HiVolt
30
Premium
join:2000-12-28
Toronto, ON
clubs:
 ·TekSavvy Solutions..
·Bell Sympatico
|  Bad wiring story...
I was at my good buddy's house today to help him troubleshoot his constant speed & sync problems. He has regular Sympatico HSE and a SpeedStream 5200. He had a Bell technician at his house a few weeks before, and he apparently found no problems...
Well, here's what I found, with the help of my Alcatel SpeedTouch modem, a voltmeter, and a Radioshack line polarity tester.
Its a 1950's large bungalow with LOTS of phone jacks, and rather old phone wiring. Out of 12 jacks in the house, 7 had reversed polarity. Three jacks had corroded wires, and one had bent pins which could have been causing a line short.
Sync rate reported by the Alcatel modem before doing any repairs was in the 500-600kbps range, interleaved, with 100% line capacity, horrible 4dB noise margin. Obviously, a problem somewhere. When checked on the Bell website, his phone line appears to be 3meg capable.
So, we went to Home Depot, picked up a few new jacks, and I replaced the defective ones, as well as corrected the polarity on the reversed wires. Also cleaned up his distribution block in the basement there were a lot of loose and cut wires, some real hack & slash job that someone had done in the past.
After the repairs, the sync rate reported was 1184/160, Interleaved, and maximum attainable rate was over 6000kbps, noise margin over 25dB. So he never got upgraded to 1.5meg because the line stats were reading so crappy when they were doing the upgrades.
We surfed the net, did speed tests a bunch of times, downloaded stuff, and it didnt lose sync once, and speed was a stable 120KB/sec, so a maximum for the given sync rate. I told him to call Bell on Monday to have him switched to 1.5meg profile and FastPath, since his line can obviously handle it. He was happy as a clam.
And the dumb f*** Bell repairman didnt find any of these problems. He should be bloody fired.
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MacGyver
Bell Sucks
Premium,ExMod 2003-05
join:2001-10-14
Orleans, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
·Bell Sympatico
| Great post! Most people don't realize what a huge affect inside wiring quality can have on their DSL performance.
Did the Bell tech actually inspect any of the wiring inside the house or only the wiring outside? And did he charge for the inside wiring check (if he actually did one)? |
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HiVolt
30
Premium
join:2000-12-28
Toronto, ON
clubs:
·TekSavvy Solutions..
·Bell Sympatico
| said by MacGyver  :
Did the Bell tech actually inspect any of the wiring inside the house or only the wiring outside? And did he charge for the inside wiring check (if he actually did one)?
He did apparently check the demarc, jacks in the house, and something at the pole. He has the wirecare plan, so I assume he didn't get charged. And the tech didn't find any problems and left without a solution.
Its freakin unnaceptable, there were SO many problems that a Joe Schmo like me found & fixed with a few basic tools.
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dirtyjeffer
Oh Yeah
Premium
join:2002-02-21
London, ON | reply to HiVolt
i think the techs only diagnose bell's end, not the customers...the inside wiring isn't bell's responsibility.
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"What's good for the goose is good for the gander." |
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HiVolt
30
Premium
join:2000-12-28
Toronto, ON
clubs:
·TekSavvy Solutions..
·Bell Sympatico
| said by dirtyjeffer :
i think the techs only diagnose bell's end, not the customers...the inside wiring isn't bell's responsibility.
Even if he has the Wire Care plan? My friend said he plugged in some stuff into *some* of the jacks in the house, he didnt bother testing all of them.
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dirtyjeffer
Oh Yeah
Premium
join:2002-02-21
London, ON
 ·Rogers Hi-Speed
| said by HiVolt :
Even if he has the Wire Care plan?
there are certain stipulations about the wirecare plan...think about it...lets say you bought a nice house in an old area...you move in and find the phone wiring is all 60 years old and in really bad shape...do you really think for $3.75 per month you can call Bell and have them rewire your house?
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"What's good for the goose is good for the gander." |
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HiVolt
30
Premium
join:2000-12-28
Toronto, ON
clubs:
·TekSavvy Solutions..
·Bell Sympatico
| said by dirtyjeffer :
there are certain stipulations about the wirecare plan...think about it...lets say you bought a nice house in an old area...you move in and find the phone wiring is all 60 years old and in really bad shape...do you really think for $3.75 per month you can call Bell and have them rewire your house?
No, but at least the tech should have checked EVERY jack in the house, checked the messy distribution box, and let the customer know what's required to repair. All it took is 4 new phone jacks and rewiring the others for proper polarity. No actual wire was replaced. Something like this is surely covered by the plan.
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TilhasBB
Formally Goden99
Premium
join:2000-08-05
canada
| reply to HiVolt
Good work HiVolt  and thanks for sharing.
I never knew it mattered if the polarity was inverst would do anything.
How can I check if they are in my house ? With a voltmeter (multimeter)
I don't understand thou HiVolt.
I know when a tech came to my house first thing he did was dissconnect the ENTIRE house from the marc point and connected his little thingy to the wire and saw sync rate and noise margin. Then went to where the modem was and dissconnected it and tried same thing and was like only 1db loss. your wiring is very good and filters and phones aren't doing much.
if he did that he would of EASLY caught the problem. |
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B777300
join:2002-01-02 | reply to HiVolt
Great work there, thats interesting, a little unbelieveable how much difference wiring can make... heh |
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HiVolt
30
Premium
join:2000-12-28
Toronto, ON
clubs:
·TekSavvy Solutions..
·Bell Sympatico
1 edit | reply to TilhasBB
To check your jack polarity with a digital multimeter, set your voltage scale to DC Volts, and a range that will accommodate 50 Volts. If your meter is autoranging, don't worry about it. Take your jack apart, and touch the Red(+) probe to the Green wire, and the Black(-) probe to the Red wire. If your meter reads somewhere between 50-52V without a negative sign, your polarity is correct. If it reads a negative value, you can fix it by swapping the wires, and then testing again. Or, you could pick up a cheap tester like the one above for literlly a few bucks, and save yourself the time and hassle of taking apart every jack in your house.
Line 1
Green Wire (Tip) = Positive
Red Wire (Ring) = Negative
Line 2
Black Wire (Tip) = Positive
Yellow Wire (Ring) = Negative
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HiVolt
30
Premium
join:2000-12-28
Toronto, ON
clubs:
·TekSavvy Solutions..
·Bell Sympatico
| reply to TilhasBB
said by TilhasBB :
I don't understand thou HiVolt.
I know when a tech came to my house first thing he did was dissconnect the ENTIRE house from the marc point and connected his little thingy to the wire and saw sync rate and noise margin. Then went to where the modem was and dissconnected it and tried same thing and was like only 1db loss. your wiring is very good and filters and phones aren't doing much.
if he did that he would of EASLY caught the problem.
I guess this tech was a dumbass, lazy, or just wanted to go home. Needless to say, he didn't do his job. I recall a tech doing the same test at my house when i had problems in April.
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teddy
join:2002-02-20
Kingston, ON | reply to HiVolt
Hey HiVolt, wanna come over to my place 
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HiVolt
30
Premium
join:2000-12-28
Toronto, ON
clubs:
·TekSavvy Solutions..
·Bell Sympatico
| said by teddy :
Hey HiVolt, wanna come over to my place
Are you asking me out on a date? |
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dirtyjeffer
Oh Yeah
Premium
join:2002-02-21
London, ON
·Rogers Hi-Speed
| reply to HiVolt
said by HiVolt :
I guess this tech was a dumbass, lazy, or just wanted to go home. Needless to say, he didn't do his job.
i can't argue with that.
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"What's good for the goose is good for the gander." |
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NRJ
join:2002-10-03
| reply to HiVolt
said by HiVolt :
said by teddy :
Hey HiVolt, wanna come over to my place
Are you asking me out on a date?
Not looking looking for a date, but it would great if you can come a check mine. |
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HiVolt
30
Premium
join:2000-12-28
Toronto, ON
clubs: | LOL. I was joking about the date part...;) I'm a lazy mofo, my friend bugged me enough times, I finally caved in... |
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HiVolt
30
Premium
join:2000-12-28
Toronto, ON
clubs: | Just an update... My friend called Bell yesterday, and today he has been upgraded to 1.5/320 and FastPath. Everything is fine, he has no packetloss or any other issues. |
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Tyreman
join:2002-10-08
| reply to HiVolt
Did some investigating here in our apartment,found that there was approx. 43' of surplus bell wire and loose connections on 2 outlet/jack feedthru boxes also the internet connection came off the last box,was able to install it to the main apartment entrance for the bell wire(still with all that reduction in footage) Internet connection is now 1st off and the connection is good so far found no wrong polarities but the black wire to one "feed" was broken and just laying touching the terminal barrier. |
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Tpav
join:2000-08-11
Canada
| reply to HiVolt
Excellent post I had sort of the same frustration, took me a couple of weeks to find it and the help of this forum of course. Mine was an old line that was not connected but hiding in the duct work. When I did find it the two wires would contact the duct work intermitantly causes shorts line noise or whatever. All I can suggest is if people are having problems go right back to the source run a new line directly to the computer if it resolves the problem than you might want to check the wiring....regards Tpav |
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Tyreman
join:2002-10-08
| reply to HiVolt
I refined things a bit to this excellant advise already given.. cut a regular 4 wire phone cable,one you don't want for good with a least one good male jack on one end,strip the wires insulation off on red and green on the other end,you'll still have black and yellow no need to strip them, notice of the 4 wires two 'nner connection wires are green and red simply plug the remaining male end into the jack to be tested with your meter connected its there.... away go or no go,I also "tinned" the bare red and green leads with electronic solder too as they are fine,my meter has aligator clip converters to simplify the process. |
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