disconnections on long lines...is it normal?

Hi everyone

I recently signed up to an ADSL Premium Max service from an Entanet reseller. As i live quite far from the exchange, i get no more than 1 meg download speeds......however during a typical day i will get 3-4 disconnections (by looking at L8NC). Is it normal for long lines to suffer from random disconnections? I am connected directly to the BT master socket and i have a ADSL nation faceplate (XTE-2005) fitted. I am only using wires 2 & 5 (ie no ring wire) and even if i connect to the test socket behind the faceplate, i will still get random disconnections. Entanet/BT have tested my line and said there are no faults on my line. I am using a Linksys AM200 modem, however i have tried a different modem/router (Netgear DG834) but it made no real difference. Here are my line stats if that helps: (i will sometimes sync at 2.5Mbps but only for a few hours before falling back to 1.5Mbps, so BRAS profile wont get raised). Oh another thing: sometimes (usually in the evenings) the downstream margin is a ridiculously high value like 26781454 db....does this gobbledeegook mean anything?

DSL Status: UP
DSL Modulation Mode: Auto
DSL Path Mode: INTERLEAVED
Downstream Rate: 1472 Kbps
Upstream Rate: 832 Kbps
Downstream Margin: 13 db
Upstream Margin: 8 db
Downstream Line Attenuation: 56
Upstream Line Attenuation: 63
Downstream Transmit Power: 16
Upstream Transmit Power: 12
LOS Errors: 0

Would appreciate your thoughts

Thanks in advance

Edited by deleted (Wed 04-Apr-07 22:35:20)

LOS Errors: 0 ? ie zero losses of signal.

Be a bit wary of L8NC, sometimes it shows things up that are routing issues elsewhere and not your line.

There is no dynamic line management on the upstream, so I would keep a close eye on that, but your -ve SNR downstream is a likely candidate.

I can't answer your general question but

" ... ridiculously high value like 26781454 db".

The modem programmers never expected to see negative margins (more noise than signal) so assigned it to a 32 bit unsigned rather than signed variable, e.g. -3 dB when displayed as an unsigned quantity is 2147483645.

Thanks for your replies guys

I read on some forum that the Zyxel Prestige 661H modem/router is a professional grade router and is one of the best at holding on to a weak line....i have ordered this and i really hope this sorts out my disconnections but having already tried the Netgear DG834 i'm not too optimistic

the 834 and the Zyxel are both AFAIK based on the same TI AR7 chipset and allegedly in tests the Netgear does quite well on noisy lines. We have a Zyxel on a 9km line hanging on at 192 kbps, you may be better with something tweakable and aiming for a reliable 1M downstream.