Level of the DSL pilot tone?

[Joerg]

Hello Folks,

After two frustrating hours on the phone with my ISP, dodging their
excuses and their "Oh, it's got to be this other problem" I want to be
able to diagnose some DSL stuff for myself. IOW measure DSL signal
levels versus noise. AFAIK there is a pilot tone at 276kHz or sometimes
138kHz for downstream and another one at 69kHz for upstream.

Question: What are the min-max levels for those pilot tones?

Reason why I want to be able do that is the extreme wait on the phone
when something happens, questionable competence of support personnel,
and their tendency to offload a problem to their HW service. "Oh, it's
got to be your line" and then they try to make you pay. I know for sure
that my current email receiving issues are not telco HW related but it
sure would be nice to tell them "Hey, I measured these dBV levels for
the pilot tones so it can't be".

 

[Frank Bemelman]

Hello Folks,

After two frustrating hours on the phone with my ISP, dodging their
excuses and their "Oh, it's got to be this other problem" I want to be
able to diagnose some DSL stuff for myself. IOW measure DSL signal levels
versus noise. AFAIK there is a pilot tone at 276kHz or sometimes 138kHz
for downstream and another one at 69kHz for upstream.

Question: What are the min-max levels for those pilot tones?

Reason why I want to be able do that is the extreme wait on the phone when
something happens, questionable competence of support personnel, and their
tendency to offload a problem to their HW service. "Oh, it's got to be
your line" and then they try to make you pay. I know for sure that my
current email receiving issues are not telco HW related but it sure would
be nice to tell them "Hey, I measured these dBV levels for the pilot tones
so it can't be".

Doubt if that makes a difference to them. But if you can surf the
web, your DSL line is clearly working. That should be a strong enough
argument.

I had similar problems with providers. What fixed it, was changing to
another provider, and yes, it costs more. I can't really say their
helpdesk is better, because everything simply works brilliant - no
need to call them. Even the bills are correct and always on time.

Same thing with hosters. Tried a few cheap ones and they all really
drove me mad. Now I pay a bit more, but everything works like a
charm.

 

[John Jardine.]

Hello Folks,

After two frustrating hours on the phone with my ISP, dodging their
excuses and their "Oh, it's got to be this other problem" I want to be
able to diagnose some DSL stuff for myself. IOW measure DSL signal
levels versus noise. AFAIK there is a pilot tone at 276kHz or sometimes
138kHz for downstream and another one at 69kHz for upstream.

Question: What are the min-max levels for those pilot tones?

Reason why I want to be able do that is the extreme wait on the phone
when something happens, questionable competence of support personnel,
and their tendency to offload a problem to their HW service. "Oh, it's
got to be your line" and then they try to make you pay. I know for sure
that my current email receiving issues are not telco HW related but it
sure would be nice to tell them "Hey, I measured these dBV levels for
the pilot tones so it can't be".

It doesn't work.
If they try stalling on a "it's your equipment/line/town ..." script, I
usually lie and tell 'em I'm monitoring a comm's analyser that's saying the
equipment and line are OK. Just blows by 'em, they move onto the next moron
script.
john

 

[Jim Thompson]

Hello Folks,

After two frustrating hours on the phone with my ISP, dodging their
excuses and their "Oh, it's got to be this other problem" I want to be
able to diagnose some DSL stuff for myself. IOW measure DSL signal
levels versus noise. AFAIK there is a pilot tone at 276kHz or sometimes
138kHz for downstream and another one at 69kHz for upstream.

Question: What are the min-max levels for those pilot tones?

Reason why I want to be able do that is the extreme wait on the phone
when something happens, questionable competence of support personnel,
and their tendency to offload a problem to their HW service. "Oh, it's
got to be your line" and then they try to make you pay. I know for sure
that my current email receiving issues are not telco HW related but it
sure would be nice to tell them "Hey, I measured these dBV levels for
the pilot tones so it can't be".

Won't do you any good...

If you're too dumb to flip burgers, you pump gas

If you're too dumb to pump gas, you work for Fry's

If you're too dumb to work for Fry's, you answer phones for an ISP ;-)

I got so tired of getting the, "Did you reboot your PC", then, "Did
you reboot your router", followed by, "Did you reboot your cable
modem", that I wrote to executives at Cox... alluding to how I would
work to get them declared a utility by the Corporation Commission, and
thus subject to refunding for failure to provide service. That
apparently got me on an "honesty list" where they just 'fess up when
there's a system problem.

Like yesterday I received....

"Dear Cox Customer,

As part of a routine maintenance earlier today, August 15, we had an
issue affecting some Cox.net email boxes. As a result, you may have
had difficulty accessing your mailbox earlier today, and you may be
seeing fewer messages in your mailbox at this time.

By late Tuesday evening or early Wednesday morning we expect all of
your messages to have been delivered, including any sent during the
day today. No mail should have been lost as a result of this issue. If
you did not receive an email you were expecting by Wednesday
afternoon, please contact the sender and ask them to re-send.

At this time all restoration methods are underway, and there is no
need to call.

Thanks for your patience,
Cox Communications"

I just loved that "...there is no need to call" ;-)

...Jim Thompson

 

[Joerg]

Hello Frank,

Doubt if that makes a difference to them. But if you can surf the
web, your DSL line is clearly working. That should be a strong enough
argument.

T'is what I told him. But you are right, it wouldn't have made a
difference if I had the levels because this guys didn't seem to have a
clue. After I finally busted my way through some corporate barrier an
engineer "found" that they are having issues with a server and a whole
crew is currently pulling a late shift to fix it. He also said my SNR
was kind of low which I'd like to see for myself. But it's certainly not
the root cause of not getting emails.

I had similar problems with providers. What fixed it, was changing to
another provider, and yes, it costs more. I can't really say their
helpdesk is better, because everything simply works brilliant - no
need to call them. Even the bills are correct and always on time.

Well, it's better in the EU. More competition. Here, you are often
dealing with de-facto monopolies.

Same thing with hosters. Tried a few cheap ones and they all really
drove me mad. Now I pay a bit more, but everything works like a
charm.

I use 1and1. Very nice. Only a few hours outage in two years but the
east was being pummeled by snow storms when that happened.

 

[Joerg]

Hello John,

It doesn't work.
If they try stalling on a "it's your equipment/line/town ..." script, I
usually lie and tell 'em I'm monitoring a comm's analyser that's saying the
equipment and line are OK. Just blows by 'em, they move onto the next moron
script.

Ah, great idea!

 

[Joerg]

Hello Jim,

I got so tired of getting the, "Did you reboot your PC", then, "Did
you reboot your router", followed by, "Did you reboot your cable
modem", that I wrote to executives at Cox... alluding to how I would
work to get them declared a utility by the Corporation Commission, and
thus subject to refunding for failure to provide service. That
apparently got me on an "honesty list" where they just 'fess up when
there's a system problem.

Maybe I should do that now.

Like yesterday I received....

"Dear Cox Customer,

As part of a routine maintenance earlier today, August 15, we had an
issue affecting some Cox.net email boxes. As a result, you may have
had difficulty accessing your mailbox earlier today, and you may be
seeing fewer messages in your mailbox at this time.

By late Tuesday evening or early Wednesday morning we expect all of
your messages to have been delivered, including any sent during the
day today. No mail should have been lost as a result of this issue. If
you did not receive an email you were expecting by Wednesday
afternoon, please contact the sender and ask them to re-send.

At this time all restoration methods are underway, and there is no
need to call.

Thanks for your patience,
Cox Communications"

I just loved that "...there is no need to call" ;-)

Just received a similar one from IEEE about why the virtual communities
are incommunicado for a while. They, ahem, gasp, forgot to renew the
domain registration. Ouch!

 

[Eeyore]

Hello Folks,

After two frustrating hours on the phone with my ISP, dodging their
excuses and their "Oh, it's got to be this other problem" I want to be
able to diagnose some DSL stuff for myself. IOW measure DSL signal
levels versus noise. AFAIK there is a pilot tone at 276kHz or sometimes
138kHz for downstream and another one at 69kHz for upstream.

Question: What are the min-max levels for those pilot tones?

Reason why I want to be able do that is the extreme wait on the phone
when something happens, questionable competence of support personnel,
and their tendency to offload a problem to their HW service. "Oh, it's
got to be your line" and then they try to make you pay. I know for sure
that my current email receiving issues are not telco HW related but it
sure would be nice to tell them "Hey, I measured these dBV levels for
the pilot tones so it can't be".

You have my sympathies. After nearly 2 months of doing battle with my ISP, I'm
off to another one.

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

Won't do you any good...

If you're too dumb to flip burgers, you pump gas

If you're too dumb to pump gas, you work for Fry's

If you're too dumb to work for Fry's, you answer phones for an ISP ;-)

I got so tired of getting the, "Did you reboot your PC", then, "Did
you reboot your router", followed by, "Did you reboot your cable
modem", that I wrote to executives at Cox... alluding to how I would
work to get them declared a utility by the Corporation Commission, and
thus subject to refunding for failure to provide service. That
apparently got me on an "honesty list" where they just 'fess up when
there's a system problem.

Like yesterday I received....

"Dear Cox Customer,

As part of a routine maintenance earlier today, August 15, we had an
issue affecting some Cox.net email boxes. As a result, you may have
had difficulty accessing your mailbox earlier today, and you may be
seeing fewer messages in your mailbox at this time.

By late Tuesday evening or early Wednesday morning we expect all of
your messages to have been delivered, including any sent during the
day today. No mail should have been lost as a result of this issue. If
you did not receive an email you were expecting by Wednesday
afternoon, please contact the sender and ask them to re-send.

At this time all restoration methods are underway, and there is no
need to call.

Thanks for your patience,
Cox Communications"

I just loved that "...there is no need to call" ;-)

Sounds like my ISP too ( shortly to be ex-ISP )
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/11/plusnet_email_fiasco/

Graham

 

[Martine Riddle]

Won't do you any good...

If you're too dumb to flip burgers, you pump gas

If you're too dumb to pump gas, you work for Fry's

If you're too dumb to work for Fry's, you answer phones for an ISP ;-)

I got so tired of getting the, "Did you reboot your PC", then, "Did
you reboot your router", followed by, "Did you reboot your cable
modem", that I wrote to executives at Cox... alluding to how I would
work to get them declared a utility by the Corporation Commission, and
thus subject to refunding for failure to provide service. That
apparently got me on an "honesty list" where they just 'fess up when
there's a system problem.

Like yesterday I received....

"Dear Cox Customer,

As part of a routine maintenance earlier today, August 15, we had an
issue affecting some Cox.net email boxes. As a result, you may have
had difficulty accessing your mailbox earlier today, and you may be
seeing fewer messages in your mailbox at this time.

By late Tuesday evening or early Wednesday morning we expect all of
your messages to have been delivered, including any sent during the
day today. No mail should have been lost as a result of this issue. If
you did not receive an email you were expecting by Wednesday
afternoon, please contact the sender and ask them to re-send.

At this time all restoration methods are underway, and there is no
need to call.

Thanks for your patience,
Cox Communications"

I just loved that "...there is no need to call" ;-)

...Jim Thompson

Sounds sortof like Earthlink when I had them. They had a very good system
status page that I would go to thru Juno when things went south.

Cheers

 

[Frank Bemelman]

Hello Frank,


T'is what I told him. But you are right, it wouldn't have made a
difference if I had the levels because this guys didn't seem to have a
clue. After I finally busted my way through some corporate barrier an
engineer "found" that they are having issues with a server and a whole
crew is currently pulling a late shift to fix it. He also said my SNR was
kind of low which I'd like to see for myself. But it's certainly not the
root cause of not getting emails.

I don't know if you are far away from the hub. Here, when you apply for
(A)DSL they first measure/test your line, also to see what the maximum
possible speed will be. The highest speed abo's aren't possible when
you're too far away from the hub, or when there is some other issue
with the actual copper wires

 

[Tony Williams]

........... He also said my SNR was kind of low which I'd like
to see for myself.

Do you have a router? I just point my browser at the
router's dq address and it returns all its measured
connection diagnostics, as a web page....... upstream/
/downstream connection speeds, transmit/receive power
levels, SNR's, round trip ping time to my ISP, etc.

It is presently showing.

Reserved Bandwidth (kbit/s) up/down = 288/2272.

Output Power (dBm) up/down = 12.0/18.0.

Attenuation (dB) up/down = 26.0/41.0.

Noise Margin (dB) up/down = 28.0/20.5.

Ping Time (20 bytes) = 14mS.

 

[Rene Tschaggelar]

Hello Folks,

After two frustrating hours on the phone with my ISP, dodging their
excuses and their "Oh, it's got to be this other problem" I want to be
able to diagnose some DSL stuff for myself. IOW measure DSL signal
levels versus noise. AFAIK there is a pilot tone at 276kHz or sometimes
138kHz for downstream and another one at 69kHz for upstream.

Question: What are the min-max levels for those pilot tones?

Reason why I want to be able do that is the extreme wait on the phone
when something happens, questionable competence of support personnel,
and their tendency to offload a problem to their HW service. "Oh, it's
got to be your line" and then they try to make you pay. I know for sure
that my current email receiving issues are not telco HW related but it
sure would be nice to tell them "Hey, I measured these dBV levels for
the pilot tones so it can't be".

Joerg,
your internet appears to be working. Why don't you
just get another account ? Such as from gmx ?
http://www.gmx.net.
Costs nothing, and they also provide an SMTP for
authenticated remote users and a web interface.

Rene

 

[Joerg]

Hello Frank,

I don't know if you are far away from the hub. Here, when you apply for
(A)DSL they first measure/test your line, also to see what the maximum
possible speed will be. The highest speed abo's aren't possible when
you're too far away from the hub, or when there is some other issue
with the actual copper wires

Same here. I looked at the analyzer when they did the line check before
signing me up and the SNR looked surprisingly good. However, in the US
there is an unfortunate habit in that contractors often bury the phone
lines in the same trench with the power lines. All it takes is a noisy
new load on the power grid (not necessarily in your own house) and the
SNR goes to pots.

 

[Joerg]

Hello Tony,

Do you have a router? I just point my browser at the
router's dq address and it returns all its measured
connection diagnostics, as a web page....... upstream/
/downstream connection speeds, transmit/receive power
levels, SNR's, round trip ping time to my ISP, etc.

It is presently showing.

Reserved Bandwidth (kbit/s) up/down = 288/2272.

Output Power (dBm) up/down = 12.0/18.0.

Attenuation (dB) up/down = 26.0/41.0.

Noise Margin (dB) up/down = 28.0/20.5.

Ping Time (20 bytes) = 14mS.

Interesting. I don't know if my router (SMC Barricade) has that feature,
have to check. The Westell Wirespeed modem is a separate box and AFAIR
not very "talkative" to end customers.

 

[Jim Thompson]

Hello Frank,


Same here. I looked at the analyzer when they did the line check before
signing me up and the SNR looked surprisingly good. However, in the US
there is an unfortunate habit in that contractors often bury the phone
lines in the same trench with the power lines.

Huh? That's certainly not legal in Arizona.

All it takes is a noisy
new load on the power grid (not necessarily in your own house) and the
SNR goes to pots.

...Jim Thompson

 

[Joerg]

Hello Rene,

Joerg,
your internet appears to be working. Why don't you
just get another account ? Such as from gmx ?
http://www.gmx.net.

Well, I have a web site hosting provider and email through there. It's
currently set to forwarding and probably this weekend I'll swing it
around to a direct connection into my email client because they are more
reliable.

Costs nothing, and they also provide an SMTP for
authenticated remote users and a web interface.

Email through a web interface would not work for me as they typically
limit files sizes to 1-2MB. CAD stuff is larger than that.

Surprise: Just got an automated message that they have fixed my line. I
did hear a truck rumble at the end of our street, maybe some connection
got a bit loose. But it has nothing to do with missing or returned
email and I wish their customer phone support folks would be a bit more
educated about how things work. Wanted to look at the online site they
mentioned to see what the problem was: "The online Repair Center is
currently unavailable." Duh! Guess the next thing broke :-(

 

[Joerg]

Hello Jim,

Huh? That's certainly not legal in Arizona.

Before building a fence a few years ago I dutifully called Digalert
(wish all the "pros" would also do that, sigh...) and when the phone
guys traced it along the same path as the utility I asked them whether
that means it's the same trench. "Yup, like usual".

 

[Frank Bemelman]

Do you have a router? I just point my browser at the
router's dq address and it returns all its measured
connection diagnostics, as a web page....... upstream/
/downstream connection speeds, transmit/receive power
levels, SNR's, round trip ping time to my ISP, etc.

It is presently showing.

Reserved Bandwidth (kbit/s) up/down = 288/2272.

Output Power (dBm) up/down = 12.0/18.0.

Attenuation (dB) up/down = 26.0/41.0.

Noise Margin (dB) up/down = 28.0/20.5.

Ping Time (20 bytes) = 14mS.

Hey, that is interesting, I have this:

DSL Flavour = ADSL over POTS
Reserved Bandwidth (kbit/s) up/down = 512 / 3072
Uptime = 19d 20:36
kBytes Tx/Rx = 258885 / 1967996
Output Power (dBm) up/down = 11 / 20
Attenuation (dB) up/down = 10 / 21
Noise Margin (dB) up/down = 23 / 30
Vendor Id (local/remote) = ALCB / BDCM
Loss of signal (local/remote) = 0 / 0
Loss of power (local/remote) = 0 / 0
Loss of framing (local/remote) = 0 / 0
Errored Seconds (local/remote) = 0 / 0
Loss of link (remote) = 0

Not that I have any idea how to interpret this.

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

Hello Tony,


Interesting. I don't know if my router (SMC Barricade) has that feature,
have to check. The Westell Wirespeed modem is a separate box and AFAIR
not very "talkative" to end customers.

http://192.168.100.1/ gives me some data about my cable modem:


Name WebSTAR DPC2100
Modem Serial Number 201455763
Cable Modem MAC Address 00:11:e6:c6:f5:1b
Hardware Version 2.0
Software Version v2.0.2r1244-050319
Receive Power Level -5.4 dBmV
Transmit Power Level 38.5 dBmV
Cable Modem Status Operational








--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida