Awful line quality, responds to toggling the rest ?!

[Sawkins]

My phone line has a lot of crackle and broadband connection is lost on average about once an hour. The crackle is still present right back at the master socket with no other extensions connected.

The weird thing is that pressing the rest on the phone up and down 10 or 20 times reduces the crackle and allows the router to reconnect. If I don't do this, the router won't reconnect, even if rebooted.

Does this suggest anything about the cause of the crackle?

(other facts - there are two cables coming in to the house from the pole. One has a green and black pair and that's the one that is in use. The other has an orange and white pair, this goes to another master socket at the back of the house which is not in use. I posted about that before, here //www.diynot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1419162 )

 

[RF Lighting]

Do you know where you NTE5 socket is?

That is the main master socket into your house, and looks like this:

Once you have found this, you need to undo the two screws on the front, and GENTLY pull the bottom half of the socket off. There will be some wires attatched to the back of it, so be careful not to pull them out.

You will see there is another telephone socket at the bottom right hand side behind the plate you have removed

Try plugging your phone into here, and let us know if the line is clear, or if it is still crackling like before.

 

[Sawkins]

Thanks - it's the older type of socket so it doesn't have a test socket inside. The test that I did was with the phone plugged into the master socket, rather than at the end of an extension as it usually is. The crackle was just the same (even with a different phone).

 

[davelx]

Thanks - it's the older type of socket so it doesn't have a test socket inside. The test that I did was with the phone plugged into the master socket, rather than at the end of an extension as it usually is. The crackle was just the same (even with a different phone).

For that to be a valid test you need to disconnect all the extension wiring from the master socket. If the noise is still there then, it BT's problem and quite likely a fault on the drop cable, esp. if it's the old "twin figure of 8" cable.

 

[Sawkins]

Engineer came and found the connection between the drop cable and the junction box on the pole was on its last legs. It's now replaced and the crackle has gone.

Apparently the 'clicking the phone on and off the hook makes the router sync' thing is characteristic of this kind of fault.

 

[TicklyT]

That is a well known phenomenon. Although there is normally a voltage between the two wires of a telephone line, there is normally no current flowing unless a telephone call is in progress.

A small DC current in the conductors helps maintain a signal transmission path through thin layers of oxides in cable joints.

It was common practise to apply a 'DC wetting current' of a few milliamps to private circuits run over the telephone network to maintain transmission paths. In some cases, that current was monitored to indicate any failures of the circuit.

DC wetting isn't applied to ADSL connections over a phone line, as a DC current flowing in the line is the signal to the exchange that the line is being used to make an analogue phone call.

The crackling or 'frying eggs' sound on the phone line can be a product of the DC current starting to break down oxides in a poor cable joint when the phone handset is lifted.