Well today after I came back from moving I again found my DSL in a wacky state. I was getting 95-99% packet loss. I called Speakeasy again to try and troubleshoot, which I have done several times since I moved. I made the mistake of saying there was static on the line so the tech immediately said it was a local phone company (Verizon) problem. I agreed that this was probably true so I had him put the line into safe mode to get it working period.
Then I tried to call Verizon to put in a trouble ticket. I got through to the 800 number but the voicemail system freaked and got stuck in a loop. I hung up and tried again and the 800 number just rang off the hook. I guess my static freaked it out real good.
My DSL was limping along at this point so I just went to Verizon's web page to enter a trouble ticket. In the process of logging the ticket it asked if I had tested at the NID. Which I had a while ago but not recently, so I went outside to check again. First problem was that there is now an ant hill in my NID, have to deal with that later. I brushed off enough to get to test jack. Hooked in the phone and it was crystal clear. Hmm.
Now I have redone the wiring for the phone lines in the house and there is only about a 10 ft run from the NID to the splitter for the house, so this seemed strange. I then checked it with the same phone at the splitter and sure enough the static was there. I thought to test one other thing. I unhooked the DSL modem from the splitter and wallah the static disappeared. Hmm.
In case you don't know DSL works on the same line as normal voice, but just at a very different frequency. You attach filters on each phone or in my case at the whole house splitter. Apparently the filter was bad and was not filtering at all or even worse it was introducing noise of its own. I swapped the filter with a spare (speakeasy sends you like 6). Magically the static disappeared.
I then called Speakeasy back to put my line back into normal mode. I sync'ed at 6.0 MB / 768 KB, which is what I am supposed to be at. Hopefully now it will work more reliably than it has of late.
Leave a comment