Does distance affect ADSL

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kwetu

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Hi,

I live 5.1 kilometers outside the town of Stutterheim in the Eastern Cape and when I have ADSL problems I am told by Telkom that it is because 5 kilos is the maximum distance that ADSL will work. However I know a fellow who lives 7 kilos from town who says that he seldom has ADSL problems. My problems began in earnest in December when Telkom upgraded the ADSL speed from 1 mg to 2 mg. After reporting problems on 5 different occasions (in succession during Dec/Jan) and after the technicians had declared that my line was perfect, but I was still having problems, they told me it was because I lived on the border line of ADSL working. One of the technicians also lowered my ADSL speed from 2 mg down to 1 mg and my ADSL improved. Since then I have times when it will not work and other times when it works fine. Yesterday I received a phone call from Telkom asking me if my ADSL was OK. I asked her to check what speed it was and she told me it was set at 2 mg. When I asked her to set it at 1 mg she said I must phone Telkom's call centre and ask them to downgrade my speed. However I don't know if I believe what they are telling me, as cities like Jo'burg and CT must surely have people who are further than 5 kilos from the exchange? Also howcome my line which I am told is perfect, does not support 2mg speed? Does anyone know the answer to this?

Thank you.
 
Yes, distance does affect ADSL.

See this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ADSL_Line_Rate_Reach.gif

The fact that you're getting 1Mbps (sort of) reliably, assuming your copper line is 5+km, is pretty good.

What you should do, is get into your adsl router's web page and see if you can find "ADSL statistics" (it could be called something else). Post the information here (specifically stuff like 'SNR' or Signal To Noise, Attenuation, etc).
 
These are the statistics from my D-Link router page
Stats 1.jpgStats 2.jpg
 
Stutterheim though.
Do you even have a working telephone system or still on switchboard?
 
@kwetu - according to this usefull thread your SNR margins are brilliant but your Attention is horrendous :wtf: Unless those values are x10?

Technically you shouldn't even be able to sync. That neighbour of yours with the 7km distance, does the first three digits of his phone number after the dialing code differ to yours?
 
I am having difficulty loading this page. Only a 'skeleton' page with only some printing on it will load. My neighbour's telephone number is the same as mine except for the last 4 digits. Stutterheim has an automatic exchange, but the code is the same as East London's code eg 043. Hope this message goes through when I press post!
 
Page has now loaded properly. I am running Win Task Manager - Networking and graph shows a flat line at the bottom with a spike going to about 2.4% every now and then. That means I am not getting internet and is what I have been getting 50% of the time when the speed is at 2mg. At 1mg I get a signal running at about 2% 95% of the time.
 
kwetu said:
I am having difficulty loading this page. Only a 'skeleton' page with only some printing on it will load. My neighbour's telephone number is the same as mine except for the last 4 digits. Stutterheim has an automatic exchange, but the code is the same as East London's code eg 043. Hope this message goes through when I press post!
Click to expand...

According to your stats you were only syncing at 320 Kbps down so your internet experience will be poor at times. If you were previously syncing comfortably at 1Mbps then something has changed/gone wrong on your line. Have you got a physical telephone - if so, do you hear static on the line when you pick it up.

If there is noise or static on your line then call Telkom and report a telephone line fault. Don't say anything to them about your adsl.
 
I very much doubt that I ever synced at 1mg, that is only what Telkom is sending. However what I am getting now (2mg) is horrible compared to what I got at 1mg. No noise or crackle on telephone.
Task manager- Networking.jpg
 
ponder said:
Those values are x10 so his stats are actually up to schite.
Click to expand...

Yeah that's what I was thinking. On my router's interface it tells you it's dB values are "x10" but on his screenshot it didn't explicitly say so I wasn't sure.

kwetu said:
I very much doubt that I ever synced at 1mg, that is only what Telkom is sending. However what I am getting now (2mg) is horrible compared to what I got at 1mg. No noise or crackle on telephone.
View attachment 103740
Click to expand...

kwetu dude, I think you better start looking for an alternative to adsl. [-]But you didn't answer my previous question - do you have a physical telephone and if so, is there static and/or noise on your telephone line when you plug the phone in?[/-]
 
Last edited:
No noise or crackle on telephone.

I did answer the question. No noise or crackle on telephone, a physical phone using the same Telkom line as my D-Link router. I am obviously going to have to phone Telkom's call centre and ask them to downgrade my signal to 1mb. Telkom have replaced all the old open copper wires (about 3 or 4 mm thick) on my telephone line with new black insulated wire (I think about 0.5 to 0.75 mm thick and probably made of aluminium) and I suspect my neighbour who lives 7 kilos from town on a different route to me, still has the old open wires which I suspect have less resistance because they are so thick.
 
kwetu said:
No noise or crackle on telephone.

I did answer the question. No noise or crackle on telephone, a physical phone using the same Telkom line as my D-Link router. I am obviously going to have to phone Telkom's call centre and ask them to downgrade my signal to 1mb. Telkom have replaced all the old open copper wires (about 3 or 4 mm thick) on my telephone line with new black insulated wire (I think about 0.5 to 0.75 mm thick and probably made of aluminium) and I suspect my neighbour who lives 7 kilos from town on a different route to me, still has the old open wires which I suspect have less resistance because they are so thick.
Click to expand...

Sorry! I missed that! I'm assuming you have a filter on the line? If Telkom has already replaced the old lines then I'm guessing they're not going to help you much further...
 
No alternative that I know of, although I'm willing to be corrected. I had a 3G wireless Dongle when I first moved to Stutt 6 years ago only to find that Stutt had 2G and my Dongle didn't work. I then got ADSL in about 2009 and haven't really had problems until Telkom jacked the speed up in December.
 
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