Pairgains a ladder and a Hi-Vis jacket

dialupjoe

Ok, further to this post http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055339542 last week i spent a good bit of time going through the house & getting the master socket and cable down to a bare minimum & still only get 31.2ks so i decided that seen as the weather was good i'd pop a latter up to the pole in the garden/ish and try a few things.

Ok im pretty sure none of this was legal but i didn't interfere with anybodys lines & screw eircom. I'm not so stupid as to think i was gona do anything out here & come back in & find i had broadband.

The hope was of finding out if i could acheive better than 31.2ks & see there after if i could take the next step in my ever lasting battel for broadband. Please have a look at the pictures & see if you would have any ideas.

I'm not even sure what im looking for here guys but maybe one of you might spot someting that i could try or tell me something about what you/me are looking at.

The first picture is of my 2 pair on the bottom left, the blue pair are the connected ones.

The second & third pictures are me disconnecting my own two pair & adding an ad-hoc connection making the distance as short as one can & still at 31.2ks(Dam it)

And the 4th & 5th is of a pairgain2000 on the same pole to whitch im not connected.

Ok.. as i said this is me doing what i can & not knowing what im doing, its a case of i wonder what would happen if i did this but if theres any thing else i could try please help.

Sponge Bob

Not the last jump to house or socket if the ad hoc krone you did was the same speed .

Bank holiday next weekend Joe, prepare to check them all the way to the exchange mate .

How far to exchange ??

dialupjoe

4ks bob and 10 pairgains counted so far from here to exchange.
Some old but 5 very new ones.
Could you explain your first line of text a little further please?

"Bank holiday next weekend Joe, prepare to check them all the way to the exchange mate" (LOL)

Don't Bob..! you never know what i'd do, if them ****ers (Eircom) won't i will.

Sponge Bob

4km hmmm

be careful of pairgains, they bond 4 pairs or 8 pairs from exchange to pairgain and stuff 120v into the bonded pairs and the data over them as well , nasty that .

It a good idea to look for YOUR line by having a Clamp Multimeter that does not make contact with the wires.

http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?ModuleNo=46384&doy=27m7



And looking for a 48v = 0v =48v jump as you use yoru mobile to call it and the phone rings at home . Then krone in and test again .

If you do not detect this pattern ( practise on the telephone lead at home first ) then it is pairgained from the exchange to somewhere within 1km of your home I should think. Modern pairgains can support 40k dialup , the older ones were 19.2k or 16.8k or even 9k

Your speed is too high for a pairgain 2000, its either a new one or there is none and its a bad join.

Start at the pole 2km away and test there , then intervals of 1km and then 500m until you find where the drop in speed is . By all means re krone , it can hardly do any harm .

If its a damaged cable segment then damage it properly when you find it , they will have to fix it properly if its damaged properly I always say

Sponge Bob

and a Cheaper Clamp type multimeter

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Search.aspx?criteria=N21CF&DOY=27m7

Note that pairgains could be ac not dc ( dunno TBH) where a phone line in the house is 48v dc or so .

dialupjoe

God dam thats some good info bob, theres a few things i can get my teeth into there, wasnt sure what i was looking for when posting but you did.

"then it is pairgained from the exchange to somewhere within 1km of your home I should think"

Thats spot-on, theres a pairgain about a click from me where the line from the main rd diverts up my lane and if i follow that line its a single line till about 250mts from my house and i've always thought it was the son of a bitch that was causing me the most problems, Bank holiday next weekend, hmmmm, that SOB won't be there after that.

Sponge Bob

Whoa

Pairgains are installed where there is insufficient copper , eg they need 75 pairs in an area and only have 50 so they install a pairgain to deal with the bottleneck.

There may be sufficient copper from the 1 click mark to the house , or not. I would calculate that there are 30-50 joins on your line along the way so thats 20-50 bodged Krones opportunities, it only takes the one sunshine .

First you need to find out where and then what .

Ideally I would open the manhole in the village before the first pole and check for that 48v-0v-48v pattern first. If present that tells you there is no pairgain at all on your line and that you can krone in straight away and dial up to see what the speed is.

When I went checking my line some years back I found the problem was that a useless engineer had broken off the bottom of this box instead of drilling it and inserting the rubber bushes then the cable.

https://us.v-cdn.net/6034073/uploads/attachments/170385/60237.JPG

Thereby allowing water ingress when it rained . A shot of sealing foam later and that was sorted The sealing foam is still there, looked like nobody went into the box since

Jonathan

Sponge Bob wrote: »

4km hmmm

be careful of pairgains, they bond 4 pairs or 8 pairs from exchange to pairgain and stuff 120v into the bonded pairs and the data over them as well , nasty that .

It a good idea to look for YOUR line by having a Clamp Multimeter that does not make contact with the wires.

http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?ModuleNo=46384&doy=27m7



And looking for a 48v = 0v =48v jump as you use yoru mobile to call it and the phone rings at home . Then krone in and test again .

Sponge Bob wrote: »

and a Cheaper Clamp type multimeter

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Search.aspx?criteria=N21CF&DOY=27m7

Note that pairgains could be ac not dc ( dunno TBH) where a phone line in the house is 48v dc or so .

Dont bother with a that clamp multimeter. I have that one and it is total ****e tbh. The only thing you can measure with the clamp is AC current. Doesnt even measure DC with the probes either. Waste of time.

watty

The only thing ANY clamp measures is AC. But the ringing is AC, more than 48V I'm sure. (or more, maybe 110V @ 20Hz? Wiki says 100V europe, 90 volts and 20Hz in the USA)

Jonathan

watty wrote: »

The only thing ANY clamp measures is AC

I'm fully aware of that. I was saying as an aside that it doesnt measure DC with probes either.

watty

It's an AC only meter. Quite normal for basic Clamp Meters.

you can make or buy an A.C. clamp attachment for a regular 4 Euro meter. Bought clamps are not cheap.

Solair

Depending on how far away the exchange is the ringing voltage can be anything from just over 50V to about 75V AC. For safety's sake assume it's up to 100V AC.

There are also different ways of feeding the voltage down the line, it may be on one let only, or applied out of phase across both legs. This depends on how the local exchange is configured and who manufactured it.

You may also get lower than 48V DC readings depending on how far you are from the exchange. The further you are the lower the voltage.

You can safely ignore those wiki articles as there is no 'European standard' for PSTN/POTS line interfaces although they're generally roughly the same, or at least sufficiently similar to be able to specify handsets that work on most EU phone networks without problems.

There are differences in ringing frequencies, voltages, dial ones, etc from country to country.

If you're continuing to have problems, see if there are alternatives available like Digiweb metro or UPC (Chorus/NTL) who can also provide phone service.

Also, if you can get a decent wireless broadband provider, the likes of blueface can provide a relatively good alterantive to a landline including a real phone number in your area code.

If eircom won't fix your line vote with your feet and starve them of line rental. They don't deserve it!

Also just be very careful poking around in those junction boxes. They're eircom property and you could end up accidently disconnecting other customers without intending to.

There are potentially dangerous voltages present too. E.g. some types of ISDN and leased lines can carry significant DC voltages to power equipment. You may also find that there's 230V Mains power present if there is equipment installed there.

So, just don't assume it's safe to touch any of the terminals. Also, if you're up a pole and get a shock when a line rings, you could fall to the ground.

Sponge Bob

Solair wrote: »

There are potentially dangerous voltages present too. E.g. some types of ISDN and leased lines can carry significant DC voltages to power equipment.

Its 100v max I think. Thats why I told him to get a clamp meter, no contact required. But 100v is nasty in itself .

So, just don't assume it's safe to touch any of the terminals. Also, if you're up a pole and get a shock when a line rings, you could fall to the ground.

Thats why I told him to find a manhole cover in town first , if he cannot detect the voltage 'burst/drop' at ground level in the village then he is likely pairgained out beyond that , a pairgain is a crummy form of digital line and will not show that 'ring' pattern on a clamp meter whereas an honest to god analogue line will all the way out.

Still think a line is 48v DC though if analogue

watty

48 DC with no load. (on hook)
about 4V to 9V DC off hook
60V to 120V, AC ringing, but much lower than mains 50Hz. Maybe Superimposed on 48V DC

(I designed Analogue exchange microprocessor controlled conversion interfaces in 1986, but we just allowed a large margin for the AC ringing, and regarded > 15V as definately on hook and <9V as definitely off hook. The spec we had only covered the timing of signalling pulses accurately).

If you hold metal ladder with one hand and touch ringing wire, it's very very likely you fall off.

You might have to stand in a earthed bucket of salt water or stick a wire in your mouth to get a lethal shock though, apart from falling on a spiky fence...

lucernarian

I looked up about the pairgain systems in use in this country a while back. The auld multigain 2000.

Apparently, according to this webpage, the multigain 2000 can work off over 150VDC. http://www.freepatentsonline.com/EP1009156.html

I know on a simple 1+1 configuration pairgain, the most common sort hanging on poles nationwide, at least 28.8k is achievable. This was on an older-looking, beige coloured multigain 2000. There's also lots of the whiter, newer looking multigain 2000s around. I've never seen bonded lines used for the older ones. I think they can and do use bonded pairs for the white pairgains.

I've seen another sort of pairgain like box with what looked to be ventilation slots on the side and a "high voltage" sticker on them. But these are uncommon and I've seen most of them on lines in Donegal and another in Co. Meath.


If you're looking for your own pair, you can follow it for a good distance. Each pair within a 30-pair cable is identified by a unique pair of colours. These colours repeat every 10 times, so there are 3 "bundles" where 2 ribbons wrap around each bundle of 10 pairs. These 2 ribbons have the same colour scheme, so you can identify any pair continuously.

Linesmen try to keep the continuity where possible.

Solair

The DC voltage drops off depending on how long the line is, the further you get from the exchange, the lower the voltage. If you're quite near the exchange the voltage will be around 48V DC.

Pairgain is no more a real telephone line than VoIP is. Basically, they take a whole load of customer's lines, connect them to a device which converts them into a digital signal, it then packs several voice signals into a single line. At the exchange end another similar device splits them back out into analogue lines again.

It means that you've no physical path back to the exchange so DSL is impossible.

Also, you have to remember that the telephone exchange itself is digital. When your line arrives at the exchange, a device not dissimilar to a sound card on your PC converts your voice signals into a digital signal which can be processed by the telephone exchange.

When you add pairgain, the pair gain system is also converting your voice into a digital signal and then compressing it then reconverting it to analogue then the exchange picks that up and re-converts it to digital!!
Basically, that kills most modem signals off as they're really only designed to cope with the way a digital telephone exchange samples and processes signals. Too many analogue-digital-analogue conversions and your modem isn't going to be very happy.

Pairgain's fine for voice, and it might cope ok with 9600bps fax signals, but it's useless for high speed modems and DSL actually requires a physical copper line between you and the DSLAM in the exchange, so if you're pairgained, you can forget it as you don't actually have a phone line at all.

What a lot of this stuff comes down to is Ireland's pathetic planning laws. Hundreds and thousands of houses were built in areas that simply didn't have the infrastructure to cope. eircom didn't have sufficient capacity so they've whacked in pairgains to cope and provide voice services.

The problem is that they also seem too cheap to remove them and invest in the necessary capacity to cope with the demand.

Providing extra switching capacity on an exchange is relatively cheap and easy, you just buy more line cards. However, if you don't have enough wires running out to locations it's very expensive as it means that they have to actually go out and run miles of cable. This involves crews and ladders and physical work.

In some cases, new housing estates ought to be getting RCUs (Remote Concentrator Units) which are basically small sub-exchanges installed. These are proper exchanges linked back to a parent with a fiber optic cable and would provide proper service, including DSL.

Sadly, we don't seem to have the planning requirements to foresee demand.

Same goes for water, sewage etc...

dialupjoe

First i'd like to say thankyou to the people who have responded to this post in such a techinacal way. I've developed a very much better understanding of what im up against and in one way im kinda depressed,

espically by Solair's
wonderfull layman terms of how the pairgain/pstn/pots work, fantastic reading, if only books were as easy read.

"Pairgain is no more a real telephone line than VoIP "
That line kinda sums it all up really.

I've printed this post out and after studying it i kinda have to except that to a certain extent i'm beaten.

I've been going back over some old threads as far back as 02/03 again and decided to put an order in for ISDN in the hope that at 31.2ks on dial-up

there has been work done on the line in the past year and i may, in a round about way be able to cancel the isdn order if or when the dial-up speeds went up into say the mid 40s,

but then again as has been said the newer pair gain technology may allow for this and im still screwed but its worth the effort and cost but after studying Solair's previous post it's gona save me a couple weeks fault finding and possible arrest if i were to continue with my current course of action, i.e. taking matters into my own hands.

What do you think of this next step? it was always plan "C" but im gona bring it into play a good bit before planned. Tryed it some years ago only to be told the was a fault on the line.

stylers

could you not investigate a wireless link to one of the neighbours that has DSL ? (assuming you've got friendly ones, dear old Ireland is not yet dead and gone :-) ). The gear is relatively cheap now and easily installed, and you'd get plenty of help on boards. I was going to go down this route last year, until eircom decided to increase the distance limit :mad:

dialupjoe

stylers wrote: »

could you not investigate a wireless link to one of the neighbours that has DSL ? (assuming you've got friendly ones, dear old Ireland is not yet dead and gone :-) ). The gear is relatively cheap now and easily installed, and you'd get plenty of help on boards. I was going to go down this route last year, until eircom decided to increase the distance limit :mad:

Been there and done that and lets just say the last time i looked in the mirror i didn't have two heads.

At the moment i've just finished climbing eircom poles and messing with there stuff so you can take from this that i've maxed out every other option.

Solair

No way you can get wireless internet via one of the providers?

dialupjoe

Solair wrote: »

No way you can get wireless internet via one of the providers?

Nothing...! Tried them all. Was either a marginal fail or poor LOS.
At the moment i have a nice big collection of satellite dishes & usb hsdpa modems :mad: & quiet a few dial-ups.

Where im at now is wait and see whats comming on line with newer technology i.e. Digiwebs mobile IP or wait & see what becomes of my new eircom isdn order & maybe be taken out of the carrier im on & pray like a mad man but that boils down to what tech i get from eircom on the day.

The guy thats been out to me the last 4/5 times is i have to say a bit of a bollox & very unhelpfull which is a dam shame cos 99% of my dealings with eircom guys out on the road in the past has been very good & they were pretty sound,

but this ould lad is kinda well WE don't have to give you anything except a working line & thats that so my fear is that it will be hime again doing the isdn order & won't bother trying anything different & just say no & send the order back.

Last time he was out i offered to pay him 300e to try & maybe do something during, after or maybe even a few hrs on the weekend and he walked away:o

But i live in hope as 31.3ks is double what it was last year, i get a may be suitble reading on eircoms pre-qual but i got the dsl/modem but no joy so im thinking im a marignal fail here plus theres that old house 150yrds down the rd thats been knocked down and that line passes the pre-qual.

Sponge Bob

A lot of them are dead sound and will do what they can if you ask nicely , if €300 won't incentivise him it looks like there is a chronic copper shortage where you are .

You wont get the national broadband scheme either because you are no doubt 'covered' according to the department


http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/Communications/Communications+Development/National+Broadband+Scheme.htm

dialupjoe

Sponge Bob wrote: »

a lot of them are sound and will do what they can , if €300 won't incentivise him it looks like there is a chronic copper shortage where you are .

How's it going bob.
Can you tell me what work or what steps are needed for me to get the enabled line from that old house 150/200yrds down the rd? i know it would be done on the side kind of thing but is it a big job?

How would they go about it is what im asking i guess.

Sponge Bob

dialupjoe wrote: »

How would they go about it is what im asking i guess.

If you run 200m of cable for them that would be a help, does that line down the road pass for BB and have you tested dialup on it speed wise .

dialupjoe

Sponge Bob wrote: »

If you run 200m of cable for them that would be a help, does that line down the road pass for BB and have you tested dialup on it speed wise .

"If you run 200m of cable for them that would be a help"
How would this work? as you know, eircom is so dam departmentalized that trying to get your point accross is always meet with a " ring this number" we only deal with etc etc.. and vice versa.

I didn't get a chance to test the dial-up speeds on that line that passes but it's been passing for a few yrs now as is the house that's right beside it with an 80+ year old man living in it who doesn't use BB and the house about 100yrds further away again have BB & think i have two heads for even asking what speeds they were geting let alone share & i'd pay for there full cost.

€300 is what i offered & to tell you the truth if he had said €600 i'd have found it from somewhere to give to him, i'd have felt pretty small but you know what they say about beggers...:o

Sponge Bob

All the alternatives ( eg wireless) would cost €300 anyway .

Did you ask the engineer straight out to swap your pair with the elder neighbours , they do that if you point it out to them , bit of Krone work at both ends and thats that.

dialupjoe

Sponge Bob wrote: »

All the alternatives ( eg wireless) would cost €300 anyway .

Did you ask the engineer straight out to swap your pair with the elder neighbours , they do that if you point it out to them , bit of Krone work at both ends and thats that.

After some polite small talk i brought the conversation around to carriers, pairgains & all things broadband & how desprate i was to try & get broadband for the family he just kinda smiled & told me how good eircom satellite was

i then showed him 3 dishes on the gable end of the house & he thought this was very funny altogether "looks like the BBC" he said, a very funny comment to which we both laughed :mad:

Sponge Bob

dialupjoe wrote: »

i then showed him 3 dishes on the gable end of the house & he thought this was very funny altogether "looks like the BBC" he said, a very funny comment to which we both laughed :mad:

If he is the only local guy AND useless then you are bollixed.

lucernarian

Christ almighty. I wonder what the linesman would do if the pairgain simply vanished or if lightning struck it...

You've nothing to lose with that linesman. Tell him to swap the line with the line down the road or that neighbour of yours.

Btw, did you ask to get a new line before?? Sorry if you mentioned it already.

I'd also bull**** to him that you are hoping to work at home and your company specified that the technology is incompatible with satellite broadband. VPNs and all that.

dialupjoe

Dear ,



Regarding your online order with eircom:

I'm sorry, but I am unable to process your order as the service you have requested is unavailable on your phone line.

If you contact 1901 they may be able to provide you with some alternative options.

Kind Regards,

,
eircom Channel Support,
Exchange St,
Waterford.

http://www.eircom.ie



Thats pretty ****ing sad! still can't even give me something as old as ISDN.

Solair

Solair wrote: »

Pairgain is no more a real telephone line than VoIP is. Basically, they take a whole load of customer's lines, connect them to a device which converts them into a digital signal, it then packs several voice signals into a single line. At the exchange end another similar device splits them back out into analogue lines again.

It means that you've no physical path back to the exchange so DSL is impossible.

Also, you have to remember that the telephone exchange itself is digital. When your line arrives at the exchange, a device not dissimilar to a sound card on your PC converts your voice signals into a digital signal which can be processed by the telephone exchange.

When you add pairgain, the pair gain system is also converting your voice into a digital signal and then compressing it then reconverting it to analogue then the exchange picks that up and re-converts it to digital!!
Basically, that kills most modem signals off as they're really only designed to cope with the way a digital telephone exchange samples and processes signals. Too many analogue-digital-analogue conversions and your modem isn't going to be very happy.

Pairgain's fine for voice, and it might cope ok with 9600bps fax signals, but it's useless for high speed modems and DSL actually requires a physical copper line between you and the DSLAM in the exchange, so if you're pairgained, you can forget it as you don't actually have a phone line at all.

In theory, it should be impossible to get a V.90/K56flex/X2 connection on a line with even one ADC - DAC conversion though I'm going on 1999 knowledge here. It would prevent the modem from going any higher than V.34 33.6k.

But yep, you're dead right. I remember having serious dial-up trouble at my parents' house as a babby. I could connect at about 41333 to 50666 but the connection always dropped out and disconnected. Even 37333 was unstable. I had to use an AT command to force the modem back to 33600 and once I did it was rock solid.

OP, I know exactly how you feel. Though in Kerry I was lucky to have LOS to a wireless broadband provider.

ttm

I had the same problem as you trying to get an ISDN line and it took me 6 months to get one put in. I was verbally told my phone line was crap and wouldn't test out but I kept asking how they knew that and in the end I got them to put up a job number to send out an engineer to test it as I said I wanted proof and a test report. The engineer never bothered and after I think another 15 phone calls an engineer turned up on the door and fitted an ISDN box in the house and then spent a couple of hours up poles finding a good pair of copper back to the exchange.

btw if you do get ISDN and the line goes down Eircom don't even have to bother to fix it. Its taken up to 10 days to line fixed before as ISDN isn't covered by comregs rules for repair times :mad:

If you need a new line I did hear from an Eircom engineer that some people in the country are so stupid when out crow shooting they even shoot at crows sitting on phone lines

lucernarian

dialupjoe wrote: »

Dear ,



Regarding your online order with eircom:

I'm sorry, but I am unable to process your order as the service you have requested is unavailable on your phone line.

If you contact 1901 they may be able to provide you with some alternative options.

Kind Regards,

,
eircom Channel Support,
Exchange St,
Waterford.

http://www.eircom.ie



Thats pretty ****ing sad! still can't even give me something as old as ISDN.

The person who told you that is some clown who reads off a line test result. You have to kick up a stink with them, send them a complaint letter or two, addressed to the chairman or CEO and whatnot. CC the email to Joe Duffy and Pat Kenny radio shows (PK in particular has forwarded emails on to eircom, which delivered good results) and especially comreg. Comreg have to be brought into this as much as possible. Also, sending a letter outlining your plight to the local press and your local TDs would be a smart move.

The more you embarass and use up the time of people who couldn't care about a phoneline in laois, the more likely they will work on your line just to shut you up. For example...

I remember reading a story on boards about a fella who had constant disconnect problems on a 2 meg line (IIRC) despite having downgraded and being near the Swords exchange. After extensive complaining and a letter or two to Comreg, 2 linesmen were sent out with the instructions that they weren't to leave the customer until the line was working. Having exhausted all other options, he was placed on either a new pair or drop cable, not sure which, and that solved the problem.


And by god tell those who you were emailing exactly what you had to do to get the engineer to do anything, and his responses, before still telling you to get satellite "broadband".

I guarantee you that going through all of what I outlined above will get you results.

ttm

dialupjoe wrote: »

Dear ,



Regarding your online order with eircom:

I'm sorry, but I am unable to process your order as the service you have requested is unavailable on your phone line.

If you contact 1901 they may be able to provide you with some alternative options.

Kind Regards,

,
eircom Channel Support,
Exchange St,
Waterford.

http://www.eircom.ie



Thats pretty ****ing sad! still can't even give me something as old as ISDN.

Forgot to say that if the exchange is Broadband enabled any pair of copper wires that will work with ISDN is also good for Broadband so perhaps you may want to kick up a fuss about getting broadband rather than ISDN? Once you have ISDN any line check for Broadband will automatically fail so it may be wise to avoid the ISDN route.