[plug] Please help.. i'm desperate

[Craig Ringer]

 >>I was lucky in that Westnet were (after a lot of argument and prodding,
 >>admittedly) willing to swap my DSL-300 for a new Alcatel for the
 >>difference in price. It appears that the Alcatel is just better
 >>engineered (wow, who would've thought... no wait) than the D-Link was,
 >>and was much better able to handle poor line conditions.
 >
 > You'd think being in a new area, with a newly built house would avoid 
this
 > :( *sigh*

With Telstra, I wouldn't think anything. I can just imagine the 
converstation....

"Look, I know we need 1mm gauge wiring here to get the specification 
voltages, but that's stuff's expensive. If we go down to 0.5mm, it'll be 
fine for voice, and that's all we have to provide proper service on 
anyway. If they whine, we just pretend there's no problem until they go 
away, or repeatedly test it fine for voice. They should just be glad 
they're not on a RIM... hmm, why aren't we using one of those here anyway?

 > Don't suppose I could steal your Alcatel for a few days? ;-)

I'd have to discuss that with my housemates, but it may be possible. I'd 
want to borrow the Billion (I assume it can be switched to behave like a 
normal ethernet DSL modem?) for the time. Of course, I'm then quite 
likely to have to report that the billion is in fact crap on our line, 
but that'd tell you something too - wouldn't it?

Have you tried talking to iiNet and seeing if they can provde a decent 
quality DSL modem as a loaner? If you got your initial DSL modem from 
them, they may be willing to upgrade you to a better one if the loaner 
fixes the problem. That was the arrangement I made with Westnet - we 
borrowed the Alcatel, and when it worked we returned the DSL-300 and 
paid the difference. iiNet used to supply Alcatel SpeedTouch Home as 
standard (when I got DSL at work 2 years ago) but no doubt the standard 
has since fallen.

My argument when I went through this with WestNet was the loss of line 
sync CAN NOT be a problem with my system. The modem does it even when 
there's nothing plugged in, it's an indicator of whether it can 'see' 
the remote DSLAM or not.u I also, to placate them, tried my Win2k laptop 
on the modem as well as my normal firewall. As such, the problem HAD to 
be the modem or phone line. They didn't want to call in a fault to 
telstra on the line, as it costs them hundreds of dollars, so they did 
us a loaner modem and that did the trick. The crucial point was that the 
fault was with their hardware or with the line, and could not be my gear.

You should be aware that calling a line fault with Telstra, specifically 
about your non-telstra ADSL service, at least used to incurr 
'punishment' charge from Telstra to your ISP that the ISP would pass on 
to you. It's an incentive to the ISP to make sure it's customers go away 
and don't bother Telstra directly over the ISP's wholesale ADSL service. 
Conveniently, if you use Telstra ADSL you can get line issues fixed (ok, 
have more hope anyway) - what a surprise. You may be able to force iiNet 
to call in a fault, but it probably won't be easy.

 From what you just said about the DSL modems you've tried, I wouldn't 
be surprised you're having problems - at least if there are any line 
quality issues at all. Mark Gaynor's comment about "built to a price" 
comes to mind - if you buy cheap and nasty, you may well end up getting 
what you pay for. Both undoubtedly work perfectly in the right 
environment, but I wouldn't be surprised if they fell apart on poorer lines.

Then again, for all I know the Billion might have good quality guts and 
there might be something else wrong (or your line might just be 
unspeakably bad). I'd be amazed if the USB DSL modem was anything but 
shoddy, though - yuk.

Craig Ringer

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