It's amazing what you can get away with
 

On Wed, 05 Feb 2014 10:13:00 +0000, Mark
wrote:

A little different but this reminds me one time an OR engineer came
out to look at an ADSL speed issue. He found a complete break in my
phone line, fixed it. Afterwards the ADSL speed was completely
unchanged.

Implying there might be another break (or other fault) somewhere else...

It's amazing what you can get away with
 

Was it one of those posh blocks with the metal sprung strip inside to press
on the wire instead of the end of the screw?

Brian

--
From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active
"Bill Wright" wrote in message
...
Brian_Gaff wrote:
If it was a two screw one, ie the other side has a screw as well, then it
might have been holding on via this until it was disturbed. Just as well
there are no earthquakes in the north of England, at least not until the
fracing has started.
Brian

No the other screw wasn't involved. The bit of bare wire that came out of
the choc block had been folded to make it thicker but was very short.

Bill

It's amazing what you can get away with
 

Mark wrote:

A little different but this reminds me one time an OR engineer came
out to look at an ADSL speed issue. He found a complete break in my
phone line, fixed it. Afterwards the ADSL speed was completely
unchanged.

We at the BT research place expected ADSL to be rather fragile in the
face of line faults. Unexplained poor performance was often blamed on
things like aluminium conductors, a particular type of crimp, and other
"bonnet bees" of various types.

As time went by, one thing became clearer: ADSL is often more resilient
to line faults than the telephony service running on the same wires.
In particular, high resistance and disconnect faults often left the
ADSL working whilst the telephony was unbearably noisy or non-existent.
There's enough capacitance to allow the ADSL frequencies to be carried
even across a disconnect.

Having said that, ADSL doesn't seem at all happy with "battery-" or
"earth-contact" faults (which cause an audible mains hum on the line
due to unbalancing it. Unbalancing seems to have the biggest effect,
which is probably what you'd expect.

--
SteveT

It's amazing what you can get away with
 

"Steve Thackery" wrote in message
...
Mark wrote:

A little different but this reminds me one time an OR engineer came
out to look at an ADSL speed issue. He found a complete break in my
phone line, fixed it. Afterwards the ADSL speed was completely
unchanged.

We at the BT research place expected ADSL to be rather fragile in the
face of line faults. Unexplained poor performance was often blamed on
things like aluminium conductors, a particular type of crimp, and other
"bonnet bees" of various types.

As time went by, one thing became clearer: ADSL is often more resilient
to line faults than the telephony service running on the same wires.
In particular, high resistance and disconnect faults often left the
ADSL working whilst the telephony was unbearably noisy or non-existent.
There's enough capacitance to allow the ADSL frequencies to be carried
even across a disconnect.

Having said that, ADSL doesn't seem at all happy with "battery-" or
"earth-contact" faults (which cause an audible mains hum on the line
due to unbalancing it. Unbalancing seems to have the biggest effect,
which is probably what you'd expect.

--
SteveT

ADSL does amazingly well over miles of very thin, often corroded and / or
half submerged aluminium conductor, with connections that would make a
school boy cringe. Ten megabits+ per second with negligible BERR rates.

Then you pick up a copy some hi-brow hi-fi magazine that tells you that for
decent audio quality (~100kbps) you need solid silver cables with gold
plated connectors costing £££ to reliably transfer data just a meter or
so....

OTOH it could be humm from the mains...

From Hi-Fi Choice

Isol- 8 Powerline Axis Mains Filter- £499
Mains filtration removes high-frequency noise, but as Richard Black
discovers Isol-8's Powerline Axis goes the other way, removing direct
current



Fortunately my hi-fi has a big transformer (filtering out HF noise) and lots
of big capacitors in the power supply (smoothing out the LF noise), so it is
so quiet [with no input] that I sometimes forget to switch it off when I go
to bed...

It's amazing what you can get away with
 

"R. Mark Clayton" wrote in
message ...

"Steve Thackery" wrote in message
...
Mark wrote:

A little different but this reminds me one time an OR
engineer came
out to look at an ADSL speed issue. He found a complete
break in my
phone line, fixed it. Afterwards the ADSL speed was
completely
unchanged.

We at the BT research place expected ADSL to be rather
fragile in the
face of line faults. Unexplained poor performance was
often blamed on
things like aluminium conductors, a particular type of
crimp, and other
"bonnet bees" of various types.

As time went by, one thing became clearer: ADSL is often
more resilient
to line faults than the telephony service running on the
same wires.
In particular, high resistance and disconnect faults
often left the
ADSL working whilst the telephony was unbearably noisy or
non-existent.
There's enough capacitance to allow the ADSL frequencies
to be carried
even across a disconnect.

Having said that, ADSL doesn't seem at all happy with
"battery-" or
"earth-contact" faults (which cause an audible mains hum
on the line
due to unbalancing it. Unbalancing seems to have the
biggest effect,
which is probably what you'd expect.

--
SteveT

ADSL does amazingly well over miles of very thin, often
corroded and / or half submerged aluminium conductor, with
connections that would make a school boy cringe. Ten
megabits+ per second with negligible BERR rates.

Then you pick up a copy some hi-brow hi-fi magazine that
tells you that for decent audio quality (~100kbps) you
need solid silver cables with gold plated connectors
costing £££ to reliably transfer data just a meter or
so....

OTOH it could be humm from the mains...

From Hi-Fi Choice

Isol- 8 Powerline Axis Mains Filter- £499
Mains filtration removes high-frequency noise, but as
Richard Black discovers Isol-8's Powerline Axis goes the
other way, removing direct current



Fortunately my hi-fi has a big transformer (filtering out
HF noise) and lots of big capacitors in the power supply
(smoothing out the LF noise), so it is so quiet [with no
input] that I sometimes forget to switch it off when I go
to bed...




Ah, you're not a disciple of Rip-off Russ then?


--
Woody

harrogate three at ntlworld dot com

It's amazing what you can get away with
 

Brian_Gaff wrote:
Was it one of those posh blocks with the metal sprung strip inside to press
on the wire instead of the end of the screw?

Brian

Could have been. I use those now, but dunno about 30-odd years ago.
They're good though, in my opinion.

Bill

It's amazing what you can get away with
 

Steve Thackery wrote:

As time went by, one thing became clearer: ADSL is often more resilient
to line faults than the telephony service running on the same wires.
In particular, high resistance and disconnect faults often left the
ADSL working whilst the telephony was unbearably noisy or non-existent.
There's enough capacitance to allow the ADSL frequencies to be carried
even across a disconnect.

This reminds me of the early days of UHF TV. With VHF a broken inner
core in the downlead would result in zero reception. With UHF (ch51
here) the signal level would drop dramatically, but usually there's
still be a picture and sound.

Bill

It's amazing what you can get away with
 

R. Mark Clayton wrote:

Fortunately my hi-fi has a big transformer (filtering out HF noise) and lots
of big capacitors in the power supply (smoothing out the LF noise), so it is
so quiet [with no input] that I sometimes forget to switch it off when I go
to bed...

I don't switch mine off!

Bill

It's amazing what you can get away with
 

Bill Wright wrote:

Ha! By the way we are still selling those washers, 50 at a time!

Well, just let me know when you need some more. They'll be laser cut this
time.

Best regards
Barry

It's amazing what you can get away with
 

Barry wrote:
Bill Wright wrote:

Ha! By the way we are still selling those washers, 50 at a time!

Well, just let me know when you need some more. They'll be laser cut this
time.

Best regards
Barry

Ah, that's good. They have been a invaluable. You should be pleased that
you have helped a whole lot of murderers, rapists, child molesters, and
terrorists to get good TV reception...

Bill