BroadbanterBanter

help..malformed email address..

The Natural Philosopher — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:13:49 GMT

This kid whose dad promised him one of our kittens stopped by today and
wrote down his email address so we could send a photo..

teh scribble is of the form christianname-space-surname@
vodafoneemail.co.uk

anyone second guess what it SHOULD be,

When BT do FTTC ?

David — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:42:51 GMT

If and when BT put fibre cable in do we automatically get connected for some
of the way to the BT exchange?
Or do we stay on copper all the way?
As it happened to anyone?
I'm wanting to know if they will be after more line rental money and a
connection charge.
Regards
David

Orange Broadband can you use your own Modem Router

Stephen Hammond — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:19:58 GMT

I'd like to use my own router as it has Homeplug built in. If I sign up to
Orange Broadband will I be able to ?

Stephen

Zen - Anything better?

Count de Monet — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 16:14:45 GMT

I will shortly be returning to the UK after a period away.

Before I left I was with Zen on their 50Gb per month package. I was very
happy with the service ETC. I see that the 50Gb package has now come
down in price so is there any reason NOT to return to Zen.

My main requirements are:

Around 50Gb per month with NO traffic shaping, port blocking ETC
Good UK based customer service

Martyn

Phones don't reliably ring after putting in microfilters

Mortimer — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 21:54:40 GMT

I was at a customer's house setting up broadband and put in microfilters in
all the phone sockets that had phones plugged into them, plus one for the
socket that the router is plugged into.

He's reporting that since then, intermittently his phones don't ring or else
give a feeble bleep instead of a proper ring-ring.

Now he may have fallen foul of the REN problem - the RENs of all his phones
add up to more than the REN limit of the line - but why has the problem only
been seen since I've added the filters? Surely it would have existed before
as well.

Router recommendation please

Graham J — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 10:15:07 GMT

Until recently I've been using the Edimax AR-7084A - the old version as
pictured on:

http://www.datakits.co.uk/store/edim...tc-p-4340.html

The new version looks very pretty, but does not have keyhole slots on its
base for wall mounting.

So I'm looking for an alternative ADSL router, which ***must*** have:

1) Access Control List to allow management from several different external
IP addresses (the list should hold at least 5 entries)

2) Dynamic DNS capability

3) Port forwarding

4) Wall mounting capability

Other useful features would be:

a) internal clock updated from NTP server
b) bridge mode
c) error logging
d) wireless variant with superset of same user interface
e) cost around �25

Any recommendations please?

--
Graham J

Isn't DSL technolgy amazing?

bod43 — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 07:15:25 GMT

Amazing DSL technology.

I occasionally check my router logs just to see what is
afoot and on the most recent occasion noticed.

Jul 24 13:16:03.449 BST: %DSLSAR-1-DOWNGRADEDBW: PCR
and SCR for VCD 1 (0/38) has been reduced to 64k 64k due
to insufficient upstream bandwidth

Jul 24 13:18:03.079 BST: %DSLSAR-1-DOWNGRADEDBW: PCR
and SCR for VCD 1 (0/38) has been reduced to 64k 64k
due to insufficient upstream bandwidth

Every three minutes for ever.

The ATM interface is also going up and down a few
times an hour on average. (now realise 28 in 19 hours)

Sure enough upstream signalling rate is 64k.

Speed test says the same, 1.5Mbps down and 52kbps up.

I usually get 3M+ down and 300k up on test, or thereby,
with signalling rates of 8M down and 448k up.

In retrospect realise that minor internet slowness
perception is probably not down to aging computer
or an artefact of my impatience:)

Reed-solomon errors are about 10% of traffic.
These are *corrected* errors. The data ends up being good
without retransmission. There are *zero* uncorrected errors
in 0.5M cells (53 bytes each).

I eventually realised that there was a horrendous noise
audible on the phone line. An extremely harsh
and very loud buzzing noise (audible across the
room as soon as phone is lifted from cradle).
More like clicks with a rate of quite a few a second or
maybe 10s a second. Reminds me of dolphin echo location
clicks as heard on TV.

Phone is unusable, automatic BT line test says it is
broken.

Point is, DSL works even AT ALL. :-)) AMAZING.
I can watch BBCiPlayer and it seems OK. This
has been going on for days. (I more or less never use
the phone for voice calls.)

Here is the technical info in case anyone cares.

Stats are reset every time the line comes up.

ATM0
Alcatel 20190 chipset information
ATU-R (DS) ATU-C (US)
Modem Status: Showtime (DMTDSL_SHOWTIME)
DSL Mode: ITU G.992.1 (G.DMT) Annex A
ITU STD NUM: 0x03 0x3
Vendor ID: 'STMI' 'TSTC'
Vendor Specific: 0x0000 0x0500
Vendor Country: 0x0F 0xB5
Chip ID: C196 (0)
DFE BOM: DFE3.0 Annex A (1)
Capacity Used: 100% 92%
Noise Margin: 4.0 dB 10.0 dB
Output Power: 19.0 dBm 12.5 dBm
Attenuation: 24.5 dB 11.5 dB
Defect Status: None None
Last Fail Code: None
Watchdog Counter: 0xF7
Watchdog Resets: 0
Selftest Result: 0x00
Subfunction: 0x00
Interrupts: 20897 (0 spurious)
PHY Access Err: 0
Activations: 28
LED Status: ON
LED On Time: 100
LED Off Time: 100
Init FW: init_AMR_4.0.018.bin
Operation FW: AMR-E-4.0.018.bin
FW Source: external
FW Version: 4.0.18

Interleave Fast Interleave Fast
Speed (kbps): 5824 0 64 0
Cells: 561292 0 309143 0
Reed-Solomon EC: 56233 0 0 0
CRC Errors: 0 0 0 0
Header Errors: 0 0 0 0
Total BER: 0E-0 0E-0
Leakage Average BER: 0E-0 0E-0
ATU-R (DS) ATU-C (US)
Bitswap: enabled enabled
Bitswap success: 0 0
Bitswap failure: 0 0

LOM Monitoring : Enabled
LOM watch configured for 200 times
LOM appeared continuously for 0 times

DMT Bits Per Bin
000: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 2 2 3 2 3
010: 2 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 0
020: 0 5 6 5 5 7 6 7 7 7 7 8 7 9 7 7
030: 7 7 7 7 7 9 7 7 7 7 7 8 7 7 7 7
040: 0 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 8 7 7 7 7
050: 8 7 7 7 7 7 7 8 7 8 8 8 7 7 8 8
060: 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8
070: 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 7 7 8 8 8 8
080: 8 7 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8
090: 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8
0A0: 8 2 8 8 8 8 8 7 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8
0B0: 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8
0C0: 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8
0D0: 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8
0E0: 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8
0F0: 6 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 7 8 8

###################################
###################################

Here is a partial view of the normal operation
from last year. Sadly I did not record the full details.

Capacity Used: 83% 51%
Noise Margin: 11.0 dB 27.0 dB
Output Power: 18.5 dBm 12.5 dBm
Attenuation: 23.5 dB 10.5 dB

Interleave Fast Interleave Fast
Speed (kbps): 8192 0 448 0

I am about 600 meters as the crow flies from the exchange
and presumably not much further as the electron goes too.

I had considered asking ISP to switch me to "fast" from
"interleave", of course if I had managed to persuade them
I would very likely not have any service at all now.
Normally ping RTT is about 40ms to first hop.

I have previously noticed that I need two microfilters
in series to eliminate presumed DSL noise from the phone.
Phone in second one, DSL in first.

Lookout for KC52 YRY

Jose Sanchez is a pedo — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 11:19:42 GMT

Lookout for KC52 YRY

> It is a blue Lexus. He is a car vandal and smokes spliff while
> driving. He drives around Enfield Island Village every morning.

http://asbcommlogicxnet.myblogtoolbar.com//exe

[OT] Display tech info of streaming audio?

Vinni — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:45:24 GMT

I listen to some internet radio stations.

How can I display the technical info of the audio stream? (Type of
compression, bit rate, etc.)

Is there some software which can do it?

Re: 0800 callthrough

Theo Markettos — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:38:51 GMT

Peter > wrote:
[0800 VOIP DID numbers]
> When you dial an 0800, the recipient of the 0800 call pays some fee
> per minute, and while you indicate you can get an 0800 that charges
> only 2p/min (who, by the way, that's an impressively low fee), that
> does not mean the companies you have used or wish to use will pay a
> similar fee. They may have locked in for several years at 8p/min.

Fair point. That may be the case for the local plumber on a long contract.
But if anyone's setting up a callthrough company the whole business model
depends on these charges being low, otherwise nobody would use them. They
don't care about changing numbers, so they'll pick the cheapest incoming
tariff.

Don't forget the price of receiving the call doesn't include the cost to
forward (eg to a mobile). But for VOIP termination there is no transit
cost. Some examples of people providing 0800 DID numbers:

2p/min plus 5 pounds/month (tenner for connection) was the first hit on
Google for '0800 voip':
http://www.voiptalk.org/products/080...ne+VoIP+Number
2p/min plus 65 quid connection:
http://www.voipon.co.uk/0800-uk-voip...ber-p-483.html

This one looks like a fiver connection plus 2p/min with no monthly fee, or
500 mins for 4.50/month:
http://0800.uk2numbers.co.uk/0800-Numbers.cfm
That might just work for me... anyone have any experiences of
uk2numbers.co.uk? Are they connected with uk2.net?

[Followups set to uk.telecom.voip]

Theo

Linksys WRT610N

bin me — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 16:51:03 GMT

Hi,
Anyone know if this product includes an ADSL2 modem? The description it
seems is more suited to the American market, and I'm not sure I can be
certain if its included or not. Or put another way, as soon as I
connect a BT line (via a filter) to the WRT610N the phone line drops,
and its the second WRT610N with the same problem.

If I need to connect via a ADSL2 modem, any suggestions for make/model?

As soon as I re-connect my old router/modem, everything works, so its
not a problem with my computer/line etc.

Thanks
--
Alan

Incoming slower than outgoing?

Gordon Henderson — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 09:54:58 GMT

Here's an odd one - checking a friends connection for them - They
are out in the sticks and SamKnows & Entanet suggests a line speed of
1.5Mb/sec. No ADSL2+ avalable at the exchange... (4.5Km straight line
distance according to SK)

I've not been on-site so I don't know what their wiring is like yet, but
the chap who installed (another friend) it is unually competent enough.

Despite this, their connection is very poor - incoming is a mere
160,000bps, however, outgoung is 832,000bps! I didn't know incoming would
go that slow! (Yes 160Kb/sec)

Stats off their router (Draytek 2820):

Mode State Up Speed Down Speed SNR Margin Loop Att.
G.DMT SHOWTIME 832000 160000 22 58

Anyone seen anything as bad as this before? Going to ask Enta to do a
line check, but who knows...

Cheers,

Gordon

> Lookout for KC52 YRY

Jose Sanchez is a pedo — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 07:48:57 GMT

> Lookout for KC52 YRY
> It is a blue Lexus. He is a car vandal and smokes spliff while
> driving. He drives around Enfield Island Village every morning. He is a pedo(his step son is behaving in a strange way)

http://asbcommlogicxnet.myblogtoolbar.com//exe

Unplug During Thunderstorm ?

DE — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 17:51:05 GMT

My Sky Netgear router has recently been giving me 5.3 MB download speed
instead of the old 1.5 MB that I had been having.

I live 3-4 miles from the exchange and have 30 feet of cable from the
incoming socket to the router so I am pleased with this speed.

During a thunderstorm should I unplug the router, would I lose the good
speed on reconnection or does Sky set the routers to go back to the most
recent speed ?
Thanks.

DS

Long PAM authentication delays

occassionally-confused@nospam.co.uk — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 10:02:12 GMT

It is a bit of a long shot to be asking here but I wonder if anybody
has come across this before.

I have two email servers (sendmail and popper under FreeBSD) and one
of them connects fast but the other one takes about 20-30 seconds.

Clearly there is some timeout issue somewhere.

The man who looks after the system has been trying to find out but so
far has not found it.

The delay seems to be on any kind of PAM authentication whether it is
via SSH or SMTP auth for sending or POP3.

The same delay is seen if the login is done with a laptop on 3G, and
this eliminates explanations related to somebody logging in over the
LAN to one but not the other.

The two servers are identically configured but not quite identically
because they are on different (fixed) IPs, are at different locations,
and one is rsync-copied to the other overnight.

Any ideas would be much appreciated.

The servers are fed with a feed from Messagelabs (which goes to just
one of them, normally, but I can switch this using the ML control
panel, but I think this is irrelevant.