Copper or aluminium phone Line

[christoffe93]

Hi guys was wondering if anyone one knows if there is any visual way to tell if my house is using a aluminium phone line or a copper one, I've been getting internet problems and need to eliminate a aluminium line causing noise problems.

 

[jsmithepa]

Copper wires = gold color, aluminum = metalic white.

 

[christoffe93]

The cables covered in a black coating so there's no way of being able to see and its not like i can go cutting into it either.

 

[everlost]

Somewhere in your house is a junction box, where the cable from outside splits to your rooms. In that box you should see several conductors striped and tied to pins. Here the metal will be visible.

 

[jsmithepa]

96.5% has nothing to do with your house wiring but with the outside wiring, house to nearest CO, what the industry call THE LAST MILE, which are old analog-era wiring, and those, there is nothing you can do until you get a solid failure, intermittent and the phone company is gonna drag their feet.

 

[rich1051414]

You'll need to unscrew one of the boxes from the wall and check. A good electrician would not do this, but copper plated(or alloy) wires selling as solid copper wires for the cheap exist... basically 98% of the cheap china wire market.
The only way to know is to measure a length, check the resistance, and compare your results to a chart for the metal it claims to be.

 

[christoffe93]

Damn seems like a lot of hassle i'm basically running out of options to figure out whats going on. Basically to cut the story short my internet will run fast then i will get random Glitch pages where they will keep loading and do nothing, if i was to click off then try and open a new tab the page will just say about blank and it sometimes makes the page go white and lock up saying page not responding. I've had this problem since October last year and nothing will fix it, I've had different windows installations, different browsers, RAM, GPU, SSD firmware, 3 ISP providers, different category Ethernet cables, 3 different routers, different master socket, different profiles on my ISP using interleaving and fastpath, switched from SSD to HDD. The only thing thats not been changed is the outside line, motherboard, CPU and the power supply.

 

[rich1051414]

As a quick test, if you have enough wire to do it, is run a phone cable straight to the box outside your house for a temporary test. Sounds like you are getting packet loss, which could very easily happen on a noisy phone line. I assume you ARE using phone line filters right? That will keep the voice traffic seperate from the data traffic, to keep them from stepping on each other.
You could also see if any appliances kick on, like the microwave, when packet loss kicks in.

 

[Michael_1106]

You would think that Aluminum is better then Copper when using phone lines due to the ability for sound (vibration, frequency) to travel faster through it.
EXAMPLES of the speed of sound through materials...
Air at 40oC -355 m/s
Copper - 4600 m/s
Aluminum - 6320 m/s
Conductivity is determined by the types of atoms in a material.
Aluminum 61%
Copper 100% ( A 100% rating does not indicate no resistance.)
Silver (Pure) 105%
Aluminum has better sound wave flow, but poorer electric flow

Dial up SHOULD work better, faster and smoother through Aluminum. HOWEVER: Aluminum expands almost 40% more than copper when heated and cooled. This can greatly affect electrical connections. YOU MAY being having more problems during summer time then winter.

YES, you can use 2 modems, but you also need 2 separate phone lines. That its a pricey way to get a little more speed. And it doesn't improve ping times. Sorry for lack of detail. GET TWO PHONE LINES and TWO DIAL UP MODEMS, double your speed. Set them to dial at same time.
Also you can make a single dial up modem faster by adjusting settings.
How to make dialup faster 921.6 kbps 2012
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHWzpzFdTtU

 

[gbb0330]

You would think that Aluminum is better then Copper when using phone lines due to the ability for sound (vibration, frequency) to travel faster through it.
EXAMPLES of the speed of sound through materials...
Air at 40oC -355 m/s
Copper - 4600 m/s
Aluminum - 6320 m/s
Dial up SHOULD work better, faster and smoother through Aluminum. HOWEVER: Aluminum expands almost 40% more than copper when heated and cooled. This can greatly affect electrical connections. YOU MAY being having more problems during summer time then winter. GET TWO PHONE LINES and TWO DIAL UP MODEMS, double your speed. Set them to dial at same time.
Also you can make a single dial up modem faster by adjusting settings.
How to make dialup faster 921.6 kbps 2012
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHWzpzFdTtU

electricity is being transmitted through the wires, not sound

"GET TWO PHONE LINES and TWO DIAL UP MODEMS, double your speed" - it does not work like that

 

[Michael_1106]

YES, you can use 2 modems, but you also need 2 separate phone lines. That its a pricey way to get a little more speed. And it doesn't improve ping times. Sorry for lack of detail.

I KNOW electricity is not sound, I just gave a basic answer, but that is why I said "Example" (Meaning how the material differs is function.) Sorry for lack of detail.
Conductivity is determined by the types of atoms in a material.
Aluminum 61%
Copper 100% ( A 100% rating does not indicate no resistance.)
Silver (Pure) 105%
Aluminum has better sound wave flow, but poorer electric flow