unstable adsl connection

[phuma]

I am battling with an unstable connection. It will work perfectly for three days, and then suddenly the line disconnects every 30 minutes or even worse. With Cybersmart, and their connection logs say "User-Request". Even if I unplug the telephone cable - which should be "Port-Error"?

The line had been fine for years, and then suddenly end of August everything went pear shaped.

Tried everything so far - another router, changed all the cables, changed the pots filter, made sure there is nothing else connected to the telephone line, even removed the "surge arrestors" from withing the telephone plugs. No luck.

Interestingly I can make the downstream SNR go up if I make a phone call - it goes up by about "2" units. During times of instability the SNR appears to be fluctuating wildly up and down - down to below 6 and then it is game over.

It takes Telkom 3 weeks to come out, and then they say there is nothing wrong with my line. Aaargh.

Allegedly I am with this exchange: http://www.broadbandstats.co.za/exchange/WTYG

Not sure what else I can do but cry.

 

[cobusv]

what is your SNR & ATT that you get on the modem, please paste output here.

Also how far from the exchange are you?

I had the same problem a while back took telkom 7 call outs for them to assign a copper tech to redo all the joints, and since then my line has been rock solid, stays connected for up to 14 days sometimes..

 

[Polemus]

I am battling with an unstable connection. It will work perfectly for three days, and then suddenly the line disconnects every 30 minutes or even worse. With Cybersmart, and their connection logs say "User-Request". Even if I unplug the telephone cable - which should be "Port-Error"?

The line had been fine for years, and then suddenly end of August everything went pear shaped.

Tried everything so far - another router, changed all the cables, changed the pots filter, made sure there is nothing else connected to the telephone line, even removed the "surge arrestors" from withing the telephone plugs. No luck.

Interestingly I can make the downstream SNR go up if I make a phone call - it goes up by about "2" units. During times of instability the SNR appears to be fluctuating wildly up and down - down to below 6 and then it is game over.

It takes Telkom 3 weeks to come out, and then they say there is nothing wrong with my line. Aaargh.

Allegedly I am with this exchange: http://www.broadbandstats.co.za/exchange/WTYG

Not sure what else I can do but cry.

I had the EXACT same problem, and it persisted for almost 8 months. I feel your pain. Telkom will come out many times, each time downgrading your line to a lower sync speed

Here is what my experience was:

Line stable at 10mb, it dc's about once a day, it does so for 4-5 days, then all-of-a-sudden, it dc's ever hour, that carries on for about 4 hours, then it dc's every 30 min's, eventually it dc's a few seconds after it sync's, this then would carry on for an hour or two, then it would stop and be fine for another 4-5 days.

From my experience I can tell you off the bat, that this is not a problem with your ISP. It is your copper. If you have a handset, listen, it might be someone's Electric Fence (god forbid)

I spent months logging calls, screaming, shouting and going crazy, it never got better, in fact, it only got worse, i started of syncing solidly and stable on 10mb, then down to 8, then 6, then 4mb, eventually 4mb was unstable.

In the end the only thing that helped me, was sending TelkomZA a PM. He struggled for weeks, and after numerous call-outs, the one TECH finally replaced a stretch of over 100m copper.

My line is now stable at 8mb (I can go to 10mb, but 8mb is fine).

All i can say is: "Be Patient".

1. Check your line for dry joints
2. Listen for tick sounds on your handset, if you hear it, then it is time to walk around th hood, and look at electric fencing, someone's fence is touching the copper.
3. Ask the tech to move you over to a new port on the exchange
4. Ask the tech to move you over to a different piece of copper
5. do not allow them to close the call

Electric fencing causes a lot of noise at the exchange, it eventually causes errors to bubble up, and the exchange tries it's best to ignore it. when the errors are extreme, you start losing sync every few minutes. The exchange then eventually reboots, not sure if it is auto, or done remotely, but once rebooted, the line will be fairly stable again for a few days.

Drop your line speed for now to accommodate the drastic fluctuations in SNR that happens every few days. Then, send TelkomZA a pm, he does great analysis on the line, and get's the right people out. After that, log a call every week, they will always give you a call telling you that they fixed it, and ask if they can close the call, be persistant, and say: NO THE FAULT IS STILL THERE. eventually, they will sort out your line.

Be patient with TelkomZA, the poor dude deals with a lot of us

Best of luck bud.

 

[Rickster]

Inspect every inch of your telephone wire from the pole to the jack and see if there is any exposed wires.

 

[phuma]

I am connected at 4Mbits currently. When the line is "ok" the downstream SNR is around 13, and upstream SNR 21. Attenuation down is 30, up is 19. I am guessing this means I am between 2 and 2.5km from the exchange.

At the moment the line is unstable again - the SNR would just start dropping, and when it goes below 6 it is game over.

Living in a complex - hard to check the line for dry joints. I've checked everything inside the house though.

By the way - my wife is on the phone right now, and the SNR is now stable again, and not going up and down :-o

 

[phuma]

I had a visit from a Telkom tech this morning. He:
* replaced the wall socket
* redid the connection outside the house to the Telkom cables going underground
* moved cables around in the roof to get them away from power cables

Sadly, things appear to be just the same. SNR is all over the place, and the modem disconnects when the SNR gets too low.

Connection stayed up for about 3 hours after the technician did things, and then started disconnecting again - 16 times since 13:07.

 

[DJ...]

I had a visit from a Telkom tech this morning. He:
* replaced the wall socket
* redid the connection outside the house to the Telkom cables going underground
* moved cables around in the roof to get them away from power cables

Sadly, things appear to be just the same. SNR is all over the place, and the modem disconnects when the SNR gets too low.

Connection stayed up for about 3 hours after the technician did things, and then started disconnecting again - 16 times since 13:07.

If you grab a trial from crystalweb.co.za and then connect, our staff can try to help ascertain what the problem may be here...

 

[phuma]

Ok, so the connection has now mysteriously stayed up since 17:35 yesterday afternoon. Stranger though even is the fact the SNR values are *completely* different from before. Downstream is now between 19 and 23 (it changes..) and upstream is at 12.

Boggles the mind - the attenuation and other values are more or less the same. It is as if the down and upstream have switched around?!

 

[DJ...]

Ok, so the connection has now mysteriously stayed up since 17:35 yesterday afternoon. Stranger though even is the fact the SNR values are *completely* different from before. Downstream is now between 19 and 23 (it changes..) and upstream is at 12.

Boggles the mind - the attenuation and other values are more or less the same. It is as if the down and upstream have switched around?!

Shouldn't be all that mysterious. Our guys have been working with Telkom to get this fixed for you. Keep monitoring it and let us know...

 

[phuma]

Well thank you

I wonder why the numbers have changed around? You know what Telkom have done?

 

[DJ...]

Well thank you

I wonder why the numbers have changed around? You know what Telkom have done?

Switching ports and moving you to a more stable modulation as well for your line. And a few other things our team have been working on to try to maintain stability at the highest sync rate for you without Telkom's ASSIA systems interfering...

 

[phuma]

Up 49 hours.... :-D

The SNR numbers are *weird* though. Currently they are sitting at 14 down, and 12 up - downstream appears to be fluctation between 13 and 18 during the day. That normal? At least at minimum of 14 downstream gives me much more of a margin!

 

[C@sparis]

Switching ports and moving you to a more stable modulation as well for your line. And a few other things our team have been working on to try to maintain stability at the highest sync rate for you without Telkom's ASSIA systems interfering...

DJ - I assume you work for Crystalweb, if so then answer this.
I signed up for a test acc when I was looking at alternative ISP's. Your staff was very abrupt when i produced a trace route stating +- 10 hops what was suppose to be a CT server. Seems I was routed through JHB.
My request was simple, wanted to know if the routing could be addressed and have it run through CT. They said no. Can you confirm?

 

[DJ...]

DJ - I assume you work for Crystalweb, if so then answer this.
I signed up for a test acc when I was looking at alternative ISP's. Your staff was very abrupt when i produced a trace route stating +- 10 hops what was suppose to be a CT server. Seems I was routed through JHB.
My request was simple, wanted to know if the routing could be addressed and have it run through CT. They said no. Can you confirm?

I am the CEO of Crystal Web.

If you are based in JHB you will route out of our JHB network. If you are based in CPT it will route out from CPT. If you are in KZN, it will route out of KZN. If the server you are hitting is in CPT, it will route it to CPT from your location.

We do not have, and have never deployed any ip-pools over the Telkom exchange infrastructure that would route Cape Town customers out of Johannesburg, or similar. It's physically not possible to do so without having Telkom re-route every single customer.

If you can provide me with a ticket number I can check the chat log to ascertain what happened, provide feedback from me personally, deal with any abruptness that may have been provided, and identify any problems and solve them if need be...

 

[phuma]

And my line is back to its old crappy performance again. Today it was down SIXTY (60) times. Yesterday 20 times.

The SNR has changed from 12.5db down to 10.3 down, and from 19db up to 13 up. What is going on here?

Even worse - the attenuation has now shot up from 29.5db downstream to 37 downstream, and from 18.5db upstream to 31 upstream. That does not make sense at all - what the heck has happened to my line? The attenuation has been rock solid before, and now suddenly it looks as if I am much further away from the exchange?!