2010-05-31

Connecting

After I wrote that last post about my being unable to connect my brother found the new modem outside. The technician that sent it the day before said
[...] How long have you had this problem? Lets look at you router's status-* Holy-Shit! How are you even able to connect? [...] Your modem is dying, there have been more than 200000 ATM Cell Header Errors in the last two hours! [...]
and decided to send a replacement overnight express. The courier instead of putting it in the locker box or ringing the bell decided to leave it balanced on my doorstep with the "Signature Required" label face up. The courier’s website says it arrived at 1:10 PM. :|

When I installed it in the exact same place the old one was I found that while it worked considerably better than the old one, it still did not connect for more than a few minutes and about the time it racked up 10k errors I decided to try connecting it in another room. There it worked brilliantly, only one error in the first ten minutes. Thinking back to the technician's questions about what might be connected to that socket, and the knowledge that I'd in the month prior had to dig a shorting electrical recepticle out of the wall that had been plastered inplace decided to replace that socket in the first room. Now it works and picking up a phone (wired or wireless) doesn't fast-resync the DSL line.

Thinking about it now, I also recall that the cable box was secured to the electrical meter by means of framing screws, I wonder if this is the source of the phantom rings that have been annoying us during the day. I will need to make a meter long insulated screwdriver and remove them. It can't have been legal to drive metal spikes into the meter the first place.

2010-05-21

unable to connect.

Another DSL modem has failed and I am now waiting for a replacement.

My connections have been deteriorating since the meter guy had a tantrum and tore the phone and cable boxes off of the wall two years ago. I strongly suspect that the 'contractor' they sent out to fix it wired something into my loop that should not be there since
  1. the boxes are now supported by their wires
  2. there are wire splices outside of the box
  3. my digital cable is fed through the phone box
  4. there are loose fasteners inside the sealed boxes
  5. and
  6. without exaggeration, I can throw a rock and hit the CO across the intersection from my house and yet my signal quality swings from nil to excellent every few mintues


As a subscriber to both Bell and Rodgers I am understandably disappointed;
when I travel south into Toronto for work I am not excited to be meeting in person with my peers but able to get their e-mail.

If only my mother wasn't javascript:void(0)determined to keep her Bell e-mail address, then we could switch to a better DSL vendor (who would actually be selling us Bell internet, but at a better price and) with technicians who would understand that a loop that has toased three modems probabaly has something wrong in it.