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Article: ADSL Connection Tips

Mark.J

Administrator
Staff member
ISPreview Team
I’ve written a quick article with some of the less well known broadband ADSL tips included. It hasn’t yet been announced in the news, but feel free to preview it here:

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/articles/adsltips/index.shtml

Please let me know if anybody has any other suggestions for additional tips and I’ll try to get them included ;) . The only one I cut out referred to MTU/RWIN adjustments, which were excluded because they can sometimes cause more problems than they solve.
 
Running through the piece in order:

It's wrong to refer to the test socket as the master socket. The latter is the entire NTE5 (or other) unit and, importantly, contains a surge suppressor and ring capacitor. The test socket is just a BT socket hard-wired to the exchange pair, useful for testing but not something which should normally be used for day-to-day connection as it leaves the circuit unprotected.

It would possibly be worth mentioning the potential benefits of disconnecting the ring wire and the use of a filtered face plate.

It might be worth mentioning that it's better to avoid running phone extensions parallel to mains wiring.

Repeated disconnects: There's a BT PDF file at http://freespace.virgin.net/adsl.test/doc2.pdf which sets the threshold at ten times in any hour.

In my experience, interleaving tends to be turned on when a line is considered unstable, eg as a result of repeated disconnections. BT tend to be reluctant to switch it off again in these circumstances. If anyone has a higher target margin than the 'normal' 6db, they may well struggle to get interleaving turned off.

Connection problems, especially those which affect some websites only, are often caused by incorrect MTU & RWIN values. It might be worth detailing the procedure for setting these values despite your reservations.
 
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I'm pretty sure the surge arrestor and ring cap are part of the main body of a standard master socket, and the removable faceplate just contains the connectors for adding extension cables. So removing the faceplate just removes any extensions from circuit, the surge arrestor remains connected.

I agree about mentioning removing the ring wire if it isn't already covered.

I'm not aware of the RWIN setting preventing access to any website, however a user of Windows 98 will suffer from very limited speeds if they don't increase it, as will someone using XP with a high latency connection.

Using a larger MTU than supported by the connection to your ISP can prevent access to certain sites, eg preventing logging into ebay is an example (or was last time I checked) . Probably best to recommend setting MTU (and MRU if present) to 1500 on the router and reducing it if necessary on the PC as not all routers MSS clamp. If MTU must be reduced you might as well suggest trying 1430 rather than messing about trying to find the largest working value, as 1430 is more efficient anyway. (well 1478 is the most efficient, but I suspect in most cases where 1500 is too large 1478 will be too)

Accessing www.dslconnect.co.uk was none too reliable using the test login on a tiscali wholesale connection, I would suggest just listing the (rather inaccurate) "speedtest" page http://speedcheck.ispconnect.co.uk/
 
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Cheers for the suggestions, I’ve made some amendments.

I may in the future include MTU/RWIN tweaks too, but I want to test everything out myself on several systems before I’m confident enough to do that and presently don’t have the time. Sometimes they can also have a slightly negative impact on multiplayer performance.
 
Additional note for running telecom cables near mains cables.

If you have to pass a coms cable very near mains, the closer you can get to a right angle difference between the two, the lower the interference will be.
 
Reading the above, I feel it would as well to state which O/S is being used.
Especially as I believe MTU/RWin changes to the PC have no effect in Vista.

Mo
 
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