Stupid Slow Internet

The tech from SECTV was here yesterday, no obvious problems found. He disconnected the line from the pole to the house to connect his test equipment to check the cable on the pole. Since then it's been OK, may have been a corroded connection there. He put in an order to replace the cable from the pole to the house just in case. I just checked, ran 5736 kbps down and 495 kbps up. Hope it stays this way. It does hit a bottleneck every so often but before it would stay there or not work at all.

Wood'nCoal wrote:The tech from SECTV was here yesterday, no obvious problems found. He disconnected the line from the pole to the house to connect his test equipment to check the cable on the pole. Since then it's been OK, may have been a corroded connection there. He put in an order to replace the cable from the pole to the house just in case.

A couple years ago, we were experiencing problems for over a year, with our phone and DSL. We called and called and called several times to have it checked and fixed. Each time they came to the house, they replaced something different, starting with the simplest component, finally started checking the underground cable from house to pole. They "THINK" there might have been a break somewhere, but thought it was on the base of the pole, and spliced a new line in there and ran it up the pole. NOPE, still dropping DSL and static in the phone. Called them back out. This time, the supervisor was onsite, and he wanted EVERYTHING checked, not just from the pole-to-house, but back to the main switch. They have some kind of meter that can detect breaks underground, and he said he detected the break to be 10 feet BELOW the pole, towards the house. Under 5 feet of dirt. "NO PROBLEM" says I, "LET ME GO GET MY BACKHOE". They were relieved to here that, as one of the guys already started poking around the base of the pole with a shovel. So i dug 5 Ft down, and 10 Ft towards the house, and we found the problem; some kind of varmit had chewed thru the telephone wires! 5 FEET UNDERGROUND! After a year of putting up with bad service, we finally found the cause. Good thing I offered to dig up the wire, we might still be running half-speed, with a very static phone.

3Mbps is more than sufficient for most people unless you want to watch some really high quality video. I haven't looked at the specs but the "HD" offered by youtube is probably not above 1Mbs. The standard video they distribute is about 250kbps . True DVD quality can be achieved at 2000kbps or even less.

Hmmm...Well I spoke to soon, down to 252 kb down. The strange thing is the upload speed tends to stay about the same. I do have the dedicated line for internet underground for about ten feet. I have to call SECTV again...

Could be a wire issue, take that new wire!
The Cable Modem can also be the problem, easy to swap that out.

I don't know if this will help or not, but here goes. I went to pcpitstop when I was having problems with my up and down speed and did there speed test, results were slow, but they did give a fix. Said that my window was set at the default level and needed to be changed and even gave a way to change it. Well it was all greek to me, wife says google it, I hate when she has to be so smart. So google brings up several ways to do the fix but one place has a fix that all you do is install there small program, wow what a difference. I tried to copy and paste the page results for the speed test like the rest of you have but it says wrong type of file to upload to this site but if I fifgure out how to change the file type to let you see results you will be amazed at the numbers. 16291kbps down 2794kbps up comcast cable

I'll check it out. My test results were screen shots (press control/print screen then paste to your picture editing program, save it as a file then upload it as an attachment on the forum).

5.7 mb down right now.

It was the modem, the tech that was here said the models almost never go bad, all the other techs change them first but he doesn't. I took it to the local Service Electric office in Sparta and they tested it and gave me a replacement.

Wood'nCoal wrote:It was the modem, the tech that was here said the models almost never go bad, all the other techs change them first but he doesn't.

Yeah, that's what the tech told me, too, as he replaced ours for the 3rd time in 18 months; now I insist that's where he starts to look for down load problems. Just out of curiosity how many programs do you have running in the background while you're downloading? I was surprised when my husband showed me all that's running in the shadows while my computer is booting up or I'm waiting for something to download. He removed a lot of malware that was slowing the process down quite a bit. Now I check for that junk regularly. Lisa

I'm sure there's lots of programs running in the background slowing things down here. That's something I should address. I do have anti-virus and adware programs to keep the junk out.

Ever since Verizon started pushing the Fios on everyone, I have this hissing/buzzing sound whenever I'm on the phone & my DSL modem is on. I complained about it a few times, & the response I got was "Fios is faster, & you'll have no interference problems". No thanks -- I pay you enough. My parents live about 30 miles from here & had the same issues, AND got the SAME RESPONSE from Verizon!

I refuse to go to cable, because in MA the company that has the monopoly on cable has THE WORST customer service of any company in history. It's as if their customers should be thankful to them for being rude & overcharging for crappy service!

Funny thing is, this all started at my place when I spotted a Verizon truck working on the pole down the street. I swear it's a Fios conspiracy!

Do you have a line filter on the wire to your phone? If not you can get noise on the voice line when you have DSL.

The DSL technology uses above audio frequencies to transmit the digital data. Without filtering the high frequency signals will be annoying on the voice circuit. The telephone company provides filters with the DSL install kit. They are to be installed on each phone, but not on the phone line that goes to the DSL modem.

Rather than installing a filter on each phone you can install a hold house filter in the telephone company's junction box. This is outside your house and has two hinges. One is intended for the phone company only and the second is for the homeowner/home wiring installer. This is where the filter is installed. See photo for the one on my DSL line. I got the filter from my friendly telephone company installer and installed it myself. Having the filter in the junction box removes the need for a filter at each telephone. With the external filter you must run a dedicated line to the DSL modem. This line should be a two conductor twisted pair. Technically the high frequencies are attenuated by capacitance which are harmful to download/upload speeds. The two conductor twisted pair has the least capacitance of the commonly available telephone/network wire cable. This is a case where CAT3 cable is better than CAT5 or CAT7. Note that the modem cable you get with your DSL modem install kit is special, it's only two conductors. This is what you should use on your DSL modem. Look at the clear plastic end and you will only see two conductors not the more common four conductors.

Wood'nCoal wrote:Do you have a line filter on the wire to you're phone? If not you can get noise on the voice line when you have DSL.

Yeah, I've had them all along. The noise started out of the blue. It started as an occasional clicking noise, then I saw that Verizon truck & after that, the buzz/hiss. I've swapped thru all 4 filters I have to no avail. Might need an updated filter? Who knows.



Some great info Yanche. So that's what the black & yellow wires are in the regular 4-conductor telephone line -- for line 2?

I used them to power my second floor thermostat. I only needed the green & red wires for the phone, & the yellow & black wires were already in the wall .... so I figure I might as well use them! I don't think that would cause the buzzing because that started years after I did that.

I wonder how that small coax (not sure what it's called, but commonly used for surveillance systems) would work for DSL?

SMITTY wrote:Some great info Yanche. So that's what the black & yellow wires are in the regular 4-conductor telephone line -- for line 2?

I used them to power my second floor thermostat. I only needed the green & red wires for the phone, & the yellow & black wires were already in the wall .... so I figure I might as well use them! I don't think that would cause the buzzing because that started years after I did that.

I wonder how that small coax (not sure what it's called, but commonly used for surveillance systems) would work for DSL?

Yes, the black and yellow is for a second phone line. I'd disconnect your thermostat temporary and see if the interference goes away. Depending on the thermostat especially if it's a digital one with an internal microcontroller it could produce noise. You want to disconnect both ends of the telephone wire segment for the test. The small coax cable would absolutely be the wrong type for a DSL connection. Capacitance would be too high. The connection must be twisted pair with the specified number of twists per foot to get the maximum data rate through the cable. It's an amazing accomplishment for the telephone engineers to have come up with a reliable method to get such a high data rate through a twisted conductor cable that was never intended to carry anything other than audio voice circuits.