Most people seem to find that the Alcatel/Thompson modems work the best on dodgy line conditions. My line is some distance from the exchange (4-5km, can't remember exactly) and I get 1.5mbit connection speeds and no issues with dropouts at all. Ah, the old USR modems were pretty damn sweet weren't they! however I'm not sure about the reliabilty of the USR ADSL modems, I have not seen any in action.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-adsl@unixathome.org [mailto:owner-adsl@unixathome.org]On
Behalf Of Simon Garner
Sent: Wednesday, 14 January 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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