(This is a repost of an earlier mail that got lost in the moderation system. 
Bob asked me to send it again; my second email might make more sense with this 
information)

It certainly could be your BT line, or perhaps the wiring inside the home.

I've dealt with a similar problem in the past (for my parents), where they 
suffered from frequent disconnections & resyncs, maybe every 5 mins, between 
4PM and 9pm. The problem was probably an increase in interference around dusk, 
perhaps due to the extra interference you get then generally, and perhaps due 
to other households turning ADSL modems on.

The solution then was
 - Use the master socket, not the extension
 - Use a good filtered faceplate, rather than one on a short cord.
   I bought one from ADSL Nation
 - Disconnect the ring wire between the master & extension socket
   Yes this made an improvement even with the modem plugged into
   the master socket.

I found a couple of sites useful. The first is a general site on ADSL:

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/troubleshooting.htm
http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/frogstats.php
http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/socket.htm

With such a long line, this page is probably going to be most useful:
http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/lowSNR.htm

The other site is a forum for users of my ISP (PlusNet). On there is a very 
helpful bunch of people who help track down problems on lines.
It might not be of direct use to you with AOL, but just looking at 
problems/solutions encountered by other might help - particularly the steps 
they go through to troubleshoot.

http://community.plus.net/blog/2007/07/02/broadband-speed-faults-how-to-diagnose/
http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/board,4.0.html

Often the advice is to start looking at the ADSL line statistics available 
through your router, and to use BT's speed checker.
The "kitz" site has plenty of details about how to extract the statistics from 
a variety of router/modems.

>From the line statistics, the "downstream attenuation" figures will give you 
>an idea of how long your BT line actually is
(rather than the as-the-crow-flies distance), and this page will give you an 
estimate for how fast your connection could be.

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/max_speed_calc.php

I just tried putting numbers in to get an estimate for your length of line, and 
can't get *anything*!

  Mike 

--- In [email protected], "wilcox_mike_01" <li...@...> wrote:
>
> The best help when trying the suggestion below is also to try to quantify 
> whether it has helped or not - but not by your download speeds.
> 
> It's better to know the line statistics (the attenuation and noise-margin 
> figures) and the synchronisation speeds, and compare these figures from tests 
> with the router plugged into the extension, and plugged into the master 
> socket's test socket.
> 
> The line stats are dependent only on the line between your modem/router and 
> the exchange, while download speeds also end up depending on other users in 
> your village, and on AOL.
> 
>    Mike
> 
> 
> --- In [email protected], Bob Wood <bobdotwood@> wrote:
> > 
> > If your internal wiring is faulty, it could make an enormous
> > difference.  But in the first instance you need to connect your router
> > to the BT 'emergency socket' in the back of the Master Socket to find
> > out whether the problem is inside your home or outside.  If the
> > problem is outside the house, using a wireless connection between your
> > modem and computer will make little difference, if any.
> >
>


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