Any DSL gurus out there???

[thatguy]

I have question for anyone that has experience with a DSL connection

We live in the country (not that far out though) and we have Verizon as our ISP. Technically we are within the limits of DSL availability, but the installer mentioned that based on the way the actual line ran we are on the outer limits of it. He suggested that we use a slower connection speed to get a more stable connection - which i have no problem with

We currently have a 768 kbs connection. Using another ISP on the same verizon line the installer got a very good 1.5 connection before we switched to Verizon.

When it works we typically get close to the stated speed (between 500 and 700) - using the Cnet bandwith test

The problem is that at times we will loose the line connection and have to reset the modem. Sometimes it takes several resets to get a decent signal (ie reset and it connects at below 100, reset again and we are back close to advertised speed). We may have to reset the modem 3 or 4 times an hour - other times it may go for days without resetting. I have not been able to pinpoint any condition for the line dropping.

Sometimes the line will drop and it will try to reconnect for 20 to 30 minutes before it is successful. Other times it will connect at dial up speeds and stay that way for several hours and then finally reconnect at a decent speed. Even using the other ISP on the Verizon line we had the same disconnect/reconnect issues.

I have tried calling the Verizon tech support but all that does it get my blood pressure up (are there any halogen lights near the modem - NO, are their filters on the phone lines NO the dsl is hard wired into a single phone jack, did you use the supplied Cat 5 and telephone cable- YES ----- ie the standard check list stuff).

From asking our neighbors no one else seems to have the problem with the modem disconnecting frequently..

I am going to try and skip the 800 number and find a local engineer to talk with. I can live with the 768 speeds, it just the resetting stuff that I have a problem with.. Before we moved here we never reset the modem in over 2 yrs, but we were in town.

Should I be having the modem reset over and over again due to a dropped signal? Is it a line problem, modem problem?

Any suggestions for resolving the problem? Or what is causing the problem?

thanks

Brian

 

[MikeInEburg]

I would try another DSL modem... they do fail from time to time. Mine did the same thing - would work for a couple of days then be a nusance for a week. Replaced and life has been good since.
Mike

 

[polo1665]

I too have Verizon DSL and live on the outskirts of the availability. The first time they hooked us up it would not work at all, after speaking to thier engineers they were able to provide us with service. I occasionally have to reset the modem (once every 30 uses perhaps). I would think that you have either a line or a modem problem. Is there a local Verizon office you can call to speak directly to an engineer, that might be your best bet. Sorry I could not help more. It's a pretty expensive service, I can understand your frustration.

Mark

 

[Tig]

In my humble experience trouble shooting line drop problems in areas where DSL does work for the neighbors. I use the following procedure.
1) Isolate the home wiring. Disconnect all other jacks from the demarcation point.
2) Check polarity. (requires a tester but shouldn't be critical).
3) Listen to the phone line for any noise. Call another land line to do this.
At this point you have done due diligence in inspecting your premises for fault.
Now it's time to look at the modem. If it's a rental save yourself the grief of hours on the phone. Unplug it and call the ISP to tell them the green light is out and won't come back on. I've found the only other way to get a rental replaced is to endure flaky performance for years until you flip your lid on the poor soul who answers the phone at the help desk. I feel worse about doing that than I do unplugging the modem, so no apologies.
If you can, borrow a neighbors modem AND their power supply (wall wart). That will test the bad modem theory. The only thing left is the wire from your house to the CO. That belongs to the phone company. Call them.
One more question. Is the modem silent when you listen to if closely?
Good luck.

 

[dmccarty]

We have DSL and we are the last house on the line. And at the limit of the service. Our connection drops pretty often around 9:00-10:00 every morning plus or minus an hour. Usually its not noticeable unless I'm using a VPN connection. The DSL connection often just goes out for a second or so just long enough to kill the VPN connection.

We think its something our service profider is doing.

On the other hand we have had problems with the modems. We had a batch of problems that went away when I moved the modem from the top of an old CRT monitor. The CRT was heating up the modem and causing line problems.

We also have had the modems just go bad. In 5 years I bet we have gone through 3-4 modems.

One set of problems was from a squirral nest in the service box down the street! The tree rat would move around the wires so that we would get a connection and sometimes loose the connection.

Later,
Dan

 

[California]

Go to Goodwill and get a few $3.99 modems to test by substitution. And plug each one directly into the outdoors box where the line comes in from the pole. That will distinguish whether it is your problem or the telco's.

Once you determine it isn't you, try to talk to the installer rather than the telco's Help Desk. Drive around and find his truck.

I have been successful several times getting switched back to a clean line after 'my' specific cable was assigned to some new customer and I got dropped back to an unused noisy cable. Each time, the installer said he was the one who did the dirty deed because his records didn't show I was a DSL subscriber so I shouldn't have noticed anything different.

The guy who actually climbs the pole will help you get good service, in contrast to some kid in India who is reading from a script that your telco gave him. "I can't help until you reinstall Windows...".

 

[rcrcomputing]

I am unfamiliar with verizon, but with AT&T, you can call phone support (not dsl support) and have a "line check" done. Their equipment is pretty good with this. They may show the problem is on their end and fix it. End of story.

If they say the problem is on your end, be aware, the jack in the demark (the box where the phone line comes into the house) can be bad and still show as "your end", though it is not. At this point try the next step.

Eliminate the inside wiring by hooking directly to the demark. When you take the cover off the customer side of the demark, you will see a jack you can unplug so you can plug the router directly into it, thus bypassing the house wiring.

Last, try another router.

 

[The Dougster]

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... We disconnected satellite and now use Sprint for home, the ranch, traveling down the highway (laptop) and pay only $60-month for the service.... as best I can tell, it is faster than the satellite service.... It is my understanding that almost all cell phone companies now offer this service.
It is also my understanding that using your own air card is much safer than using wifi (airports, resturants, etc)... Give'r a try...

 

[DANOCHEESE]

Take a close look at your inside wiring. If possible runa line out to the demarc and test. You may be able to log into the modem and look at the performance.

Also jsut call your provider and tell thme you are ahving issues. Keep bugging them thye will do something. IF they are hopping pairs they ahev other issues and enoguh trouble tickets on section of line will generate a repalce order. Well not with Verizon as they are done with copper.

 

[Bird]

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.

 

[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