Monday, February 21, 2005
Trouble with broadband
I've had ADSL broadband for over a year now, and barring a few brief moments of down-time it's been reliable and trouble-free. Last month we decided to go digital with our TV as well, and installed a Sky box. Now, Sky require that this box is connected to a telephone line at all times, so that they can collect billing information etc from the box itself. It was easy enough to run an extension lead from the telephone socket to the Sky box, but ever since then our broadband connection has become extremely unreliable. BT (my BB provider) tell me that their tests indicate there is interference on the incoming signal, which could be due to the recently installed extension cable. Their recommended solution is to use Cat 5 cabling for the extension, which is shielded, unlike plain old telephone cable. Fair enough, for someone like me: telling me to fit Cat 5 cabling means I start looking around for some and then get a cable made up, but it's not so easy for a less techy user. Cat 5 cable is easy to buy, but not with telephone connectors on the end. My second thought is that ADSL broadband, whilst being quite a remarkable technology when you think about what it does, is still quite fragile, and is subject to the random interference that affects our relatively old-fashioned telephone systems. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, so having high quality cabling in the street is not much good when the wiring in the house is actually incapable of supporting high speed digital data. Apparently my cheap ADSL filters could be contributing to my problems, but how was I to know that there are different grades of filter? I just fitted what came with my router! I'm just wondering how far the broadband revolution will go before we need some of genuine revolution of our aging telephone network. Might WiMax be the answer?
I've had ADSL broadband for over a year now, and barring a few brief moments of down-time it's been reliable and trouble-free. Last month we decided to go digital with our TV as well, and installed a Sky box. Now, Sky require that this box is connected to a telephone line at all times, so that they can collect billing information etc from the box itself. It was easy enough to run an extension lead from the telephone socket to the Sky box, but ever since then our broadband connection has become extremely unreliable. BT (my BB provider) tell me that their tests indicate there is interference on the incoming signal, which could be due to the recently installed extension cable. Their recommended solution is to use Cat 5 cabling for the extension, which is shielded, unlike plain old telephone cable. Fair enough, for someone like me: telling me to fit Cat 5 cabling means I start looking around for some and then get a cable made up, but it's not so easy for a less techy user. Cat 5 cable is easy to buy, but not with telephone connectors on the end. My second thought is that ADSL broadband, whilst being quite a remarkable technology when you think about what it does, is still quite fragile, and is subject to the random interference that affects our relatively old-fashioned telephone systems. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, so having high quality cabling in the street is not much good when the wiring in the house is actually incapable of supporting high speed digital data. Apparently my cheap ADSL filters could be contributing to my problems, but how was I to know that there are different grades of filter? I just fitted what came with my router! I'm just wondering how far the broadband revolution will go before we need some of genuine revolution of our aging telephone network. Might WiMax be the answer?
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(c) 2003-2005 Russell Beale
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