New ADSL line up-down up-down

[Claymore]

I was with a customer yesterday, since she had just had her ADSL line installed (and about bloody time too - 5 months is not cool for someone 84 years old).

I set up the USB modem for her, but the ADSL utility keeps giving a message: "Bringing down line due to persistent faults" and "Spurious ATU detected".

Occasionally, after a while it would seem to stabilitse. I was able to connect to Telkom using the Telkom guest account (sometimes, not always), but could not connect to her ISP, Netlab - I kept getting "Specified destination is unreachable". That happened on the Telkom guest account sometimes too.

Any idea what the problem is here? Seems like it could be a line problem to me; she does have seriously old lines in her house, and she does have at least 3 phone extensions.

 

[Vio]

Make sure each phone has a adsl pots filter attached too it. Also maybe listen too the line too hear if its clean.

 

[Mr Anderson]

Also...make sure with telkom that the line has been "cleared" on their side for ADSL. My reason for saying that is the following: If you can use the telkom guest account and reach the telkom website, but you cannot connect to her ISP and go outside of the telkom website it tells me that her line has been enabled at the switch side but has not been "activated" according to telkom.

I hope this is a worst scenario case but it looks like she's going to have to wait another couple of days.

Tell me, was this a self-install or did a telkom technician do it? If it was a self install...did you verify the line on the Telkom website??

 

[Claymore]

It was installed by Telkom, though I did the modem install. I think there's one extension that may not have a POTS filter - does that really make a difference?

Some of the wiring is seriously dodgy, I must say - she still uses the old-style phone jacks on one extension.

 

[Darth Garth]

You only need to have the filter sitting behind all the extensions.
Try another modem ... USB is crap.

 

[Claymore]

I agree on the USB being crap, but that's what she has (yes, she ordered a 4-port shen she requested it, but that's not what they left).

Will not having a filter on one of the extensions be a problem?

 

[Darth Garth]

I agree on the USB being crap, but that's what she has (yes, she ordered a 4-port shen she requested it, but that's not what they left).

Will not having a filter on one of the extensions be a problem?

It depends how it was wired.
The technician put my filter on the line so that all my extensions sat after it i.e he split the outside line for the DSL modem and one for the telephones in the house via a splitter box and then put a filter in front of the line that went to the telephones ... you only need one filter then and not one per extension.

 

[Darth Garth]

I agree on the USB being crap, but that's what she has (yes, she ordered a 4-port shen she requested it, but that's not what they left).

Will not having a filter on one of the extensions be a problem?

Does the problem go away when you disconnect the phone from the wall socket ???.

 

[Claymore]

Telkom said the modem was faulty, so I took it in to a Telkom shop and exchanged it (for one of the wi-fi routers, yay!). Took that off, connected it up. Link light blinks forever. It did connect, very slowly, for about 30 minutes, and again later after the link light blinked for about 20 min, but all traffic was errors, so it was unusable.

I logged a request with Telkom to have the line seen to.