Well I've been having all sorts of shenanigans with my router over the last week, dropping out every couple of minutes, unable to load up full pages....unable to reply to anything on Brisky  :wonder:

 

After much ado, I seem to have discovered it's the ADSL filter, purely by chance that I noticed the connection stabilised when wifey was on the phone.  Changing it to an old one from an old router box and bingo!

 

So it's a simple questions for any techies on here - are they all much of a muchness or should look for ones that get the best reviews?

 

A quick looksee seems to suggest the XF-1e is a good one to go for, but info on it all looks a bit dated.

 

Any advice gratefully appreciated.

 

Ta

 

Gaz

There are two types of ADSL filter, active and passive. The passive ones are the free ones that come with your router and are very basic in operation. Active are powered and get the power from the phone line, these are far better quality. When I first got ADSL with a passive filter, things like caller display did not work and the internet would drop when the phone rang. Tried all the filters that came with the router, same result. So I purchased an active one, caller display worked and the internet remained always connected.

I used one of these and it was good. Marginally faster than your usual Active filter.

I wouldn't splash out any extra for one over another active filter, but at the time it did it's job well enough.

 

http://www.adslnation.com/products/xtf.php

Being an olde fashioned transmission tech I developed a way of dealing with ADSL filters. First you run a cable from pins 2c & 5 on the BT master socket( customer side) to a socket close to your computer. Then you insert a filter. Computer is plugged into RJ45 socket. The telehone side is fed to a master socket ,and other sockets run from pins 2.3.5 to other phone sockets 2,3,5.The further sockets shoulb be slave sockets .After some dispute with BT, I contacted the technical department who made the filters for BT and had it confirmed that my aproach was correct. Mind you,I was looking at the problem from a technical direction ,as per my BT training. Remove /seperate the signals early at source. From talks with telecomms blokes, the telephone line enters a joining filter where ADSL is applied to the line. At the home .a filter is used to seperate both signals .My solution did it close to the PC . Problem was in educating the Asian techs to accept this way of thinking.

I havent used a separate filter since getting my BT iPlate fitted, the router connects to one side and the phone goes in the other.

Being an olde fashioned transmission tech I developed a way of dealing with ADSL filters. First you run a cable from pins 2c & 5 on the BT master socket( customer side) to a socket close to your computer. Then you insert a filter. Computer is plugged into RJ45 socket. The telehone side is fed to a master socket ,and other sockets run from pins 2.3.5 to other phone sockets 2,3,5.The further sockets shoulb be slave sockets .After some dispute with BT, I contacted the technical department who made the filters for BT and had it confirmed that my aproach was correct. Mind you,I was looking at the problem from a technical direction ,as per my BT training. Remove /seperate the signals early at source. From talks with telecomms blokes, the telephone line enters a joining filter where ADSL is applied to the line. At the home .a filter is used to seperate both signals .My solution did it close to the PC . Problem was in educating the Asian techs to accept this way of thinking.

bloody foreigners, eh :(

When I first got ADSL I found I didn't need the filters. I had an older phone and answering machine - not digital but still tone dialable.

 

When I finally obtained some DECT phones I nearly sent them back! Until I remembered to try an ADSL filter. They REALLY didn't like it.

Well I clearly spoke too soon.

 

And thanks for the advice by the way chaps 

 

VWD - I'm sure that's probably english you're talking, but it's like double dutch to a luddite like me 

 

The replacement ADSL filter was fine for a couple of hours but then started behaving in exactly the same way as the original.

 

Phone line has an intermittent crackle still.

 

It's taken six attempts over about an hour to get this page to load up enough that I could even reply.

 

Going to take the front off the split BT wall socket and have a rummage/use the test socket.

 

Then I'm going outside to look in the inspection pit (fitted last September due to ongoing wet joints - we're about 6' above sea level!) to see if it's full of water.

 

BT are booked to come out next Monday, but I want to eliminate as much as I can before they charge me £130 to say 'not our fault guv'.

 

Doesn't help that there's 4 miles of copper wire between me and my nearest exchange I guess.

 

Starting to drive me nuts now it is   .  If Im slow at replying it's only coz I can't get online.

 

Now....where's my sons torch.....

 

Gaz

 

PS: my local IT guru says it's quite common that using a phone gets a router back on line - and is more often a sign that it's not the router that's at fault.

 

PPS: Found young V6TDI's Fenix torch - batteries made it 'til I got downstairs  :wonder:

V6TDI- Od style BT socket has a removable plate for folks to wire into to provide extensions. On the rear of this plate, there are terminals either 1 -6, or 2-5 ( older ones). For a normal extension wired off the master ,you'd wire from 2,3 & 5 on the BT master to coresponding pins on the extension ( slave =no yellow cylinder =capacitor) socket. For my way of wiring Adsl, you'd wire from 2 & 5 on the master to a slave socket next to the computer. Plug in one filter and plug computer into the RJ45 (SMALLER ) socket. Meanwhile the telephone out socket is wired to 2 & 5 of a master socket, and other telephone extensions conected to 2.5 & 3 from the new master to further slave sockets. That's as about soimple as I can get it.

However ,back to your problem . If you look at your BT master socket and it's an older style one , therec will be two screws on the front. Remove them and plug a filter into the socket on the inside. Connect phone to filter and see if you still get crackles. Connect computer to computer side of filter and check speed. I'd suggest that all is as before. If so fault is external to premises . I never trust BT call centre monkeys. I ,at onetime was a self employed systems installer ,and the number of times I've had call centre monkeys tel me all is well ,-well if I'd £1 for each, I'd be living in costa del spain . One business with 12 lines only had 11, lines 11 & 12 came up as same line. Customer had a fax line that had no line to socket, despite call centre telling me that they could see a socket. I had the same at home after a friday installion frenzy. "Must be on premises" said the not so wise monkey- we can see a socket. Engineer came back from cabinet shaking his head. He knew I was ex company and knew the score. I've even had one bloke turn up to a noise fault ,remove the front fronm the BT socket, test and as noise was still there tell me it was on premises. Ten minutes later after pulling ex rank and some drawings he understood that the internal socket was connected to the exchange side.

I had one charity organisation that had done our residents association some good, mention that their BT non maintianed system had problems and BT wanted loads of money to attend. I volunteerred my services to see if I could help . It was a two line system ,and one line was faulty- exit stage left BT,with a seriously red face . Moral of tghe story- let BT attend to prove ,at no cost to you that their line is fault free to the last point on their system. If you get problems from them ,ask to speak to a level one superviser. If there's problems after that ,he has to explain to his boss,as fault gets automatically escalated, and he don't want that , as he's looking to be a level two in a few years .

You might need an exchange "lift and shift" this is a common fix for such problems. If this does not fix the problem then swapping to a second pair of wires may also help (several pairs inside the main feed cable from street).

 

If you still have the issue at the master socket (front plate removed) then this is a sure sign that it is external especially if you know that the filter is OK.

Crackles are a fault on the line, it took openreach 2 months to sort mine permanently, even though I told them what was wrong.

 

For me, it was the overhead line running through trees. The end of October storm damaged something, the line went crackly and intermittent. they fixed it but my Inifinity 2 speed never recovered (only got to 50meg, was 76). Then we had more wind, and it went again, but started working so did not bother. At the beginning of December in another storm it finally gave up the ghost. Cue several engineers over a few weeks. 1 week before christmas it was finally sorted, they replaced 200 yards of overhead wire, running it a new route. Took 4 engineers and a cherry picker more than 2 hours.

 

I have a broadband engineer due this morning, the Infinity speed is only running at 16meg. Apparently DLM has not restarted on my line, he is going to check the signal and reset the IP profile back to default if all is well.

I have seen issues with ADSL where an active call will pull the ADSL up - it is usually caused by a join fault, the extra volts and current of the voicecall is lowering the resistance of the join fault.

 

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wetting_current for an explanation of what is going on.

 

Good luck with BT / OpenReach BTW - service has fallen off since the split in my experience. Good old OffComm forcing a business split that has drastically reduced the service quality if you are a BT Retail customer.

 

All IMHO of course - but based on my experiences.

Ensure your using the standard ADSL router provided by your ISP and that you plugged into the master socket - This way BT cant charge you sod all. They would need to raise the charge on your ISP 

Crackles are a fault on the line, it took openreach 2 months to sort mine permanently, even though I told them what was wrong.

 

For me, it was the overhead line running through trees. The end of October storm damaged something, the line went crackly and intermittent. they fixed it but my Inifinity 2 speed never recovered (only got to 50meg, was 76). Then we had more wind, and it went again, but started working so did not bother. At the beginning of December in another storm it finally gave up the ghost. Cue several engineers over a few weeks. 1 week before christmas it was finally sorted, they replaced 200 yards of overhead wire, running it a new route. Took 4 engineers and a cherry picker more than 2 hours.

 

I have a broadband engineer due this morning, the Infinity speed is only running at 16meg. Apparently DLM has not restarted on my line, he is going to check the signal and reset the IP profile back to default if all is well.

 

I bet they didnt trim back the trees though.

 

BT USED to do this, but now refuse, so you have to get whoever owns the land the trees are on to do the work, otherwise your line will be full of micro-fractures again within a year.

Hello folks....it's me......I'm back 

 

After several days of mostly no internet or phone line.  BT visited this afternoon and found it to be a corroded wire outside (installed September 2013!  :wonder: ).

 

Poor previous installation with the inner fine wires exposed to the elements and water sat down the side of a foam bung helping expedite the corrosion.

 

This is outside my house at the front, which is very exposed.  I'm just about to text BT back, replying to their text which says their tests show it to be an internal fault.

 

BT chap was waiting for a colleague when I got home (about 1:45pm) to help him pull a new cable through.  Second guy turns up at about 3:15pm.  And then the rain started.

 

Out of interest, how many BT staff do you think it's take to change one broken wire?  Shall we count........

 

One

 

 

Two-oooooo

 

 

Three-eeeee.... and four......

 

 

Couldn't count as to if there were five or six blokes in total.  I feel quite privileged 

 

And to cap it all, when I asked if the new cable pulled through okay, he said 'oh, we didn't have to..' and explained they were able to use the 'spare' wires in the existing cable.  Yes, that'd be the one that rotted through in four months flat.  Yayyy.

 

I am now filled with re-assurance at his confident tones that....the whole lot will probably need replacing in the next five years.

 

Until then, that's one little saga over  :sun:

 

Gaz

As I understand it, correct me if I am wrong anyone who works for Openreach but back in the BT days they used to pull two cables everytime they did an install exactly for this reason or for if you required an additional line etc.

No - they fitted a dropwire with four wires ( orange & white + green & black) , the first pair were used for the initial installatiin , the second pair for a fault removal , or for a second line. As a GPO trained engineer, I now think we "can't get crappier than a BT FITTER"

No - they fitted a dropwire with four wires ( orange & white + green & black) , the first pair were used for the initial installatiin , the second pair for a fault removal , or for a second line. As a GPO trained engineer, I now think we "can't get crappier than a BT FITTER"

 

Must admit I was a bit perplexed.  The chap showed me the fault and that the outer protective cable sheath had been cut off about 6" short.

 

I took time off last time around when BT's 'we-don't-dig-holes-anymore' hole digging contractor dug the inspection pit and channel to sink the pipe in along the side of my front path.  The pipe is about 1.5" - pretty much like a plumbing waste pipe.

 

So if the pipe's relatively new...and dead straight....and a bloke's sat in the inspection pit with a cable roll, ready to go, why wouldn't you just haul the new cable through, cut it to the right length and make a proper job of it, once and for all.  Stitch in time and all that jazz....

 

On the bright side, my ADSL filters are both great - I'm spoiled for choice!

 

Gaz