ADSL Help!

[stevel]

My ADSL keeps dropping out and the light on the router flashes. This has happened for a couple of years and being in Italy I put it down to the line.

Recently I made a phone call while the ADSL light was flashing and it immediately stayed on and the internet connected again. Now when the light flashes I ring my mobile from the house phone and the internet always reconnects. I'm now sure this is not coincidence so can anyone explain what is happening before I try to explain it to Telecom Italia in my halting italian.

We are WiFi so its not the computer.

Any help/suggestions gratefully accepted

 

[ByronBlack]

Do you use a filter on the adsl?

 

[stevel]

Yes we use a filter, we have tried one or two, there is quite often alot of crackling on the phone line though.

steve

 

[misterfish]

Crackling on the line usually indicates a phone line problem. In our case when it's happened it's been due to water getting into a joint somewhere along the line. The water starts corrosion and this is then exacerbated by electrolysis caused by the line current and the joint eventually breaks down. Here, once BT are convinced that there is a problem they will then track it down and repair it, But as far as Italy goes I don't know how they work.

The other possibility is a dodgy connection with the internal wiring in the house - here I can connect into the test socket on the master socket where the phone line enters the house which tests the signal incoming with the internal wiring disconnected.

My brother lives in France and it took France Telecom six months to repair a fault on his line!

Misterfish

 

[LeeElms]

We had the exact same problem a year or two ago. Crackling on the line, and the ADSL connection being affected by phone calls as you report. Eventually, it was traced to bad connections (corrosion) in a junction boc 150m from our house.

 

[Dibs-h]

.. as far as Italy goes I don't know how they work...

I don't think they know themselves - unless you know someone, who knows someone.... :wink: :lol:

 

[Chems]

Yes we had the same thing and phoning the phone seemed to clear it. It went away on its own and it was no trouble occasionally having to clear the line.

 

[Lons]

We've had an ongoing problem with the same symptoms for the last couple of weeks, hopefully now sorted.

BT insisted on checking my line several times despite my insistance that it was an exchange problem. There were a lot of us in the village with identical problems including several through different providers.

There were 5 BT openreach engineers around us at the same time, all on different callouts :?: :?: :?:

Getting that through the thick heads of the indian customer services was frustrating to say the least. I think at last they've changed some cards in the exchange. 5 minute job :!:

As said, most likely an external junction. very easy to test from your incoming master socket

 

[stevel]

Thanks guys for all the replies. I will try Telecom Italia and see where it goes. Usually not very far!

Steve

 

[Jonzjob]

Hi Steve, can I assume that you have a VIOP telephone connection through your router? What router and ISP do you have?

We have just had a similar problem with our France Telecom line with the ADSL signal dropping out, but also the problem was that if we were using the VIOP phone and the PC was switched on it dropped the VOIP line and disconnected whoever was on the phone! Bloody annoying as it stayed off until the Livebox router had done a repower up!

I contacted the English speaking line for FT and they did a line check, found a fault and a day later the engineers found a bad connection not far from our house.

I have no idea if there is a similar system in Italy, but you may be able to get some info from this site http://italy.angloinfo.com/countries/italy/telecoms.asp. We have the AngloInfo site for us here and they are very helpful.

 

[stevel]

Thanks John, Italy is not so anglophile as France, its italian or nothing!
we don't have voip and I forgot to meantion that when the router is off, the phone line is perfect without any cracles.

Our ISP is Telecom Italia (alice internet ) and the router is also alice.

We had a lightning strike a month or so back and this destroyed the old router and ADSL filter. When they checked the line it appeared to be OK, but then it is OK most of the time.

Will try TI and see how I get on.

Steve

 

[Jonzjob]

From what you have said Steve it is looking more and more as if you have a line problem and the extra load of the router is dragging the line down.

I am sorry if I am teaching you to suck eggs? But the principle is that your ADSL is a digital signal. Your telephone, when you speak, is an alalog signal. The job of the filter that you plug your router in to is to filter the analog out from the digital for you PC and the same to filter the digital out for your speech on the telephone. The analog and the digital signal are superimposed on the same line. This is why you have to have a filter on each and every socket that you either have a phone/fax/answerphone or a router plugged in.

It would appear that when the extra load of both the phone and the router are applied it takes the line down to a state that gives you the problem?

Have you tried just the router with the phone disconnected? It may prove the point, but it may not because the router is more sensitive to the signal strength?

Try all of the combinations that you can think of. It makes the escape door smaller for TI !

 

[stevel]

I understand what you are saying John but why would the internet reconnect when I use the phone. So far I haven't noticed it disconnect when the phone is in use.

The line is indeed many years old but the village is due for an optical upgrade to 20mg this year (or maybe not, we are in italy) but that is not solving my problem.

I will however try your suggestion and disconnect the phone, but since this is a random event it may not show me much as some days there does not appear to be a problem.

Thanks

Steve