Eircom Broadband Extended Reach

charlo_b

Hi Guys,

After desperately wanting broadband for the last 5 years I once again went to the Eircom Line checker to see if my line would pass, to my amazement it came up saying "May Be Possible".

Needless to say I ordered it on the spot.

Few days later my Netopia Router arrived I set everything up and waited for the agreed date that DSL would be turned on for my line.

Come the date nothing happened, still a blinking green light. Rang the Support line, they went through all the usual tests, and sai they'd send out an engineer. This guy was useless and did nothing essentially (According to the wife).

Anyway, I then went up to my attic found the main eircom line into my house, disconnected all extensions from it, and connected only the phone point that the router was plugged into. The DSL light came on synced @ 1280/256 Kbps ...... however it dropped after 4 hours of use .

The next day I checked the connection again (in the attic) came down, sync light on again only for a few hours.

My questions are:
1) If it worked for a few hours should it not always work, or did I just get
lucky as the Eircom Support guy told me.
2) Does it sound like I could have an internal wiring problem.

Thanks guys.

charlo



Sorry if this is the wrong forum.....feel free to move it.

uncle_sam_ie

What are your DSL stats? Line Attenuation,SN Margin and CRC Errors?

watty

I tested a line frequenly once and realiced the line stats matched the tide table. It was undersea cable from Donaghdee to Portpatrick.

Lines do change with weather, water, traffic, who knows what.

Disconnect everything except Modem to eliminate internal issues

lucernarian

He has already disconnected everything except the modem.

To be honest, the engineer could have done a lot more. I thought they were meant to install a special master socket with a filter built into it. It sounds like the internal wiring is an issue if it won't work at all with the extensions connected.

When you say it loses sync, did you see if the modem resynced shortly afterwards? As uncle_sam_ie said, give us all your line statistics (accessible through 192.168.1.254, then the troubleshoot tab, then statistics, then the DSL tab I think.)

But I think the suspect lies with the wiring somewhere. On a high attenuation line like yours, it's a good idea to use Cat5 cable for the phone wiring. And try to follow this wiring guide: www.reci.ie/technicalinfo/eircominterface.pdf. There are also threads and guides for the fixing of internal wiring around boards but it may be difficult to find them. The sockets in the pdf file can be got easily off any eircom engineer. Just ask for a master socket when you see a van pulled up somewhere if you need a socket.

charlo_b

Thanks for the replys everyone..

As the DSL wont sync anymore I can't tell you exactly what the Line Attenuation was but 62/32 does come to mind.

When I say it loses sync....it doesn't come back! It came back after I went up into the attic and rejigged the wiring (Took the cable out of the connector block and put it back in)


What I'm planning on doing is bringing the Router into the attic and plugging it directly into the main line and seeing if it syncs.....that should definitively tell me if it's the internal wiring or not.

uncle_sam_ie

This site might help you aswell. http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/lowSNR.htm

charlo_b

It connected again the other night and the Line Attenuation was 63/32.

It dropped soon after, but while it was working it was great, download speeds were what you'd expect from a 1Mb line.

What I don't understand is if it synchs and seems fine, why doesn't it just stay connected???

lucernarian

That's very strange indeed. If it can hold 1 Mbit but then disconnect completely, then it looks like it's a rather poor modem, but you also need to check that the internal wiring is spot on before going out looking for a new modem. If you search boards, you might find some guides for doing the internal wiring. Remember, you only need two wires for any one eircom line. Any other wires are surplus to requirements in this country, unless you have 2 or more lines.

charlo_b

Hi all....

It's up again and for those of you interested the stats are as follows

System Up Time 335:14:36
Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time
WAN PPPoE 11754 11624 0 39 394 06:02:55
LAN 10M/100M 2000 0 0 0 0 335:14:32
WLAN 11M/54M 108823 90360 0 52 7 335:14:22


ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 1024 kbps 128 kbps
Line Attenuation 63 db 15.5 db
Noise Margin 7 db 15 db


I'm thinking that the upstream is fine, but the Downstream seems to be fairly close to the limits???

Oh by the way I went out and bought a Netgear DG834G Router

lucernarian

This is more a general broadband question, but are DSL modems capable of measuring attenuation over 63 dB?? I remember reading something about modems unable to report more than 63 dB.

There's a huge gap in the upload and download attenuations. Friends of mine with 3 Mbps would have 21 dB upload attenuation. Not sure if there's any significance in that.

The downstream noise margin is okayish. It's not the signal to noise ratio. I believe that the noise margin is at 0dB when the SNR is at 6 dB. Anything below 6 dB SNR should disconnect, hence the term noise margin. 7 dB should give a stable connection. See how it goes, and let us know if everything works out okay.