Telkom and DSL issues

[recre8]

2 years ago, my DSLAM was upgraded to 10mbps and I had a pretty decent sync at 10221kbps. Two years later, my line sync has become iffy. Some times during the day, the line will still sync at 10221kbps, with a borderline upstream SNR of 6.0dB and then drop the sync a hour or so later. Most of the day now, I sync at 7mbps. My line comes in from the road, straight into the Billion router. There is nothing but the router on the line. Right now my stats are:

Operational Mode ADSL2+
Upstream 635 kbps
Downstream 7168 kbps
SNR Margin (Upstream) 13.6 db
SNR Margin (Downstream) 8.1 db
Line Attenuation (Upstream) 27.5 db
Line Attenuation (Downstream) 28.0 db

So I had the telkom technician out, how gave me the default go-to answer: "There is no fault on the line, and I can't hear any noise when I plug a phone in, so the only answer is lowering your profile". I told him that is unacceptable because I used to sync fine at a full 10mbps. I asked if his telkom bakkie started shaking when he drives faster than 40km/h and the workshop told him, that is now the maximum speed the bakkie can go, if that is an acceptable answer.

Another problem: Whenever I use the WebAfrica control panel to reset the port, ask WebAfrica to reset the port, or even ask Telkom to reset the port, the line doesn't lose sync at all. My line stats on the WebAfrica control match up with my router's stats, but for some reason, the port reset does not work at all. So in the entire lifespan of my telkom line, the DSL port has never been recreated once, and no-one can tell my why it can't be recreated. I asked the telkom guy to swap my physical port out, and his response was, he can only do that if there is a problem on the port, and there isn't because it syncs fine.

I have since escalated the telkom ticket, but now some specialist has to come out and check, but this guy is in PE at the moment. Does anyone have some keyword that I can mention that immediately makes them resolve the issue?

 

[Rickster]

Try switch your ADSL mode to ADSL and ADSL2.

Then post your stats here.

 

[ichigo]

2 years ago, my DSLAM was upgraded to 10mbps and I had a pretty decent sync at 10221kbps. Two years later, my line sync has become iffy. Some times during the day, the line will still sync at 10221kbps, with a borderline upstream SNR of 6.0dB and then drop the sync a hour or so later. Most of the day now, I sync at 7mbps. My line comes in from the road, straight into the Billion router. There is nothing but the router on the line. Right now my stats are:

Operational Mode ADSL2+
Upstream 635 kbps
Downstream 7168 kbps
SNR Margin (Upstream) 13.6 db
SNR Margin (Downstream) 8.1 db
Line Attenuation (Upstream) 27.5 db
Line Attenuation (Downstream) 28.0 db

So I had the telkom technician out, how gave me the default go-to answer: "There is no fault on the line, and I can't hear any noise when I plug a phone in, so the only answer is lowering your profile". I told him that is unacceptable because I used to sync fine at a full 10mbps. I asked if his telkom bakkie started shaking when he drives faster than 40km/h and the workshop told him, that is now the maximum speed the bakkie can go, if that is an acceptable answer.

Another problem: Whenever I use the WebAfrica control panel to reset the port, ask WebAfrica to reset the port, or even ask Telkom to reset the port, the line doesn't lose sync at all. My line stats on the WebAfrica control match up with my router's stats, but for some reason, the port reset does not work at all. So in the entire lifespan of my telkom line, the DSL port has never been recreated once, and no-one can tell my why it can't be recreated. I asked the telkom guy to swap my physical port out, and his response was, he can only do that if there is a problem on the port, and there isn't because it syncs fine.

I have since escalated the telkom ticket, but now some specialist has to come out and check, but this guy is in PE at the moment. Does anyone have some keyword that I can mention that immediately makes them resolve the issue?

Your SNR seems too low for your attenuation, what changed when you 10 meg went faulty did the line go down or was there a storm?

 

[recre8]

Your SNR seems too low for your attenuation, what changed when you 10 meg went faulty did the line go down or was there a storm?

Nothing changed that I can remember. It just deteriorated over time. Telkom phoned me now, the issue is being escalated to "underground cables" department. It sounds like a made-up name.

 

[ichigo]

Nothing changed that I can remember. It just deteriorated over time. Telkom phoned me now, the issue is being escalated to "underground cables" department. It sounds like a made-up name.

They escalated ours to them long ago and they had to replace an underground cable and then after that the whole neighborhoods lines was fixed so dont think it is made up .

 

[recre8]

OK, a bit of feedback for everyone. The telkom technician phoned me later the day and asked me to meet him back at the house. They replaced a part of the cable, but sadly my stats inside the house at the phone socket my router usually connects to wasn't much better, BUT when connecting from the wires in the manhole, the stats were vastly improved. The technician then showed me that there was significant corrosion on the wires in the manhole and stripped clean the wires and gave a different colour pair.

Where my phone line comes into the house, the stats were great, but sadly, still not good where the router normally sits. But at least we narrowed the problem down to my extension inside the house.

Last night I started investigating the extension cable. I decided to strip back some of the wires on the little RJ11 socket box to see if that might help. As is my usual (and highly discouraged method), I stripped a piece of the plastic around one of the unused pairs using my teeth. After receiving a nasty electrical shock, I realized something wasn't right. The usused pair should have NO current on it at all.

Turns out, when I had alterations done to my house, someone was kind enough to re-attach the little RJ11 socket box, but they used the wire one side. The phone cable has four wires in two pairs: blue-and-white and orange-and-white. They used the white from the "other" pair. I find it a bit strange that the technician plugged a phone in and told me there is no noise on that socket, when there should not have even been a dial tone, but nonetheless, here are my line stats now:

BEFORE

Operational Mode ADSL2+
Upstream 635 kbps
Downstream 7168 kbps
SNR Margin (Upstream) 13.6 db
SNR Margin (Downstream) 8.1 db
Line Attenuation (Upstream) 27.5 db
Line Attenuation (Downstream) 28.0 db

AFTER

DSP Firmware Version DMT FwVer: 3.10.17.0_A_TC, HwVer:T14F7_5.0
DMT Status Up
Operational Mode ADSL2+
Upstream 1019 kbps
Downstream 10240 kbps
SNR Margin (Upstream) 6.7 db
SNR Margin (Downstream) 17.2 db
Line Attenuation (Upstream) 8.2 db
Line Attenuation (Downstream) 23.0 db

near-end FEC correctable error fast: 4
near-end FEC correctable error interleaved: 0
near-end CRC error fast: 2
near-end CRC error interleaved: 0
near-end HEC error fast: 1
near-end HEC error interleaved: 0
far-end FEC correctable error fast: 0
far-end FEC correctable error interleaved: 0
far-end CRC error fast: 0
far-end CRC error interleaved: 0
far-end HEC error fast: 0
far-end HEC error interleaved: 0

I have had a solid connection now ever since I fixed that boo-boo.

TLDR: Telkom gave me different twisted-pair from manhole to house, phone extension cable in house was running on only one wire.

 

[Chevron]

Seems like you need to drop your line speed to 8Meg for it to be stable.

 

[slvR]

I'm having the same issue. Synced at 10Mbs for 2 years, around 3 weeks ago it started disconnecting every so often and when I looked at the stats it seemed as if the SNR dropped below 6dB on upstream while downstream drops to about 16db. This has never happened before so I logged a fault with Telkom on Monday. What area are you in?