Posted by arthur p bloom on Friday, May 14, 2004 at 0:40AM :
In Reply to: OT. Modems for Dial Up Connection posted by Paul(in NY) on Thursday, May 13, 2004 at 7:09PM :
Paul:
In my previous post, I suggested several things that Verizon could do. I forgot to state the obvious, and elementary, solution first - that is to have your line checked by repair service, or a friendly competent field technician, for basic metallic troubles. This is akin to a doctor checking a patient's blood pressure and temperature before doing any diagnosis.
Ask the repairman to do a stress test with his Sidekick meter. You may just have some easily fixable noise, unbalance, power influence, or corroded connections. You must also ask them to replace any carbon protectors with new gas-tube ones. These are the little fuse-type thingies at the side of your house, that protect you from lightning strikes and power crosses from downed power wires. The old style carbon protectors (sort of a sparkplug type device) are notorious for causing noise that cannot be detected by the ear, but can be detected by a modem or test gear.
You must ensure that all grounds are bonded together. This includes water, power, cable tv, and telephone grounds. Make sure that any big, noisy electrical stuff is on a different power feed/ circuit breaker from the computer.
If you have the newer type Network Interface that uses a test jack ("Plug a known working phone in and then call Repair Service") the contacts in the jack may be at fault. They are cheap and have little, if any, gold content.
Likewise, there may be some easily measured and repaired basic problems with your inside wire, jacks, or even the cord that connects your computer to the network. Cords are the most notorious culprits when it comes to poor (noisy) connections, either voice or data. You might also have some left-in, currently unused, wiring and jacks that can be eliminated. The wire that feeds your computer should be a "home run" from the interface to the jack for the modem, and it should be category 3 at a minimum, and preferably cat 5. Cordless phones, even when on-hook, will introduce noise into the line. Fire and burglary alarm panels that dial out for help have been known to be noise-makers, too.
Contact me privately, if you wish to, and I will walk you through a few quick tests that you can do yourself, to see if we can raise your speed a bit.
To the rest of the forum folks, please excuse the public dissertation. I felt it might help others who are suffering from the same problems.
apb
Follow Ups: