High Resistance Fault issue? How to fix permanently?

Can anyone help us?

For the last 3 weeks, our broadband has been so unstable it is useless to use, (i.e having to use openzone for simple things as our BB is so dire/not working at all). Since we have been here 8 years we have never had a particularly stable broadband line but now it is beyond a joke.

We called the BT help desk last week (shudder) for a high resistance fault on the line, which they cleared, voice was perfect and sync circa 3.5Mbps however the dreaded ipprofile was not changing after a day, despite a 2000% increase in sync speed (no that is not a typo with an extra 0 btw). Called the help desk again and they were certain there was still a fault on the line and would not reset the ipprofile until an engineer had visited.

Having had 5 engineer visits in the past hey ho why not go for a 6th. A very nice engineer visited and by this point the ipprofile had changed for the better but guess what no actual problem on our line to be found. He did fix the cosmetic placement of the master socket and confirmed we should be getting circa 3MBPS on our line.

After sitting at 0.1mbps that would be very good indeed, back to where we used to be some years ago in fact. Actually we sync'd at 4288 SNR 6.5db and getting 2.7 MBPS actuall speed, hurrah!!!!

It did not last - next morning - NO BROADBAND!!!

Exactly the same symptoms are occurring again, no broadband, make a phone call and it will connect, hang up and it will disconnect then usually reconnect (for a while). The line crackles now and again (was awful last night but got better over the 2 hours on the phone to BT) and when someone speaks there is lots of hiss.

Once the router syncs the SNR slowly decreases until connection is lost. We have had the range of +24db to -58db! Once the connection has failed usually you have to make a phone call to get a connect/sync and repeat and you slowly loose the will to live.

Calling BT broadband dept said the line was fine from their tests and nothing they could do it was a voice issue affecting broadband so connected me to the voice dept who said its a broadband issue and as the line was fine from their tests it had to be due to equipment in the house. (starts to gently hang head in despair) They also said We need another engineer despite only having one out only 2 days ago and of course an engineer can only visit when I am working. GAH! Trying to resolve that issue the call disconnected to my mobile so we got no further. Probably just as well as I think I was about to have a nervous breakdown in frustration. We have tried all the usual combinations, phones wired and non wired plugged in, 2 routers, different microfilters, no phone connected, test socket etc etc etc and nothing changes.

We have had 6 engineers to our house and they have checked everything, even did a lift and shift. Our physical line to the exchange is as good as we could ever get. All this talk about an engineer is annoying too, in the past we were told we needed another "specialist engineer" who would be more qualified and have super authority compared to others that had visited. Guess what, the same engineer as before came out again.

We have connection problems regularly, getting far worse the last few months but IMO wrongly tolerate it as usually after a while it does tend to settle (although at a lower speed than before) and the alternative is to call the dreaded helpline which seem to have the collective technical knowledge of a mollusc. Yes that seems harsh and indeed there are one or two gems, but when you have people insisting it's a computer setup issue at fault and not the line/router etc with details as above you do despair. Especially when you humour them and say actually all 5 computers are failing and they all have different OS that does seem a little un-expected and they still insist to start->ctrl pannel etc even when you say the wired computer is ubuntu. The most amusing one was after some nice conversation I let slip I am a software engineer and as part of my job I own and manage over 600 machines from desktops running windows/linux distros to mainframes so am capable of understanding these "complicated technical issues". I was shortly then asked if I would help spec out a system for them .I digress though.

We are also using a netgear router as the BT home hub(s) were even worse on the line for dropping out. In fact that was what fixed our last long standing battle by getting a netgear.

All we want is stable broadband at a decent speed. Is that really too much to ask do you think?

My neighbours dont suffer this, the line to the exchange has been tested and pronounced fine so many times it really does suggest there is a problem in the exchange! is there something that can be done there. i.e. physically move the pairs of wires to a new circuit?

Please help. What else can we do?

I had problems last year with xDSL dropping (IP Stream) when I got incoming phone calls (just the phone ringing would cause a disconnection.) An OR SFI engineer established that it was a burst of noise at the exchange end that was causing the problem, he attempted to fix it without any success and there was no mention of any further investigation to be carried out. So I asked my ISP (Plusnet) for the SFI's report and whether any further action would be undertaken however this stalled and seemed to be getting nowhere.

So I switched to partial LLU (uno broadband and retained the BT landline rental) and the problem went away. My exchange has since been upgraded to 21CN WBC and I'm now tempted to return to a non-LLU connection because the BT exchange kit has been changed/replaced.

It may need a switch to full or partial LLU or a change to 21CN WBC before a line fault can be fully rectified if both OR and one's ISP are dragging their feet...

If phone calls are affecting broadband, then quite simply your filter is not doing its job of separating the two, though the noise needs to be fixed first.

Edited by professor973 (Thu 30-Aug-12 17:27:58)

Thanks for that 4M2 - appreciated.

In reply to a post by professor973:

If phone calls are affecting broadband, then quite simply your filter is not doing its job of separating the two, though the noise needs to be fixed first.

There's a filter at the exchange end also...

In reply to a post by 4M2:

In reply to a post by professor973:

If phone calls are affecting broadband, then quite simply your filter is not doing its job of separating the two, though the noise needs to be fixed first.

There's a filter at the exchange end also...

I was talking the domestic ADSL filter.

In reply to a post by professor973:

In reply to a post by 4M2:

In reply to a post by professor973:

If phone calls are affecting broadband, then quite simply your filter is not doing its job of separating the two, though the noise needs to be fixed first.

There's a filter at the exchange end also...

I was talking the domestic ADSL filter.

Sure

But the OP and engineers have apparently done all those checks - if there is noise interference on the line exchange side of the NTE5 then there is no way that a domestic ADSL filter can eliminate that. Possible problems caused by domestic extensions and devices have also apparently been eliminated...

In reply to a post by 4M2:

In reply to a post by professor973:

In reply to a post by 4M2:

... nested quotes trimmed ...

There's a filter at the exchange end also...

I was talking the domestic ADSL filter.

Yes, I realise all of the above. Though I may well have got the wrong end of the stick, the mention of phone calls disconnecting Broadband usually points to the filter, as they should separate the two. There does seem to be a gradual build up of noise as opposed to a spike causing disconnection.

Sure

But the OP and engineers have apparently done all those checks - if there is noise interference on the line exchange side of the NTE5 then there is no way that a domestic ADSL filter can eliminate that. Possible problems caused by domestic extensions and devices have also apparently been eliminated...

Ring BT Broadband again (painful I know) and ask them to run a CIDT test on the line. This should identify the HR fault, and a CIDT skilled engineer will attend to locate and clear the fault.

When you use the test socket, do all extensions become dead?

Do you have a phone-line connected burglar alarm such as Red Care?