Any DSL gurus out there???

[Greenmountain Farmer]

Was having problems with mine, turned out one of the phones was bad, trashed it, no more problems

Tom in Vermont

 

[rcrcomputing]

I've had Centurytel DSL now for about 3.5 years. Only one modem has gone bad in that time and they promptly sent me a new one. But when you say "reset" the modem, do you mean turn it off, unplug it, wait 5 minutes, and plug it back up? That's what I've had to do two or three times in 3.5 years.

Yes, they do get "stuck on stupid" sometimes. Though I only unplug them for about 10 seconds.

 

[dmccarty]

I'm no guru and know absolutely nothing about DSL but the wife and I recently made a deal with Sprint, our cell phone carrier to use their "air card" that is their term, not mine. ... as far as we are concerned, it is the only way to go... formerly we used a satellite for internet service and were spending just over $50-month...

Does Sprint charge you if you send/receive more than say 5 GB of data? We thought about using Cell wireless for the computers but our service limits us to 5GB of data per month. I could chew through 5GB in a day. The kids like to watch Ben 10 on the computer. I would hate to have to pay for them to watch Ben 10 because we went over our data limit.

Later,
Dan

 

[The Dougster]

Yes Sir, they do have a limit of 5 gigs per month and I don't have a clue as to how pricey that is... I cannot say for certain but I believe all companies have that limit.... Da warden and I never download movies, etc so we've not been concerned with the limit... Okidokers?

 

[dmccarty]

Yes Sir, they do have a limit of 5 gigs per month and I don't have a clue as to how pricey that is...

Dang. I was hoping you would say you did not have a limit. Even without the kids watching TV shows we would burn through 5GB real fast.

Later,
Dan

 

[teststrips]

Most DSL modems have an easy way to find a rating for Signal to noise ratio (often called Margin). This tells you how much noise is in the line (db) and how much signal you're getting (db) - if the difference isn't around 7 or above, you'll have a very flaky connection. Line attenuation and transmit power numbers are also very helpful.

To get the information from your modem, you'll genearlly browse to it through your web browser - type in a generic password (admin/admin or something like that), and find a page called Transceiver statistics or line stastics. Without knowing what model of DSL modem you have, it is VERY hard to give you exact instructions. Once you get the page, refer to this page Modem Line Statistic Numbers. Verizon Online DSL FAQ - dslreports.com for information on what you are looking at.

the dslreports.com website will probably have information on your exact modem and its generic password for access. I've also found that the "verizon direct" forum under Forums - direct support has technicians which are more knowledgeable than what you typically get via phone support. If you continue to have trouble, you may also want to look up the "presidential" support phone number.... you'll get VERY expirianced, highly trained folks on that number, but you generally don't want to abuse that line + try general support first.

 

[teststrips]

one other thing - the numbers I spoke about in my last post (transceiver stats) were horrible and my connection would slow down more and more if I didn't reboot my modem. Verizon eventually came out and found the connection point on my telephone pole was really oxidated (green rust on copper wires) and they had to basically clean them up. This made my connection really good for about 6 months + my numbers went to crap again... I went to the pole and the wires were green/nasty again. I re-connected them and put some di-electric grease on them to (hopefully) prevent future problems. Its been about a year and I haven't had to mess around again..

Long story short - if you can get to any connection points that happen outside, check them for green oxidation, and if you find it, clean up the connections with some sand paper.

 

[farmerjim]

i wouldn't say i'm a dsl guru but i am a cable splicer/ and was a repair man for at&t. if you keep losing your dsl connection its most likely an outside plant issue. but it could be an inside your home wiring issue, do all your other phones have the filters on them if the dsl tech didn't use a whole house filter in your dmark box usually on the outside of the house? if inside looks ok i would ask them to send out a repair tech who works specifically on the outside facilities. there are many possible issues that could cause a poor dsl connection, teststrips touched on one the oxidized connections at his serving terminal, or at any other terminals from the central office or remote terminal depend on how the outside plant is built in your area. not sure how your service is fed aerial or underground but if its aerial and you being at a greater distance and possibly having an older drop wire(non-twisted pair) the dsl signal may be losing capacity. any high resistance fault on your line may cause an issue w/ dsl, but not so much w/ the voice portion of the line, especially if you're near the end of the cable run. not sure if they will do this but when i was in repair and had a customer w/dsl and they were near the end of the run i would remove any bridge tap that was on their cable pair, it wasn't really policy to do it but it did make the customer happy. basically bridge tap is any portion of cable off the main run (like a side street) that may have your assigned cable pair traveling down it as well. so it has a t connection at the point where it goes down the side street and your service also travels down that street each time the signal passes through a "t" connection and goes down the side street you will lose some capacity, once you get far enough away from your source of the dsl signal (co or remote) the dsl signal will be erroded enough it won't run properly. just for elimination purposes you could try to run a "homerun" wire from the dsl modem to your dmark as mentioned by teststrips and see if it helps if not then i would be calling for a repairman to come out. depending on how verizon dsl is distributed, probably similar to the equipment i work on dsl should run well up to 18k feet from either the central office or remote terminal . good luck, if you need more info don't be afraid to ask, jim

 

[radioman]

As a former video relay technicain/engineer that supported hardware installed on high speed DSL's and cable, I can tell you that many of the TBN'ers here have made alot of good points here. The video hardware that I supported before wass very demanding of the bandwidth space on people high speed in the homes. I see alot of unnesscary calls to fix the hardware when its always related to customers home lines. If it a DSL, the problems always was a bad phone line or corroded junction box. I always tell them if you are willing, try a brand new single piece of phone line wire directly to the outside junction box and try the internet again. 9 times out of 10, it always fixes it. The other 1 time is some other odd issue. This is where I would start before pulling your hair out with calling the help desk of your DSL company.

 

[thatguy]

thanks for all the feedback.. Im still digesting all of this and trying to contact a local DSL person for help..

As a side note (which i should have added in the beginning) - We had similar problems with our home phone line when we first moved in - the line would go dead and the line test with the phone ppl would show a short inside the house - BUT on one call we disconnected the line at the outside box to prove to them that it couldnt be in the house..

After months of trouble shooting they found that we had a bad connection/short in some switch box.. Since then we have not had any problems at all with the home phone line.

again thanks for all of this..

Brian