Any ADSL experts? Multiple ADSL lines in the same house

[gullyg]

HI Guys,

 

Wondering if anyone here has either knowledge or experience of running multiple ADSL lines in the same house. 

 

At home we've got one ADSL connection with BT at about 1.25 to 1.5mb/s which just really isn't enough, unless you only want to do one thing at a time.  We looked at satellite but the ping and cost is just too high, 3g modems just don't have the data allowance and there's no Virgin or BT FTTC/FTTP.

 

I'm considering having a 2nd phone line and running another ADSL connection as I have a Draytek router that can take multiple WANs on failover/load balance modes but I'm concerned that I might get interference between the lines as my understanding (I'm no phone engineer) is that you can run up to three phone lines on the same phone cable.

 

A drop of even 250kb/s is going to kill both lines without having to pay massive amounts for bonding and there's an added complication of it being very likely that I will be getting a work phone line and "business" ADSL connection fitted in the next few months as well.

 

Does anyone know if it's likely for mutiple ADSL connections to impact on each other at these kind of speeds?  I'm worried that I'll end up paying for a connection I can't use on a 12 month contract.

 

Cheers

[Beerhunter]

Pretty well all UK dwelling have two pairs entering it.  Practically, one would run one ADSL circuit over each pair, that is to say here would be no sharing of the medium.  In fact I do not believe that two DSL circuits over one pair is even possible.

Edited 6 July, 2014 by Beerhunter

[gullyg]

Pretty well all UK dwelling have two pairs entering it.  Each pair can have an ADSL circuit and so what you wish to do is certainly possible. 

 

Oh is it only two?  Oh well if my work have to fit another cable that's not the end of the world.

 

Just need to worry about possible interference.

[Beerhunter]

Oh is it only two?  Oh well if my work have to fit another cable that's not the end of the world.

 

Just need to worry about possible interference.

Why would you need more that two pairs?  Are both of you pairs already in use?

 

I'll add a little more detail to my answers.  Each pair can support one voice circuit and one DSL circuit and so I see no need for another two pairs in order to do what you wish..

Edited 6 July, 2014 by Beerhunter

[gullyg]

Why would you need more that two pairs?  Are both of you pairs already in use?

 

I'll add a little more detail to my answers.  Each pair can support one voice circuit and one DSL circuit and so I see no need for another two pairs in order to do what you wish..

 

 

I've currently got 1 phone line, I'm thinking of getting another for personal use and work is most likely going to setup a 3rd, but it'll only be for my work laptop and calls so I can't use it to take some of the strain of my personal use.

[Sad555]

Firstly have you had the line tested by your sp,secondly if it test ok get the adsl tested for loss or errors,I wonder how far you are from the exchange,if you order multiple lines these can be used together to increase speed over 6 or 7 kilometres but you will be paying the cost of renting each line.

[GentleGiant]

It can be done, I was stuck with an ISP refusing to deal with my issues or cancel my account and got around them by ordering a new line and a new ISP.

 

What router are you using?? Some chipsets are much better at handling long/noisy lines than others; my old TP Link router was 20% faster than my Zoom or Netgear routers over the same line

[softscoop]

I have done this two ways in the past, admittedly both at a business premises with business BB instead of residential, however it should be achievable at home.

 

First, we had two separate ADSL connections, going into a dual wan Draytek 2910 using 2 Vigor 100 modems.

This worked quite well, but its main purpose was for load balancing. At the time we couldn't combine the load down the 2 lines to give 2x download speed. We could however max one of the connections out, and still allow other users to browse as normal. The Vigor allowed to load balance based on traffic type, users etc.

 

After this became a bit too slow for our needs, we found a company that could provide a bonded ADSL connection.

Essentially, you have a fat pipe going to the cabinet, ISP hardware splits the data over the ADSL connections, then some custom routers in your premises glue it back together again, essentially presenting you with a fat pipe connection.

In our case, we bonded 3 ADSL connections together, however I believe two or 4 was an option. The ISP installed some extra hardware in the cabinet, and then then give us 3 Netgear routers with their custom firmware. The three routers were teamed together via small cat5 cables, and out of one of the routers, we had a single WAN connection presented to our hardware. Because they bonded the connection back at the cabinet, it gave us 3x the download speed compared to 1 line. I think at the time we had an 18mb connection vs 2x6 separate connections before. It worked quite well, and I can't really remember any problems. 

 

The only main drawback with bonded ADSL is the cost. We had to pay line rental on each line, BB subscription for each line, and then a separate cost for the line bonding.

 

Things may have changed quite a bit since then, as it was around 7 years ago we had the separate connections, and we stopped using the bonded connection around 5 years ago now.

[Huskoda]

Yes, you can do it, but it will cost you. If I were you I'd speak to a specialist ISP like AAISP (who I can tell you are very competent and helpful) but you do pay for their service.

[gullyg]

I've looked at bonded and it's too much money.

If I run the smart tv off one connection and everything else off another we're fine. I've been doing this with a 3 dongle at the moment but without spending lots on new dongle/antennas etc I'm only getting about 1mb/s so it's no difference speed wise to another line and only get a 10gb allowance for £15/month.

For £18/month on a 12 month contract I can get a 2nd adsl line with evening calls (immaterial) and unlimited data.

I've used multi lans for a long time as the house before we used adsl+cable. In this house we've used adsl+bi-directional sat link and adsl + 3G via USB dongle into the router.

Kit is currently

Draytek vigor 2920n

Draytek vigor 120 adsl modem

Huewai e170 dongle

My main worry is I can't afford to take a hit on the current link speed caused by any type of crosstalk etc if I get a second adsl connection.

[Beerhunter]

I'd say that cross-talk is unlikely.  Your current pair comes all the way from the exchange bundled with other pairs quite happily and so the only chance of extra cross-talk is between the two pairs on your drop wire.  But until you try you won't know.

Edited 7 July, 2014 by Beerhunter

[GentleGiant]

You might want to try a different ISP as well, some of the smaller guys are more willing to play with the line settings to improve your speeds.

 

My house is a lot further from the exchange than my parents house, yet with identical equipment and two nearly new lines, their "big ISP line speed was less than half my "small ISP" line speed (2.2 v 6.5 Mbps)

 

Another benefit is, they often only charge you the BTOR cost of a new line (standard install fee is £50 +vat = £60), whereas BT themselves charge you at least £150 - earning themselves a nice instant profit of £90.

[hertsnminds]

You broadband speed can also depend on lots of other factors

http://www.choose.net/media/guide/features/broadband-speeds-explained.html

 

Might be worth looking at providers with lower contention ratios rather than trying to contend between your own lines

[cheezemonkhai]

You could look into paid for FTTH but we had 6 lines at the same time with no issue.

[Sad555]

You need to give more information as the major loss of speed is the line length or a faulty line,faulty exchange equipment or dodgy wiring or filters in the property,before you have eliminated all of the above you are just guessing.

[gullyg]

You need to give more information as the major loss of speed is the line length or a faulty line,faulty exchange equipment or dodgy wiring or filters in the property,before you have eliminated all of the above you are just guessing.

 

Yeah - unfortunately I don't have any info really.  Just that we're not even scheduled for a fibre rollout :(

 

Going to bite the bullet and go for a 2nd line, hopefully we wont be regretting it.

 

Thanks for everyone's assistance.

[Dean-]

Yeah - unfortunately I don't have any info really.  Just that we're not even scheduled for a fibre rollout :(

 

Going to bite the bullet and go for a 2nd line, hopefully we wont be regretting it.

 

Thanks for everyone's assistance.

 

My two pence would be to wait see if you are going to get anything new in the next 12 months or so. I certainly wouldn't be paying for a second line + BB.

[Sad555]

Out of interest what speeds are you neighbours getting as there is no fttc and no cable ,if theirs is a fair bit greater you have a problem so don't order another line yet ,it does not cost anything to have your line tested and a line length given,I know of people who have been fobbed of by the sp so talk to your neighbours first to get a realistic idea first,you might be surprised and it doesn't cost a penny,sorry a P

[gullyg]

My two pence would be to wait see if you are going to get anything new in the next 12 months or so. I certainly wouldn't be paying for a second line + BB.

 

I don't pay for the first as it's a work "benefit".  Also as we don't pay for Sky or a TV license as we only use the TV for onDemand and Netflix (don't even have an antenna in the house) the "extra" £18/month is far less than what a lot of people pay, we're currently paying £15/month for a mobile broadband connection on a 30day contract so that'll be getting booted.

 

We were using a sat link that was 20mb/s but the latency was dreadful (~800ms ping) and when they wanted to put the price up from £65 to £75/month we booted it.

 

Out of interest what speeds are you neighbours getting as there is no fttc and no cable ,if theirs is a fair bit greater you have a problem so don't order another line yet ,it does not cost anything to have your line tested and a line length given,I know of people who have been fobbed of by the sp so talk to your neighbours first to get a realistic idea first,you might be surprised and it doesn't cost a penny,sorry a P

 

Neighbours are with Sky - get 1.4mb down about 200k up.  Someone else here has BT as I can get on their Home Hub via FON - 800k down 200k up (although I think FON limits bandwidth).

 

We're in a big development and there's a fair few people complaining about our specific cab on the BT forums.

[Sad555]

Depending on the size of your village/community if it has a cab that could be fed by 1 of more cables ,if one of the cables is of bigger poundage the loss would be less and if a bb engineer had to do a HEALTHCheck on your line they would compare the loss on different cables and put your line on the one with the least resistances .its better to get one good line exch to nap than 2bad ones.

[DaveI]

You won't suffer from interference.

 

If work are paying for it, go for it

[gullyg]

Just as an update,

 

Openreach was round today and fitted the 2nd line which is running about 2mb/s - doesn't seem to have had any impact on the 1st line.

 

Cheers everyone.