[ale] Line Tester, Polarity, and ADSL

[Joe Steele]

Well, if Star Trek has taught us anything, it's that when all 
else fails, reverse the polarity :-)

It used to be (back in the days when all phone equipment and 
wiring was the property of Ma Bell) that phone equipment was 
intolerant of polarity reversals (I particularly remember that 
touch-tone keypads would not work).  These days, I think most 
consumer phone equipment will work regardless of how it's 
connected, because if the consumer has installed their own 
wiring, it will probably be wrong 50% of the time.

Even in the case of Ethernet hubs and adapters, you often read 
that they have "auto polarity correction".  

So, I would speculate that (at least some) DSL equipment might 
also be tolerant of polarity reversals.  However, I have no 
evidence in support of this.  (Someone else bold enough to 
experiment with their DSL equipment?)

FWIW, A quick search for 'polarity' at http://www.dslreports.com/  
turns up others giving the opinion that polarity is no longer 
important.  If nothing else, I would think there is no middle 
ground -- either it will work fine or not at all.

--Joe

-----Original Message-----
From:	Michael Smith [SMTP:MSmith at webtonetech.com]
Sent:	Sunday, December 17, 2000 11:07 AM
To:	'ale at ale.org'
Subject:	[ale] Line Tester, Polarity, and ADSL

I just bought a line tester about a month ago to test a new line I was
putting in and realized that the polarity throughout my whole house was off.
My question is "How could this affect an ADSL connection?".  I had ADSL for
about a month a year ago and dumped it because I could never get a constant
connection.  Any ideas?  I am thinking about making the plunge again into
ADSL and would like to know if this was a major contributor to my problem.  
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