[aklug] Re: yet another rant: ACS - 1 for 3, better than was expecting, actually

On Mon, 6 Dec 2010, Lee wrote:

> So a bit of a followup.
>
> Turns out the hit in my bandwidth may be the wire or the receptacle in my house.
>
> Having a conversation with one of the telecom guys. He says 'check your house wire'.
>
> "Yer kiddin, right?", says I. "Having a little fun with the newb...?" says I.
>
> "Not at all", he says, "I'd check it out at the demarc first", he says. So I did. And
> now I owe him a beverage of his choice.
>
> If I plug the DSL modem directly into the demarc, speedtest shows the connection works
> as advertised. If I use the house wire, there's 150-250K hit. And it's repeatable.
>
> So I owe ACS an apology and in all fairness give them 2 for 3. Although I'm still going
> to give some constructive criticism of their website. From the Cantankerous
> TechnoCurmudgeonly point of view.
>
> And then prep to spend a bit of time maybe rescrewing down the wires in the demarc and
> receptacles. Maybe use 'real' phone wire (the 4/22 stuff) instead of cat5? Although
> that's sure counterintuitive. Any other thoughts anyone?

The "ideal" setup is

In the NID (demarc box) DSL splitter, this is a 3 port device, incoming
line on one port, house phone on the second and DSL modem on the third.
It puts freqs < 15khz on the phone port, > 15khz on the DSL port and
maintains proper balance and line impedance while doing it.

The "phone" port would connect to your existing house wire, the DSL port
to the dedicated DSL run.

Good CAT3 or CAT5 is fine for the DSL run, so ling as it is 22 - 26 gage
twisted pair. Alot of the generic 2 pair "phone" cable from home
stores/rat shack, etc is 28ga cheap trash with _no twist_.

The "second best" setup is checking all of the house wire for
corrosion/short/miswire, and making sure there is a DSL filter on
*_EVERY_* port where there is a device except for the modem itself.

Many phones/fax/analog modems, etc will put RF noise on the line, draw
down the signal levels, etc.

The best case being the in-nid splitter, most home phone wireing is star
format and a not so great install. This leads to imbalance and
reflections degrading the signal.

I would run a dedicated DSL run and talk to the service guys about a
in-nid splitter, IIRC there are at least 2 types stocked by the warhouse as
std service parts.

Depending on distance and age of the cable, the run from the CO can be an
issue, but in my expr, house wire is almost always poor and tends to
distort/weaken the DSL signal in the last 200 feet of house wire as much
or more than a 2 - 3 mile run of feeder cable.

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Received on Tue Dec 7 16:07:21 2010