I've crapped on a bit below so I'll summarise here. A friend has what I believe to be a line fault which is causing a noisy phone line and an intermittent internet connection. Telstra says that there is no fault. Her ISP isn't exactly known for customer service so I don't think that they'll be very helpful either. Does anyone know what should be done next or have any other suggestions?

A friend asked me to come and get her 'internet working' the other night. She'd bought a used modem recently off ebay as all her equipment was fried in a lightning storm and she'd never got it working properly trying to set it up herself. In her words she knows enough about computers to completely stuff things up.

Anyway I spent ages trying to get everything working - playing guess the modems web interface IP was a particularly fun game.

Anyway to cut my long story to the point I think she's got a line fault. The modem kept going up and down like yoyo. I changed the spliter/filter. I changed the modem. I rang her ISPs help desk. They noted as I did that the modem was 'walking the dog'. I also noticed that the modem went up when I got on the phone more than when I wasn't. I also (finally) noticed the significant line noise on the PSTN, when I picked up the handset and just listened to the line.

The only thing I didn't do, as per a full isolation test, was leave out the phone handset. Norti me. But I've since asked her to do it and she said it made no difference. Also neither of her modems had a page to see her line stats so all I can base my line fault theory on is that the phone is terribly noisy and her adsl is intermittent at best.

She has a telstra guy there yesterday who was apparently 'very thorough' but said there was no problem with the phone line. This has me gob-smacked as I can't believe the phone line has an acceptable level of line noise - it was seriously noisy. Coupled with the flaky internet I can't see it being anything other than a problem.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Have you had her unplug everything from the phoneline, Modems, filters, etc etc and just try an handset (one by one) in each socket, see if they all have noise or not

Post some figures from the modem.
If a Telstra tech has been out due to an ADSL fault then there are certain specs he is supposed to get before clearing the job.It also seems that the problem is pretty consistant and should have been easy enough for the tech to pickup and determine if the problem was inside or outside. If the tech has been as thorough as you say then I would suspect the problem is inside.

From my understanding of things, Telstra *should* respond to noisy lines by attempting to correct whatever may be causing the noise. That said, it could be something other than the noise that's causing the issue.

I'd try ringing Telstra again to see if you can get someone more sympathetic sent out. Bit of a dice roll, but you might get lucky.

And as Drekkus said, it could well be an internal wiring fault, particularly if she has an old house, but even if it's brand new this shouldn't be ruled out.

Does the house have more than 1 phone socket.
If so you need to check the phone wiring in the house and make sure its not wired up in a star arrangement as this will create bridge taps which will severly kill the ADSL performance.

Ensign R writes...

Does anyone have any ideas?

Don't mention ADSL when reporting it to Tel$tra, just complain about the noise etc. on the phone side of things, they try and blame the ISP or you if you mention ADSL.
If it's the phone side of things it seems to attract a different type of response from them.

Cocka writes...

Don't mention ADSL when reporting it to Tel$tra, just complain about the noise etc. on the phone side of things, they try and blame the ISP or you if you mention ADSL.

the first thing that ANY provider will do is ask the user to isolate the issue to determine where the problem lies. this is especially the case when there are multiple service conponents on the one line, any of which could be causing the problem.

lie about the issue in order and you risk being charged a hefty fee when the telco finds you have lied - and they then walk away leaving the problem unfixed, which ou then have to take up via the correct method anyway.

Cocka writes...

Don't mention ADSL when reporting it to Tel$tra, just complain about the noise etc. on the phone side of things,

Its hard to tell from the OP description whether or not thats been done already.Telstra has been out and found nothing wrong up to the house.Perhaps its an intermitant fault but it didn't sound like it was.Believe me some techs are more than happy to charge for what they consider an incorrect call out so you would want to be sure of your side of things before getting someone out a second time.

Can you post some modem stats?
What suburb?

Ensign R writes...

Does anyone have any ideas?

I have posted this several times, one day I will be correct - sounds like it could possibly be a corroded socket.

Cheers

The problem will be a "star" wired house or a back to base alarm that's not filtered, my guess is star wiring because usually if there is a unfiltered back to base alarm you cannot get "sync" on the modem "sync" being the adsl or dsl light being on solid not flashing, "Star" wiring is when more than 1 cable or cable pair is ran off a socket or termination point, to other sockets. sockets need to be wire in series not parallel

As it turns out I was correct in the first place. A line fault existed in the nearest pillar. It was also effecting the neighbours; something Nat had to find out for herself after the 1st Telstra tech told her that there was no problem.

She also (against my advise) went out and bought a brand new NB9W so as to eliminate her modems and filters being a part of the problem - because the original tech told her there was no line fault and she needed her connection back asap.

In other words because the original tech failed to diagnose what to me was an obvious problem she was not only without a working internet connection for another week she also shelled out quite a bit of money for a superfluous modem; although granted it's a much better one than the two she already had.

To answer some of the posts above. I did a full isolation test on the line, save for using the same phone handset as she didn't have another. She only has one phone jack in the house (ED: and from my understanding the Tech should check the '1st' phone jack in the premises as thats where 'their' network ends hence he should have found any corrosion on that jack) and from it we used two different splitter filters. (ED: the fault was reported to her provider (which does both) and Telstra as both a phone and dsl fault.)

I guess that'll do. Except for posing the question, do you think she'll have any chance of getting Telstra to pay for the NB9W? ;)

Ensign R writes...

I guess that'll do. Except for posing the question, do you think she'll have any chance of getting Telstra to pay for the NB9W? ;)

Well, I'm hoping to win the $40,000,000 Powerball next week - maybe we will both get lucky :-)

Cheers