Whirlpool

Hi all,

I have a wiered issue where, whenever my phone rings, my internet drops out completely. Whether I answer or not, and it stays offline until I hang up the phone.

I have tried a new modem, filters including double filtering. I have two phones and it doesnt matter which one is connected or to which socket. None of the equipment including phones have been replaced in the last couple of years.

I have had Telstra out twice and they have not managed to rectify the problem. Although they did not request to come inside and check out the internal wiring, which makes me suspect that there was a seperate fault pherhaps, as yesterday the tech told my g/f that he had fixed something at the exchange.

My phone dilemma has not been resolved.

I have made several calls to Adam helpdesk and although the intial service was, lets say a polite, not helpful. They seem to have taken a bit more of an interest but have not managed to come up with any answers. My noise ratio is low, as is my attuition. So much so that the Adam rep yesterday was trying to convince me to up my profile, which I resisted as I want as stable connection as possible.

I have been requested to try a third phone by the Adam rep, which I shall do tonight, however, as I have gone through the elimination process on the other two, I doubt it is my phones.

Has anyone ever heard of or had this type of fault ??

My logic would suggest a frequency issue but I am no expert.

teamkiwi writes...

I have been requested to try a third phone by the Adam rep, which I shall do tonight, however, as I have gone through the elimination process on the other two, I doubt it is my phones.

Got filters on every active phone port, other than the one your ADSL modem is attached to (or a splitter if there is a phone there as well)? It might be worth checking. I've recently come across this problem where somebody got a new modem with VoIP, and used their normal phone to test it. When they put the phone back, they forgot to put the filter back, however, because the problems started at the same time the modem was bought, believed the problem was caused by the modem, and because they didn't have experience with the new model and brand of the modem, didn't investigate it further. It's always a good idea to make absolutely sure the fundamentals are correct, even if you believe they should be. It's common that something minor changed that you've forgotten doing or missed checking because you believe it couldn't happen.

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the reply. Yes there are only two phone points in the house and they are both filtered. The modem has a splitter as well. I have spare splitter and filters so I have also tried changing them over but to no avail.

I recently emailed Adam ( help@adam.com.au ) about a dropout problem a friend was having which was quite similar to this. In their case, it was an old alarm system which had spontaneously started talking on the phoneline. Unplugged the alarm and all was fine again. The help guys at Adam sent me back this email, it might help you too.

Adam helpdesk wrote:

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There are a myriad of possible causes for this and locating the specific cause is often only accomplished by a lengthy process of trial-and-error.

Here are some of the most common causes for dropouts (and slow speeds) that people experience (as well as some hints to correct those problems). Please try to work your way through this list as thoroughly as possible and, if the problem persists, contact our office for further assistance.

1. One (or more) of the telephone devices at the premises does not have a filter or has a filter installed incorrectly.
1a. Telephone devices include ANY device which plugs into the phoneline ANYWHERE in the premises. eg. Telephones, answering machine, fax machine, alarm system, foxtel digital, caller ID unit (Etc).
1b. Each filter is directional. The side labelled "line" must connect to the wall. The side labelled "phone" must connect to the telephone itself.
1c. There should always be two peices of cable for a filter, one short (eg.5cm) one long (eg. 1.5M) the short one should be between the wall and the filter, the long one should be between the filter and the phone.

2. The modem has a filter on it.
2a. The modem must never be connected through a filter unless that filter is an inline filter-splitter. In this case, the word "line" must go towards the wall and the word "modem" or "ADSL" must go towards the modem. This arrangement should be avoided unless it is not possible to do anything else.

3. The modem is sharing its socket with something else.
3a. Don't do this unless it is absolutely impossible to avoid. If you must share the socket then it must be done as described in 2a.

4. There is a telephone extension cable in use somewhere in the premises. Telephone extension cables act in three ways, as an antenna for interference and also as an echo generator, finally they also add resistance to the line. all of which are bad for broadband.
4a. If an extension cable must be used for a telephone device it is of the utmost importance that it is not used on the modem.
4b. Using a telephone extension cable on the modem is NOT an option.
4c. If you haven't got a phone socket near the computer, invest in a long "ethernet" cable (aka "Cat5e Network cable") roughly $1 per meter to your desired length from an electronics or computer shop.
4d. Place the modem near to its telephone socket and further from the computer (using that ethernet cable in between modem and computer)

5. A filter may have failed.
5a. Eliminate every telephone device (including filters, adapters, everything) from the premises. Once done, check the speed attained in the modem. If it has improved, connect devices one by one, power-cycling the modem (turning it off and on) and checking the speed after every device. When it goes back down again, you have found your culprit.
5b. This can be used for a lot of the above steps, comparing the results before and after to see if things have improved.

There are (of course) many other possible points that could be causing interference on your line and thus causing the dropouts (and often slow speeds). There are a few more which are within your control and then there are a handful of others which are not.

If you continue to have troubles after going through all of the steps above, please call our office at least 40 minutes before we close on any day (8am to 10PM Monday to Friday and 9am to 5pm Saturday and Sunday) to discuss this matter. It can of course be earlier if that is convenient for you, but it should not be later as we may need a large portion of that time to work with you over the phone.

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My son had the same problem and got a big run around from experts all saying different things.This went on for months and nothing worked till me his stupid old man saw what the problem was,not one expert said to him could you please look at your filter connection to make sure that the lines are conected into the correct socket.We connected the lines into their right socket and he hasen't had one dropout since.I hope that this is as simple in the end for you as it was for him,good luck teamkiwi.

Cordless phones should all be double filtered.

On an intelligent DSLAM that negotiates the interleave(error correction) level at sync-up, cordless phones stand out like dogs balls. The interleave is high, and the SNR is usually about 3db lower than it targets.

I had pretty much the same issue with my Internode connection, tried everything such as using different filters, modems, lines and even phones.

In the end I had someone come out to install a central splitter + new phone port and to cut the story short, he found there was a dodgy termination from where the line came into the house. He showed me a pair of transistor looking things which apparently splits the phone lines or something and they were broken/faulty as it just "fell off" as soon as he touched it.

I've been connected for 6 days now :)

I guess my advice would be to install a central splitter etc. Then if you do have anymore issues you've done everything possible and just take it up with your ISP.

thankyou all for your advice. I just tried isolating and swapping everything again but it didnt help. What exactly does a central splitter do ? I am willing to try anything. Is it normally expensive? Thanks again. Its appreciated.

If you're house uses the old style sockets, you might want to unscrew the side of it and scrape down the metal parts with steel wool to remove the rust. This worked for me and my also my uncle. Problem solved.

Although you may have a line fault, I would just check this out first as it only takes 2 minutes.

myne writes...

Cordless phones should all be double filtered.

On an intelligent DSLAM that negotiates the interleave(error correction) level at sync-up, cordless phones stand out like dogs balls. The interleave is high, and the SNR is usually about 3db lower than it targets.

O thanks Lol was reading here if i could help :P everything i would have said has been said hehe

No one including yourself have mentioned wireless.. So i'm assuming, and i know i shouldnt, that you are not having droputs with your connection because your cordless phone is interfearing with the wifi? naaaa.. you woulda said right?

Cool... soz.. i just needed to make sure it wasnt that.

I'm agreeing with alot of the suggestions here and would like to ad a couple:

Make sure there is no alarm, telstra fax duet or any other unusual additions to your line that you may think is compatible and not worth mentioning.

sounds like one of your phones or something else is sending some surges or non standard signals through the line to your modem when ringing..

Have you tried different phone cables?
Are your phones AU standard.. have you tried removing all the phones and just using a standard telstra landline wired phone to test?

When testing remove everything and put it back together one piece at a time and test with each replaced piece.

Hope I was helpful

Hi all,

Sorry for the delayed response and thankyou to all your help.

The issue is still not resolved, however Adam have arranged for Etech to come out on Monday and hopefully find the fault.

I am hoping Etech will provide me with what the actual fault is / was and I will let you all know.

I had a similar problem at my old house. There was some questionable wiring running down to the shed, it had been partly disconnected, but what happened was some wires going into a connector had got wet at some point and had slightly rusted. When the phone actually rang you could actually see a spark jump across the two pins. I removed this dodgy wiring at it's source and everything was good. The main point here was that the phone was working absolutely fine to make calls and to talk, there was no noise whatsoever, but if someone rang, they heard a ring for a short time and then it went to an engaged signal. I am no expert, but I believe when the phone rings, a higher voltage is pumped down the line, which was to make the old phones with a ringer on them actually ring, but i am not sure how true that is. THe higher voltage could jump across dodgy connections. So you could have a similar problem, but trying to isolate could be difficult! An interim solution would be to divert the phone if you absolutely want no dropout, eg for playing a game or something....but that is not a long-term solution. I guess if you remove everything and you still have a problem, there is either an issue in your house, or anywhere from the exchange!

I have the same problem. Turns out my alarm system is causing the problem. All lines in the house go into the box for the alarm system. This requires i think a POTS splitter to be installed which will cost over 100 bucks to get someone to install it (i think its illegal to do it yourself), so i just bear with it (not forking over the money).

I currently have the same problem as teamkiwi and its pretty annoying at times. I have yet to determine the fault.

teamkiwi, please post the result of Etech visiting your home.

Hello all,

Well, etech found a fault which they told me was hard to trace and questionable, however they did lodge it and Adam arranged a third Telstra visit.

The Telsra tech came out just yesterday and was amazed that we even had a phone still working. The line was severed not far down the road.

Without altering the custom profile that adam had me on my line speed jumped from 2,000Kbps to 7,500Kbps !

I am now happily syncing at around 10,000 with only one dropout today.

I am hesitant to say it is totally fixed as I want to give it a few days to see.

It certainly looks like it is tho :) This has had me stuffed for a few months now.

Thank you to all that offered their experience, advice and input.

Evo, good luck with your fault and whim me if I can be of any help.

Damn, looks like I'm late to this party ;) What you had is what is called an "open circuit", and its fairly common.

For reference (and you Adam boys better be listening) the trick with an issue like this is to do an isolation test and call the home phone number from a mobile phone. If there is a break in the line, a device on the line that is unfiltered (alarm etc), or in rare cases the line card in the exchange is faulty, the modem will dropout.

Doing an isolation test with nothing but the modem plugged in clearly removes filtering from the equation and all the remains is internal wiring (more than not is the culprit) or an issue out in the street. Funny thing is that it should show up on a Telstra SULTAN test.