Things to do to maximise your chances of passing for DSL...

seamus

Right, hopefully after agreement from my co-mods, this can be a sticky thread packed fulls of things to do, such as removing phone equipment, badgering eircom technicians, etc etc, to get passed for DSL, hopefully to get as many people to pass as possible.

Otherwise, I'll just ask my question and throw it over to the Broadband forum

Right, my line is pretty good. How good, I'm not sure, cos I've been too lazy to borrow someone's laptop and a short cable to test it properly. But I've gotten 42-46K on occasion, with a old 25m cable. I'm fairly close to the exchange (<2km), and the neighbourhood hub is outside my garden gate.

I've failed every time they've tested. Twice I was online, with my huge cable, so obviously that didn't help, and the 3rd time for no specific reason.

Too much waffling, just one crucial query - Should I have a telephone plugged in when they test? I have no phone, I don't want to incur any costs other than internet. I had a good chat on IRC (thanks Snaga) and was told they test for termination - whether the line is open or closed - but does this have any bearing on the results? they way I look at it, if there's no phone in the socket, then the loop isn't complete, and it won't test properly...

Or is it wishful thinking?

BigEejit

There has been many a rumour with relation to what should be hanging off the phone line. You will never get a straight answer from an €ircon employee, except common sense.....

I think that your best chance is that you have a cheap phone (€ircons own comfort or aisling phones would be ideal) and nothing else. If you can, remove any spurs, these are lines from the €ircon connector on the wall to anywhere else in the house. Basically they werent installed by €ircon and could well be complete crap. (Not saying that the lines €ircon installed are brilliant, just that some of the aftermarket lines are particulalrly cheaply made)
I dont know if they will test while the phone is in use, it certainly seems illogical and I am sure that testing would introduce a lot of noise into the communications at the very least.

If you are still failing after a month (there is a month between testing or so €ircon maintains) you could report an echo on the line, I have read on boards that they will always send out an engineer in this case. Be sure that you are there when the engineer arrives, ask about broadband. I personally had my phone line replaced (moisture damage to the line, was suffering dropped calls, engineer said that reactance (capacitance?) was high) and when they were there (was two of them) I said I needed the line for broadband (I did this just in case they split the neighbours line just to get me out of their hair) and they told me that it was very likely i would pass. Note that i was still failing the test for a further 4 - 5 weeks after the line was replaced ... I thought that all the work was for nothing...:( ... the first I knew that I had passed was an email from IOL (I had "expressed interest" some time in the past) telling me and inviting me to partake of their service .... it was a further week at least before €ircon sent me a letter ...

Some background: Every phone line in the country has a REN rating of 4 (ringer equivalency number) that should not be exceeded. A normal phone is usually one (one ringer ... geddit?) ... a answering machine usually is two rens (dunno why, they are nearly always externally powered, you would have thought they would be 0, but printed on the back of the three I checked they all said two). I dont know what a $ky dodgybox is but a modem is usually 1 as well. If you go over 4 REN's you stand a chance of dropping calls or some phones not ringing at all (voltage on the line not high enough because the other phones are ringing) .... I have read that it can slow your dial-up connection speed, but never experienced this myself. If you had a lot of phones and everyone picks up the line may drop or the volume in all the earpieces could drop way down.

A note about phones. My sister has a GE mobile and two (really) cheap and nasty Argos phones. She cant get on the internet with the Argos phones connected. Also if you are in your first year contact with Sky it is illegal for you to disconnect the dodgybox. I think I read someone on the Satellite forum wrote that $ky are instructing the dodgybox to dial home at some intervals to check the phone connection. Not all Argos phones have this problem I'd say, just watch the really cheap ones.

sceptre

Originally posted by BigEejit
I dont know what a $ky dodgybox is but a modem is usually 1 as well.

A diggybox is 0.5 REN AFAIR, though I'm open to correction.

spongebob

Lots of Irish houses have rubbishy inside wiring. If DSL is that important to you you should disconnect all the inside wiring from the first socket. Once you get DSL you can start to reconnect the sockets one by one , ensuring that no socket causes an outage to your service and debugging them one by one. This is your responsibility not Eircoms, it is internal wiring after all.

Put a quality socket on there , a quality socket is probably €8 and not €3 in an electrical wholesaler or get a surface mount socket (about the size of a fat matchbox) which costs c.€4 . Get a good contact with the eircom wiring from outside, you would need to bare at least 5-10mm and wrap it well around the contact posts on your socket.

Plug in a bog standard phone into that socket.

By bog standard I mean a phone with no LCD display, LEDs or Clock/Alarms built in as these 'features' suck power from the line . The Eircom Ashling is a good example or the older Corrib phone.

HTH

M

rymus

for what it's worth.. I had absolutely nothing plugged into my phone line when I was tested (and passed) the pre-qual.

Redshift

Another thing you can do is get hold of a new type eircom socket (White) if you have one of these then they test to the socket not to the phones and wiring, how you get one is up to you try talking nicely to a linesman or perhaps cause you current socket to accidently break due to wear and tear;)

Calibos

Are you sure about that Redshift?? Can anyone else confirm that? We have a white Eircom box which IIRC was installed when we got ISDN. Its a white box about 3" x 3" with Eircom and logo printed on the top right corner of the box. There is a removable cover on the bottom third of the box with 'Eircom access only' printed on it and detachable via 2 screws. The phone line comes in from outside and into this box via some internal connector and out to the ISDN plug and play wall box in another room.

If what you say is true then that rules out my Fax and Dect and internal wiring. Like I have said in other threads, I have ruled out everything else cause all my neighbours including those in each side have passed meaning the problem is between the eircom manhole at the bottom of my drive and the white box inside my hall door. So like I said if what you say is true then its my ISDN causing a fail though it shouldn't according to the rat in which case a downgrade and retest for €25 should sort me out.....OR......its this, about which I have posted like a broken record in numerous other threads.......



:D:D :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

Redshift

It's the very newest type that has bevelled edges and the eircom logo moulded into it. AFAIK the previous white square socket which just has the logo printed on it does has the testing capability.

shinzon

When i got the socket put in by the enigineers, i got an eircom box put in, is it the one with the testing socket above it


Shin

De Rebel

Originally posted by Calibos
I have posted like a broken record in numerous other threads.......

Has the broken record contacted eircom and reported the intermittent line problem which prevents him and his half deaf relation making and taking calls?

Calibos

No. The broken record hasn't had the time to get around to it yet! :D I'll probably ring them on monday.

JNive

OK.. heres how my eircom i-stream connection matches up.. i have a Sky 'Dodgybox' , one new 'LCD type' battery powered phone, and another plain phone (which is on a long extension) plugged into one microfilter which is connected to my main distro-point close to the inside eircom wired terminal. Off the same distro-point, is my fixed-wired connection to another socket (about 10-foot of cable). I have my dial-up modem and ethernet DSL modem (D-LINK) connected through another microfilter to this. Im about 100-feet from the neighbourhood 'multiplexer' box. And another 2km line-of sight from the Exchange.

Speeds: (maximum average eg. File Downloads) 57kbps
(Maximum peak eg. browsing) 68kbps.

Just thought i'd share the info.

PS. Location - Cork City - Dennehy's Cross exchange.

JNive

And also. Upload speed: ~13 kpbs constant