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Can two ADSL lines into the same house interfere with each other?

Hi,

I have a personal and a work phone line into my house both with ADSL (although from two different ISPs). The work line and its ADSL was put in as an up-to-8meg service last year. Originally, I had intended to cancel my personal ADSL but the service on the work ADSL line was so poor (averaging around 1.5meg even though I am about 800 metres cable length from the exchange) that I decided to keep my personal 2meg service running.

Last week my ISP changed my personal line from the rock-solid 2meg service to the up-to-8meg service and, although the training period doesn't finish until Tuesday, I've seen that also drop to below 2meg.

The interesting thing is that when the personal line was changed over, i saw the work line drop to an average of half a meg for a couple of days. It could be coincidence but it made me wonder whether the two are linked in some way and that I have created a vicious circle - keeping the personal line because of poor performance on the work line and getting poor performance on the work line only because I am keeping the personal line.

With the personal line performing as badly now, I have no problem with cancelling it if any of you believe it could be part of the problem. Alternatively, is there any way I can get a line reverted to the reliable to 2meg service? Another option is to move to Sky as they are offering an up-to-16meg service locally but I suspect many of you will warn me off Sky generally and, if it is the same rate adaptive system, it will probably get restricted down to the same level anyway.

Any advice is welcome.

Regards,

Dave
 
Hi,
Sounds to me that both lines could be physically 1 line but shared as 2 lines somewhere.

If this is the case then there is a possibility that the upgrade on 1 has affected the other.

the only people that could advise on this is BT if they are your line supplier or your isp's.

regards Ian
 
Thanks for the really quick reply IGS.

When the work line was installed, no new line was run to the building. Does that mean it is shared in some way?

Both products are BT Wholesale through different ISPs but my experience of raising issues like this with BT is not good. The only people qualified to say for sure are the engineers and you can't ring them. Do you think the best solution is to cancel my private ADSL altogether and would I then be able to get BT to run the 10 day training period (not sure what the proper name for this is) afresh on my work line?

Regards,

Dave
 
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Thanks for the really quick reply IGS.

When the work line was installed, no new line was run to the building. Does that mean it is shared in some way?



Dave

ADSL doesn't work with line sharing devices (DACS). There was probably a spare pair running to the building.

If you have any internal telephone extensions, I would suggest removing the lower half of the BT Master socket and pluging your router into the test socket behind it and checking your line statistics (SNR Margin, attenuation and Sync rate) if they improve, the internal wiring is the source of your problems. Also check the stats after turning one of the routers off to see if they are interfering with each other.
 
Thanks Mel.

The previous occupants had three lines without any switchboard facility to my knowledge (just home, busines and fax PSTN).

I don't have a traditional BT Master Socket on my personal line, just a strange panel (about 8"x5") under my stairs that feeds a number of sockets mostly put in by Sky. The work line does have a BT Master Socket but it is a line taken from this same under stair panel and it does not have any extensions running from it or even a phone plugged in. I am happy to try what you suggest on this line though and will report back. Would any improvement be instant or would I have to give it a few days?

At the moment, my work router is not connected to the phone socket as I thought I'd disconnect it when I suspected there may be a conflict. The following line status stats are taken from my personal router before and after the work router was disconnected from the work line. They don't mean anything to me but I thought I'd include the details here in case they mean anything.

These are figures since I disconnected my work router and reset my personal router at about 10:30AM this morning.

Line Status: Downstream / Upstream
ADSL Link Speed: 7616 kbps / 448 kbps
SNR: 3.5 dB / -
ATEN: 15 dB / 12 dB

Line Error: Downstream / Upstream
ADSL layer FEC: 59 / 1377
ADSL layer CRC: 3 /161
ATM layer HEC: 5 / 154
Frame Counter: 29913 / 25028
Loop Distance: About 3 K ft


These are figures from before I disconnected my work router. I am not sure when my personal router had last been reset before this.

Line Status: Downstream / Upstream
ADSL Link Speed: 7136 kbps / 448 kbps
SNR: 2.5 dB / -
ATEN: 15 dB / 13 dB

Line Error: Downstream / Upstream
ADSL layer FEC: 10 / 15074
ADSL layer CRC: 1 /18
ATM layer HEC: 2 / 17
Frame Counter: 305715 / 377814
Loop Distance: About 3 K ft

As ever, any advice welcome.

Dave
 
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Thanks Mel.

The work line does have a BT Master Socket but it is a line taken from this same under stair panel and it does not have any extensions running from it or even a phone plugged in. I am happy to try what you suggest on this line though and will report back. Would any improvement be instant or would I have to give it a few days?

In that case don't bother as it won't help -Removing the lower panel disconnects any telephone extensions wired into it.
 
Line Status: Downstream / Upstream
ADSL Link Speed: 7136 kbps / 448 kbps
SNR: 2.5 dB / -
ATEN: 15 dB / 13 dB

Line Error: Downstream / Upstream
ADSL layer FEC: 10 / 15074
ADSL layer CRC: 1 /18
ATM layer HEC: 2 / 17
Frame Counter: 305715 / 377814
Loop Distance: About 3 K ft

Both sets of stats look pretty good to me, the SNR should be a minimum of 6dB which means your downstream sync speed should fall slightly towards the end of the training period.

I think you need to wait until the end of the training period for BT's equipment to adjust the IP profile for your line, so that you get a decent data rate.
 
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