnt able to do that for me.
As far as i understand, the attenuation is affected by the line speed. so if you sync at 4meg at around 48 DB, then when they reduce it to 2 megs it should drop to 40 or less. ( dont think it affects the noise levels though)
The attenuation rate, is the " difference" between the signal strength at teh exchange compared to teh signal strength at your modem... so the lower the attenuation rate the better. this is especially affected by the distance to the exchange from your home.. as the attenuation rate directly relates to the resistance in the copper.. so the further away you are the higher the resistance and thererore the higher the attenuation rate. now from what i understand (and i am not a techie so please correct me if i am wrong) when they sync the line at a different speed, the way the signal is sent results in less resistance... how this works i am not sure, but you will see on your modem that your upstream attenuation is tyically like 28DB when your downstream is at 48 DB
I also understand that 4 meg lines can still effectively sync as long as your attenuation rate is lower than arround 50 DB ( some telkom techie told me this :P)
 
avanie said:
It is something they have to set..
I am surprised, not sure if you are phoning the 1021something number or the 0800375375 one... when you use the 0800375375 number, you can ask them to reset your port and you can ask them to reduce the sync speed... i have never had a help desk person that wasnt able to do that for me.
As far as i understand, the attenuation is affected by the line speed. so if you sync at 4meg at around 48 DB, then when they reduce it to 2 megs it should drop to 40 or less. ( dont think it affects the noise levels though)
The attenuation rate, is the " difference" between the signal strength at teh exchange compared to teh signal strength at your modem... so the lower the attenuation rate the better. this is especially affected by the distance to the exchange from your home.. as the attenuation rate directly relates to the resistance in the copper.. so the further away you are the higher the resistance and thererore the higher the attenuation rate. now from what i understand (and i am not a techie so please correct me if i am wrong) when they sync the line at a different speed, the way the signal is sent results in less resistance... how this works i am not sure, but you will see on your modem that your upstream attenuation is tyically like 28DB when your downstream is at 48 DB
I also understand that 4 meg lines can still effectively sync as long as your attenuation rate is lower than arround 50 DB ( some telkom techie told me this :P)
Click to expand...

My Attenuation is at 56.5db.
I just got off the phone with the techie, and he said that when I'm home, i must call and ask them to reset the ports as this will help with the attenuation levels. I asked about the syncing, and he said that i have to call and ask them to drop my line speed to 512. I tried so hard to explain what i wanted, and they couldn't understand....

As a matter of interest, once i've decreased the snc speed, is it easy enough to increase it to the normal levels again?

The bounced me between so many numbers.... 0800375375, 0800500200, 10219, 10215 etc etc etc.... it was like a tennis game...
 
56.5 is very high... i am running on 49 DB and i having problems syncing sometimes.
Do you know how far you are from the exchange?
there is a calculation somewhere (google it) that you can calculate the distance according to the attenuation rate... if there is a large discrepancy here, then there could be something else causing the high resistance on your line. e.g. bad connections/ EM influences (like from other high voltage equipment near your line).

However if you are far away from the exchange then there is not much you can do about it and you will never have a optimal 4 meg connectivity.

and yes, these sync speeds is something they set on their system and they have done it multiple times for me while on the phone with them, it just involved them resetting the port ( think its just a setting on the port on their side) and then me rebooting my modem for the new settings to take effect. Usually the techies on teh 0800375375 line only seem to know how to change it to 2Meg and 1 Meg, but once i had a specialist phone me from cape town and he even set it to 3 Meg. and yes changing it up is as simple as changing it down, just involves a port reset and a modem reboot. so if your problem is caused by a line fault and your attenuation rate drops once this is fixed you can always ask them to ramp it up again.
 
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Had the same problems on my line, everything was fine and then one day it started to drop like crazy on the 4mb in the end they could not even sync it at 384 and had to cancel my adsl. Turns out the neighbor was the problem since he went in installed electric fencing and the "emp" from the fenced interfered with my line.. Still out of adsl here. its been 2 years... :(
 
How's this, I finally call telkom, and have my line speed set to sync at 3072 rather than 4096, and now my line attenuation has gone UP instead of down.... its up from 57.5 to 58.5.... please.... someone help...
 
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