psgrad

Is she alone in the world? I have a friend who has a problem, so being the nice guy that I am I tried to help. Despite having very few problems over the past 5 years she has now had this problem on and off for several months and it is getting her down. She has a Neuf Box (supplied by SFR) with a big yellow light on it but she would prefer it to be a big green light because that is what makes her the most happy.  She has tried to get it sorted many times by ringing 1023 and talking at length to SFR but with no avail. A nice man from SFR (Neuf Box engineer) called one morning to help but only made matters worse because he thought that the yellow light was a nice colour and green was beyond his capability, for that he would need the assistance of his colleague 'Telecom French' who was currently way over worked and could not make it in the foreseeable future. Her yellow light is a result of her Neuf Box (modem) making continuous short  attempts to gain sync (accés) and not managing to do so due to the bad quality of the line. So here I am, Monsieur nice guy. Armed with a test meter and a piece of tin foil, off I go. A quick check on the line reveals no ground shorts and 54vdc. With the line shorted by the meter I get a current rising from 36mA and settling at around 50mAdc and believe it or not I get a solid ADSL sync light (accés) followed by a solid data light (traffic) but still a yellow light. So now for the fix. I folded up a small sheet of aluminium foil (tin foil) and plug it into the open phone socket on the ADSL filter (ADSL FILTRE PHONE) socket to short out all the connections. Once the line has settled for a minute, rebooting the Nuef Box modem (by unplugging the power connector) the light turned from yellow to green as if by magic and she was once again most happy. All was well with the world (Neuf Box), accés, traffic, tel, (no tv), wifi, (no alarme) and the big green light. So my question is: After over 5 years of good service why has this become a problem? Why does shorting the line out and drawing 50mA or so make it operational? Is the current draw improving the continuity of the line allowing the high frequency ADSL carrier to synchronise? Is the short after the ADSL filter giving a better termination to the line and reducing reflections? Should the line have a 600ohm termination anyway? Is the line current causing a heating/welding effect at bad line joints/connections? In foggy/humid wet weather this does not seem to work, why? So is the answer to short out your filter socket with tin foil to sustain a connection on a failing line???