The type of modem you install will most probably have very little to do with improving your ability to get ADSL. The problem is the actual phone line length and the technology - ADSL theoretically maxs out at 5km - as you have seen.
Apart from Telecom improving the quality or their lines between your premises and their exchange, the only other thing you could look at is your internal house wiring. Often, homes were wired with simple twisted pair which is not designed for transferring high speed data. You may get a performance increase if you replace this twisted pair stuff with Cat 5 or 6 Ethernet network cable. But, in the scheme of things, your likely to change out about 10~50m of cable in a line that is 5.5km long. So I still very much doubt even changing it out will improve things....

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-adsl@unixathome.org [mailto:owner-adsl@unixathome.org]On
Behalf Of Simon Garner
Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 4:22 PM
To: adsl@lists.unixathome.org
Subject: ADSL modems on dodgy/long lines

Hi all,

I'm trying to get DSL working at a residence which is about 5.5km from
the exchange. I tried to get it working there about four years ago -
this was before the days of filters or Jetstart or purchasing modems,
and the installer came round, installed a splitter and tested it with
the rental Nokia and couldn't get it to sync up.

I thought that surely by now things must have improved and maybe with a
newer modem we'd have more luck. I arranged a self-install, bought a
Dynalink RTA300W and plugged it in and, of course, it couldn't establish
the link.

I am wondering if anybody can suggest if there is a better modem out
there (suitable for 'border line' connections) that would be worth
trying or if this is simply a lost cause. The Telecom line test web page
rates the line at 0.4 to 0.8 Mbps. After enabling the service the
Telecom contractor said it probably wouldn't work but "a high end modem
might help", whatever that means.

The only way we could even get 56k on this line was using a USR
Sportster modem (every other modem I tried couldn't get past 31.2k), so
I've got my eye on a USR Sureconnect DSL router, but before spending any
more money I thought I'd see if anybody else has any experience or
recommendations in the area.

thanks in advance,

-Simon

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