Aluminium Drop Cable & ADSL Speed?

So I've posted on here a couple of threads about my current situation.

Moved into our new house beginning of July and awaiting FTTC to come to the area (part of superfaststaffs BDUK rollout - due end of September.

My master socket is in the hall, right by the front door and no power nearby. The drop cable comes into a BT80a junction box then a short (about 4 inches) connection of cable to a master socket right next to it.

Here's a post from one of the members here about it

So I've replaced the BT80a with a new one, and put a master socket in the lounge and connected this to the new BT80a using copper twisted pair wire. (I've just disconnected the previous master socket and left it where it is - complete with the wiring of all the extension sockets connected)

I haven't seen any speed increase in my line at all (But no decrease either) but what was slightly concerning me is that the drop cable looks silver in colour.

Is it possible that it's aluminium and would that explain why the speed I'm achieving is somewhat less than predicted, and what implication if this is true, will this have on FTTC speed when it arrives?

I did ring BT to find out if I was on the wrong profile, but seeing as my upload speed is now 992kbps I assume that means I am indeed on ADSL2+

My download speed is 8128kbps but according to the dsl checker I should be getting between 10 - 19 Mbps

It's not a massive problem as I have said FTTC is due by the end of September and my previous Exchange Only line has been migrated to a cabinet.

It's more of a "getting to the bottom" of things.

And the full set of connection stats is?

What does http://www.coolwebhome.co.uk/calc say about lines potential speed based on the router stats.

Can you post your line stats reported by your router please?

Here's my line stats..

Thanks for the coolwebhome link, that seems to indicate my line is a problem in getting any additional speed on account of my noise margin..

Edited by deleted (Wed 19-Aug-15 19:34:51)

No such thing as aluminium dropwire ( as in pole to house )

The lack of speed is due to the DSL modulation being g.dmt - ADSL.

The wire is silver coloured though, certainly doesn't look like copper to me..

In reply to a post by CHBMB:

The wire is silver coloured though, certainly doesn't look like copper to me..

Scrape the silver coating off. It will be a copper wire.

Thanks, what is the silver coating for and what's it's purpose?

Here's my coolwebhome results

This seems to indicate that my downstream noise margin is the issue.

Is there anything I can do about this? And is this likely to have a significant effect on FTTC speed or provision.

I'm no expert on this, but I have never heard of aluminium drop wire. Aluminium underground cable yes, but drop wire no.

Tinned copper wire is also silver in colour.

Can you describe the dropwire?

Is it circular with a number of different coloured wires inside? 2 x 2-pairs plus some steel support wires in yellow insulation? Or is it figure of eight shape, possibly grey in colour; rather like speaker cable or mains twin flex of yesteryear?

If figure of eight, then the two conductors are likely copper plated steel, whether these are also tinned, I do not know.

By the way, I have seen, internal phone wire which was described on the drum as CCS wire. It was not until after I had used it that I found that it was Copper Coated Steel....

Cheers!

In reply to a post by CHBMB:

Thanks, what is the silver coating for and what's it's purpose?

It's to inhibit corrosion/oxidisation of the copper.
Aluminium has never been used for overhead wires, as it lacks the mechanical strength and pliability needed when the cable moves in the wind.

In reply to a post by CHBMB:

This seems to indicate that my downstream noise margin is the issue.

The issue is that the DSL modulation is g.dmt - ADSL.

Well I'm assuming that it's the dropwire. It comes from the telegraph pole outside my house then goes into the soffetts, next place I can see the wire is a black wire coming up from the skirting board inside my hallway.

It's black with four wires within.

White - Connected to A
Orange - Connected to B
Green - Not connected
Black - Not connected

It doesn't look in the best nick as there's about three inches of each wire that was crammed into the BT80a and certainly not twisted.

What they said, you need to switch to auto mode or adsl2+ to boost your speeds

Given my line stats, is it worth it?

I have spent hours on the phone to BT in the last few weeks, are there any magic words or numbers to use to convince them to attempt to change my profile?

I'v already been through the process once with them but nothing changed...

In reply to a post by CHBMB:

Given my line stats, is it worth it?

Yes, your attenuation is very low = good.

Thats dropwire 10 , copper.

So at present I'm on ADSL, the bit that I got confused about was in my original thread MrSaffron posted this

on the ADSL caps the upload is capped at 448 Kbps

although this was in response to another poster's comment not mine.

Why would BT put me on ADSL if ADSL2+ is available?

Is it possible that I went up to ADSL2+ and been put back down again?
I ask this because for a while my line was very unstable and dropped connection several times a night but this now seems to have settled down.

Ali was used on overhead cables back in the day. The conductors are never under tension. the 'strength' is in the suspension wire. It was never used in dropwires though. The OP has tinned copper.

It is odd for them to force the modulation mode, what ADSL hardware are you actually using on the line?

I'm using an Asus DSL-AC68U now, although initially I was using the HH4 with no difference.

I run my own E-book library on Apache so forward port 80 to port 81 on my server which I wasn't able to do on my HH4, as well as run an OpenVPN server which runs natively on my Asus.

In which case you should have control of the adsl mode yourself you just need to change it

If the wire is tin-plated as part of the manufacturing process, keep in mind that food cans are generally tin-plated steel, to prevent corrosion - and copper is prone to corrosion.

It is also possible that if any soldering has been done, a short length of the wire may have been "tinned" with solder, which until recently was a tin-lead alloy at the eutectic ratio, to get the lowest melting temperature.

More recent solders have proportionately, less lead and more tin.

Also, I have used silver-plated wire in equipment requiring an extremely high reliability factor.

As several others have already correctly stated, there are no aluminium dropwire cables in use by 'BT'.

The only place on a pairs route to a customer where you might find any soldering would be if the exchange bar pair was of a tip solder type.

Thanks for that update on present practice.

I seem to think, possibly mistakenly, that I did not mention "aluminium" in my posting; and only the slight possibility of tinning, via soldering preparation, in the OP's premises, that may have been carried out, say, by an unauthorised person.

In reply to a post by eckiedoo:

... in the OP's premises, that may have been carried out, say, by an unauthorised person.

Just the same as some of the other changes that have been made there!

Well I feel a bit of a tit now, Found the setting in my modem to change it to ADSL2+ and now connected at 20,000kbps.

Sorry folks....

I still have some unresolved issues about my BT bill but mark the connection speed as solved. Need to keep an eye on the CRC errors but even so.

Better head over to the BT forums and apologise for my moaning about the connection..

I'm man enough to admit when I'm wrong..

My wire definitely isn't soldered, that's one thing I know about, and it definitely hasn't been tinned..

Thanks again all

(Mods - Is there any chance we can delete this whole thread and magically remove it from everyones memory, it's rather humbling to expose yourself as a dozy twazzock on the world wide web!)

I've enjoyed reading this thread so I vote to leave it - someone else may have a similar situation.

Well I'm glad someone is pleased at my embarassment! hehe

Have a meal on us ... PIE

What seems to have happened is that you had already decided that you had aluminium cables and from then on you were following the well-trodden path of confirmation bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

Don't worry about it, they all do it.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

As several others have already correctly stated, there are no aluminium dropwire cables in use by 'BT'.

The only place on a pairs route to a customer where you might find any soldering would be if the exchange bar pair was of a tip solder type.

They used to tip solder eside hand twisted joints where there was a conductor poundage change.

Edited by deleted (Thu 20-Aug-15 21:35:01)

I'm familiar with confirmation bias, pretty important for me at work.

It was a genuine question and the reason I asked about Aluminium is because I'm wiring the house with Cat6 and had to be careful when buying the box that it was pure copper not copper clad aluminium. It just got me thinking about the BT wire that's all, and I did wonder why it was silver in colour rather than copper coloured..

The speed issue was a secondary afterthought, what was confirmation bias here was I spoke to a neighbour and he is getting 8Mbps so I assumed that was what the line was capable of despite dslchecker, so after going through the BT call centre trial and instead of being put through to technical support I got put through to sales and the lady not knowing what I was on about but said she'd put "an order in" without any further specification, order was delayed then fulfilled without any noticeable difference, I just resigned myself to that.

It was only the niggle in the back of my mind that my upload speed had improved that led me to ask a little more. MrSaffron's last post was when it finally clicked.

I assumed (never a good idea) that if I was on ADSL2+ my modem would automatically detect that, as it turns out it doesn't, I can choose only ADSL or VDSL on the WAN settings page, but then on a different page I can choose a DSL modulation setting.

Not denying I've been a bit of a pillock, but that was my thought processes behind it.

Thanks for the pie, it was delicious! lol

Hey guys, give me credit, at least I came and owned up, could have just disappeared like a man of mystery!

In reply to a post by CHBMB:

I assumed (never a good idea) that if I was on ADSL2+ my modem would automatically detect that

It's not up to the modem to detect that, the modem should negotiate that.

Well, I do see the difference, but the fact remains it wouldn't negotiate it automatically, had to set it manually for it to negotiate it.

In reply to a post by CHBMB:

the fact remains it wouldn't negotiate it automatically, had to set it manually for it to negotiate it.

I wonder how many other people haven't done that.

Well my next door neighbour is a likely candidate..

Only recently moved here, but he says everyone in the road gets 8mbps! I could make a few new friends here, he's already impressed with my knowledge of when FTTC is suposed to be coming!

Although he has a HH of some variety and I'm not familiar with the setup on those to be honest, I remember that there's not a lot of configration options that's for sure. I suppose it's possible he hasn't been moved to ADSL2+..

When I first got my broadband activated the HH4 was definitely on ADSL Max, so I'm guessing that when I rang and asked to be moved to ADSL2+ that's what actually happened.

They used to tip solder eside hand twisted joints where there was a conductor poundage change.

Yes, but unless the OP is working on the E-side cable run he is unlikely to come across this TBF.

Home hubs are much of an auto set up so will have dsl mode set to auto, which is the default for the majority of modems

Thanks, that should help get my next door neighbour squared away easily enough...

My own fault for buying a complicated modem router, although I do love my Asus.