Friday, September 26, 2008

Slow Internet

My connection has been extremely slow the past few days. I'm barely able to get pages to load most of the time. So if I disappear for a while you'll know why.

UPDATE
I called my ISP and things seem to working now, but I've learned never to celebrate too early because when it comes to computers things can go wonky real quick.

UPDATE 2
I began having trouble again yesterday. When I called my ISP they told me that they heard some static on their end of the line and that's what may have been causing my trouble. So I called my phone company this morning and they're going to send someone out by Monday 5pm to check my line out. No hurry. But I've noticed that these past two mornings, today included, that my connection seems to work fine. It's in the evening that problems seem to arise. Not sure if that means anything.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"...things can go wonky real quick." Ain't that the truth!!

The Watchman said...

Do you water the grass in the evening? It is very much common that water cause problems in telephone cables. Just a guess.

Unknown said...

have you done an isolation test?
...that is: disconnect all other devices (phone, cordless phone, fax, etc) from the phoneline, and connect your modem directly to the phone socket without a filter and see if internet is better.
this will rule-out interference from other devices (a common source of problems).
If the problem is the same with only modem connected to phoneline it suggests that the problem is the wiring between your place and the phone exchange (more often internal house wiring).
As well as the obvious devices on the line, you need to think of things like 'back to base alarm' and subscription TV services (I don't know whether US use phone line for TV or separate cable?)

Start with the isolation test (it might save getting a techie out), but chances are if you can't find source of noise at your end you need a line technician to determine where the problem is.

Another thing you can do is check the signal margin in modem settings (see modem instructions for configuration page - normally requires entering 192.168.1.254 or 10.1.1.1 in web browser) Snr should be 6dB or greater downstream. If downstream signal margin is lower than 6dB internet connection will be unstable and that's how that 'noise' on the line will appear... though it will make the connection unstable, but slow is unlikely unless your ISP has changed you connection profile to overcome that problem.
The 'we can hear noise on your line' is also a classic way of passing the blame if the ISP has no responsibility for the maintenance of phoneline.
Good Luck!