[LINK] ADSL problems with AAPT/Pacnet, NSW

[Noel Butler]

On Tue, 2013-02-19 at 09:17 +1100, grove at zeta.org.au wrote:


> 
> > Lodged a service fault with pacnet?
> 
> I did this on Sunday morning and had one call back 8 hours later to get me 
> to do the cable shuffle, ie plug/unplug everything, move the heavy cabinet 
> etc, which I dutifully did to fulfil my obligations to the scripted helpdesk
> gods.....  ...this is in spite of me using the diagnostics of my switch
> to comprehend that there was line sync and ATM connectivity etc.....
> 


That can still occur with 'foreign battery' or other little quirks that
can occur on the line.

Do you have crystal clear phone conversations?
Although I've not dealt with DSL stuff for a few years now, often there
was, and likely still is, buck passing from ADSL supplier to voice
provider, recently with all the weather in Qld, my parents had cronic
problems, removed DSL, called hel$tra VOICE and had a line test run,
problem detected, and resolved 8 days later (required field tech, and
this happened at the start of ex TC Oswald, so given the teleco mess all
telcos had to deal with in SEQ/Wide bay, I think 8 days was most
acceptable).




> > ADSL not working can mean anything, are you still in line sync? if so
> > what errors does your modem report?
> 
> I have Line sync, but the problem lies at the ISP PPPoE/auth server which 
> was going up and down without ever offering a route...
> 


that can be a symptom of line fault as well as LAC and LNS etc etc etc




> Not very happy if this is my regular "service" now.
> It would seem they (AAPT or someone) decided to "stabilise" my
> connection by dropping the attainable line rate, so I am 
> now at about 4495kbps now.
> 


Definitely a sign of a bad line if you get stable around there but
previously had a  lot better


> When I signed up for the service, I was promised "Up To" 20000kbps ;)
> 

Not sure if it's still the case, but hel$tra used to only guarantee
DSL1 speeds, even on DSL2 ports, so I think the others would have too.


> It's that "up to" that needs to be dragged through the streets
> and flogged mercilessly - "up to" is the biggest cop out, ever.....
> 


I think its fair given the myriad of factors that determine what you can
reliably attain.

Do you know your local exchanges location? An old trick used was divide
downstream attenuation value by 13.84 to get the rough distance in km's
from the exchange, I say rough because that value is affected by line
quality, line gauge size, extra phone points in the home and so on.

What are your line quality (SNR and attenuation) readings from your
modem?
SNR values representing a good line with always be into double figures,
upstream will be much higher than down, so down should be at least 11 to
be solid, but 10 is reasonable, are you able to debug your modem to see
if it logs retrains?

Attenuation is the opposite of SNR margin and should be as low as
possible, 20-40db is optimum, though my personal DSL runs fine at 46DB
(I'm almost at the end of the exchange run here).

Cheers

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