PCA Forums

Been through another patch of laggy, off/on DSL service from Frontier. They bought the local Verizon copper and the service continues to get worse. With Verizon I had almost 100% uptime and good overall speed. Now Frontier will get off/on for a couple of hours, then be ok for a few days. I suspect that a lot of the problem is physical - old poorly maintained copper. My drop off the main line comes via a junction box across the street which was obviously backed into by a car a long time ago. I've seen the techs open it and there are spider webs, etc. inside. As soon as it starts raining or get very windy the service starts to slow down.

I currently using the Frontier free modem (who knows who made it) - I know I got better throughput when I swapped out a cable modem back when I had cable. Those were the days...Now the comcast line terminates about 1500 feet from my house...they wanted $7k to bring it here when it was 2300 feet away...

DSL reports diagnostics show decent service when my service is up and running - 2 MBS down 768 up...just wondering if a better modem would help with the off/on issues.

TIA

Hard to say if a modem would help. Best to buy a modem locally from something like a Best Buy. If it doesn't seem to help you could return it.

Any moisture in the line will cause noise. You don't want any crackle or hum. Wet spider webs aren't good. Me personally, I'd go out to the box on the street myself when no one is looking and clean out the spider webs, but that's me.

Also check your own wires in the house. Make sure the phone box outside is water tight and there's no corrosion.

It's always best to have the modem on a home run straight to the phone box. A lot of homes have the phone cables running all over in strange loops.

I've seen some defective hardware conflict with DSL. When the service acts up try pulling ALL your physically connected phones. See if it helps. Make sure not to use splitters - they tend to be noisy.

Some DSL modems do not like having a phone line surge suppressor on the line.

thanks, I'll double check everything you mentioned.

follow up: I called Frontier and amazingly they had someone out the next day. He was an old school verizon wire guy who really knew his stuff. He found an uncapped wire in the street junction box, fixed that, then checked the wiring in the house. He found a short somewhere - who knows exactly where because this house had a phone jack in every room, and I only used two of them. He split the dsl out at the box on the house, made the line to the modem dedicated, then isolated the one phone line with use from all the spiderweb wiring in the basement. The guy was really good. After he finished I offered him $20 because he came in the house and cleaned up the mess. He said no, but thanks, not allowed.

I also got a new modem. Haven't hooked it up yet, but I am getting close to advertised speeds (2.8/268).