So, lately, I've been having a horrific time with my DSL modem. A scrawny Efficient Networks (Seimens) SpeedStream 5100 given to us by SBC. (Now AT&T, after that depressing merger.) Everyone I regularly interact with on the internet has been adversely affected... Skype would drop, Uru would crash, IMs would go offline and the modem would crash, pulling down half my network with it. It was pretty bad... It's been happening for several months, but has gradually been getting worse and worse... To the point of resetting every 10 minutes on the clearest days.
I at first thought the modem was broken, so I'd started to look for another. Let me tell you, that's no easy task... Everyone with a name worth looking at seems to promote cable modems and hide DSL modems in the darkest depths of their sites. Turns out, most of the modems were hidden under "router", as modem/router combinations that I really don't want, but apparently didn't have much of a choice.
With some help, I narrowed a really nice modem down to a Cisco 857. Depressingly expensive, but it's Cisco! Can't go wrong with mega-corporation quality equipment. If my modem was bad, this would solve all my problems. Found some on eBay that I'm tentatively watching, but I'm not going to pay 300 dollars for one, Cisco or not.
But then, with some more help from folks in Cyan Chat, I learned that line noise could cause a modem to crash. (Or at least appear to crash.) If it cycles through all the available DSL "channels" on the line, it'll reach the end and just... stop working. Which, after some diagnostics, I believe is exactly what was happening.
Today made it easy to track down the problem... It's a perfectly clear day, no a single rain cell on the weather map, and yet the modem was constantly dropping and reconnecting. Time to diagnose! (Warning, potentially complicated technical garble coming.)
So I'd read about DSL connectivity on DSLReports.com. Really interesting site! Didn't really help my issue directly, but I got some background knowledge. One thing that comes to mind is that I read about hybrid numbers. I believe it's basically a form of error correction implemented to counter bad house wiring. (If anyone with technical know-how reads this and laughs at my poor conclusions, please let me know so I can learn!) Basically, Hybrid 1 is what you want... It's where a modem has a direct line-of-sight (in a manner of speaking) to the telephone network. Nothing out of the ordinary, and it provides the best speeds. My modem had been connecting at Hybrid 2, which is common, but it's still not exactly good. Some reduced connectivity that can be avoided by proper wiring for at least your modem.
I'd been downloading a torrent last night, so there were plenty of errors and reconnections... All at Hybrid 2, and they were all reconnecting at speeds other than my maximum. 1536 is my max DSL speed, and the modem was connecting at 800, 600, 500... Anything but 1536. Bad, bad, bad. I was afraid that maybe our lines were deteriorating again like they were BEFORE we got DSL... Lines so noisy that you couldn't hear people talking.
So then I read some more DSLReports articles about how to open up the telephone junction box doothinger that they put on the outside of your house, so you can see if the line noise is house wiring or telephone network trouble. I'd hoped it was our fault, because then I could fix it! (In all honesty, I rewired our property's telephone wires when they came out to fix the static issues. I know where everything goes!)
Sure enough, I plugged a phone into the box and PERFECT dial tone with no noise, period. None at all. Quite refreshing to know it's possible to get that sound everywhere else. I'd picked up a phone inside the house and it was very, very noisy. I haven't actually used a telephone for ages, so I never noticed it before. Line noise was definitely the problem!
I had my own sort of little... hub of wires in the basement. That was my next stop. I had an idea that the problem was in the wires running out to Dad's work shop. An ancient track of wire put in by the house's previous owners, and thusly made a horrific job of it. Disconnected that, tested telephone, TADA! Perfectly noiseless... Connected DSL again, TADA! Perfect maximum speed without any crashes so far. Connected at Hybrid 1, even. An added bonus!
So that explains all the drops I've been having lately. Looks like I'm going to have to track down a spool of new line to drag out to the work shop and get Dad's phone working again. Maybe he can just connect his wireless phone base in the house and take the headset outside and we won't have to stretch a bazillion feet of cable out there.
BUT WE SHALL SEE... I'll have to put my modem under stress and see how it stands. By all accounts, it should be as pristine as when I first connected it. Hmm... Actually, the modem would seriously crash when you loaded a list of Counter-Strike: Source servers. Gathering information on over 6000 different connections in such a short time was a little too much for my connection. Let's test it!
Uhm... okay, as I type, it has passed the 6000 server margin and is at 11000 servers and still counting up. No signs of modem death, and the logs aren't even showing that it's tried to reconnect without my noticing! I think everything's going to be okay now, yay!
