6100 modem

[dame of dames]

Thank goodness for Google.

I hope I'm at the right place, because I'm at my wit's end.

Beginning of the year, I signed up for Verizon DSL. The service wasn't too bad, though I noticed that I'd lose my connection at odd times. Since I tend to keep my apartment cold, I figured that the phone line itself was affected, and that it would get better as it warmed up.

Well, recently, it started to get worse. I'd lose whole days of service or just have intermittent service of five minutes, oh it dropped again, darnit!. I also found that I could hear noises on the phone itself, noises of static and obvious squeals of a modem... which is supposed to be impossible, seeing as how my computer's internal modem was swapped out for a new USB 2.0 port and the only other modem I have is this 6100 piece of junk.

Not only could I hear noises, but I also realized that when the phone is off the hook, the modem would pick up the connection again.

Now, I've had 3 phone techs come out. I've spoken to Verizon DSL service people too many times for me to count. I'm on the second modem, gone through 8 DSL filters, have two on one phone line because I have a Slimline phone and separate answering machine (both GE, BTW) and the last tech guy said that he found that with the all-in-one machines tend to need that extra filter so lets give this a try...

And it was working fairly normally with only one or two dropped connections, until last night.

While I'm typing this, I called myself and left my phone off the hook, so as to get the busy signal. I can hear static on the line, and it ain't white noise, because there's that snap, crackle, pop.

The tech guys say it's not the phone line OR the equipment, though they concede the point that I live in an apartment building with fairly old wiring. They note that it's impossible to replace unless the manager decides to get the whole building rewired. But the main phone office itself is just down the road, so the signal should be pretty good nonetheless.

Again, it's a 6100 modem, supplied by Verizon. I'm using the yellow Ethernet cord. The phone cord is the flat kind. It's double jacked into the living room wall with the (now three) DSL filtered phone/answering machine. There are two other jacks, but the one is capped off because I don't use it and the other is another Slimline phone with a DSL filter in the bedroom. Taking the phones out and just jacking the modem doesn't make a difference at all. I figured out how to get a log going on dropped packets/connections (I think), but really wouldn't know how to read it without help...

So.

Any ideas? And I thank you folks in advance, for any assistance. As you can see by the time on this post, it's keeping me up at nights.

:-)

[johnwill]

I think you have identified the issue, it sure sounds like phone wiring. If you're hearing crackling when you are using the voice phone, that MUST be fixed before you'll make any progress with this issue!

[dame of dames]

How can I get that fixed? I live in an apartment building and they sure aren't gonna spring for new wiring...

:-(

[johnwill]

Well, I have no idea. This is clearly something that it's not possible for us to dream up an on-line fix for, it's going to require someone actually track down the problem in the phone wiring.

[dame of dames]

This is just to say that I added another filter to the phone in my bedroom, and now having two filters on each phone line seems to have done the trick.

Thanks for the advice, though. :-)

[johnwill]

I've never heard of that, I suspect that you may have some defective filters, or a bad phone instrument.