Connection naff when/after it rains - any tips?

Evening all,

Hoping someone might be able to give me some suggestions on what to do next.

I've had 8 meg (well, about 4 or 5 meg I guess, but you know what I mean) ADSL with Namesco for about 2 and a half years, and generally all's been hunky dory. Using a Netgear DG834PN router, no problems, all nice and speedy.

Since July, however, the connection has had terrible problems whenever it rains more than a spit. The synch goes completely, and although the voice line works fine (it's quite crackly but always has been) I can't establish an ADSL connection at all. This has the knock on effect of lowering my line profile to around 135k or whatever the one just above ISDN rate is, as the router tries repeatedly to connect - and if I'm not around to stop it doing so, that's me at slothful speeds for the next three days or so.

This is normally just tedious rather than anything else - it has a horrible habit of happening on a Thursday night so I'm on rubbish speeds all weekend before the line profile resets, but I can live through that.

However, we had pretty torrential rain here on Tuesday night, and for three days after that the connection failed to synch at anything above 1 meg. Normally the synch gets back to normal the morning after the rain stops, but this is much longer than usual. Of course, the line profile dropped down to 135k or whatever, and I've been stuck at that speed for a whole week now which is more than a little frustrating.

I've already done a merry dance with both Namesco and BT, and I'm currently in a stalemate whereby Namesco can't call out engineers because I asked BT to run a fault check on the line last Thursday (which turned up nothing, unsurprisingly, as my voice calls work fine) - they haven't closed down the open fault on their system, however, and seem to be making no move to do so. As the problem is essentially peripatetic because it's not really happening while it's not raining, it's also going to prove difficult to prove anything when I eventually manage to get an engineer out. I'm certain there'll be a leak in a junction box or something along those lines, but...

Anyway, the purpose of this post is to ask whether there's anything I should try doing other than the obvious steps:

i) Changed the microfilter (did nothing)
ii) Plugged directly into the master socket (did nothing, no ring wire installed)
iii) Borrowed a router from work (no change)
iv) Tried a different computer just in case (unsurprisingly no difference)

Is there anything you clever bods can suggest to either help from my end or to make sure that, if I ever DO manage to get an engineer out, they look for the right thing?

In case they help, current stats (having managed a stable connection for a day or so now...) are, from the router:

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 2720 kbps 448 kbps
Line Attenuation 39.0 db 21.0 db
Noise Margin 10.7 db 19.0 db

(when the connection is in its prime I can get around 4600kbps or so downstream I guess, not sure of an exact figure. I'm just under a mile away from my local telephone exchange in Cricklewood.)

Any advice would be very gratefully received. It might be helping cure me of my Internet addiction, and it's not like I don't have other things I can do, but I'm not too happy either way!

Not a complete fix to the problem but instead of going through BT with their rubbish bras profiling system why don't you go LLU?

I see you have C&W LLU at your exchange.

Xilo for me have been great on the Pro H package for £17.24 a month, then if you do get a bit of a dodgy line when it rains it won't reduce your profile you will just sync back up to as much as you can get. (I also see that they have renamed the Broadband page UNO broadband - part of their new marketing strategy I think?)

Only downside is theres a £40 connection fee, but it's only a 1 month rolling contract and there are no restrictions on usage port blocking etc.

With my fairly long line, I was only getting 1-1.5mbps (sometimes as low as 256mb and this could last for a few days) before as any flakeyness on the line would reduce my IP profile, whereas now I'm LLU I get as fast as it will go 99% of the time, which is just over 2mbps.

You may also get adsl2+ which would see a speed of between 8-12mbps on your line, from this speed checker, but Xilo would need to confirm whether or not your exchange was cabable of this.

Perhaps others may be able to offer more assistance if you wish to pursue the problem with your current provider and set up.

Edited by deleted (Tue 22-Sep-09 20:58:02)

Maybe worth tracing the telephone line from the master socket to the small junction box outside your house which will probably be on an external wall of your house and then check for sources of water ingress into this box and open the cover to see if the connectors are corroded etc. If that box is sound then go back further to the junction box on the telephone pole to visually check for any glaringly obvious problems. If you see a potential problem on the pole then maybe your neighbours also may have similar problems when it rains and that would be good a reason to call out BT.
Good luck !

Why not ask BT to run a nornal (voice) phone line test when the line is wet.

If this does show a fault you can then get them to fix it.

The fault could be in the cabling. I had a similar problem not too long ago, where an overhead cable on a property up the road had rubbed against a tree and worn the insulation away, and eventually water got in when it rained.

Edited by deleted (Thu 24-Sep-09 07:38:39)

In reply to a post by zebedeee:

The fault could be in the cabling. I had a similar problem not too long ago, where an overhead cable on a property up the road had rubbed against a tree and worn the insulation away, and eventually water got in when it rained.

Yup, I bet this is the problem. Cable damage that lets water in. I had the same issue with the drop cable where it passed down the roofline. The previous owners had poked this cable under the roof tiles and whenever it rained the connection went awful to the point of being unuseable.

When I finally got a BT engineer out who had a good look and test he saw where the cable was going and said that he bets that whoever put that cable under the tiles used a trowel to poke it under and damaged the cable allowing water in. He replaced the drop cable from the roof line to the master socket and my line has been rock solid ever since.

Worth looking at how your cable enters the premises to see if it follows a similar route of being hidden under the rooftiles.

Hi

with your Attenuation of 39db The line length appears to be about 2.8 Km and you would expect to synch at about 7000Kbps with the default target SNR at 6db. your current SNR margin is Noise Margin 10.7 db . Were these stats taken immediately after booting the router ?.Is your SNR margin stable ?
You target SNR is at least 9db maybe even 12db , this could be costing you 1600Kbps in synch speed (worst case ) . That still does not explain your very low Connection Speed 2720 kbps.
Might be worthwhile running Routerstats to see what the state of your connection is including BIT loading .You can find at http://vwlowen.co.uk/internet/files.htm
The link below may be of some assistance .See the various sections .
http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/socket.htm
Note until your connection problems are resolved changing ISP may not change anything .

Regards Jeff