Loosing Conectivity

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Guest

First timer here. In the past week I noticed the (online & send) lights on
my Modem
were either off or flashing. It hapens several times a day. I will unplug
the thin black wire at the bottom of the modem and reconnect and in a minute
it will be ok for a while (anywhere from an hour or two to 20 minutes....
Any help out there? Thanks in advance.--
Beau-Beau
 
Time to replace your modem...

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows - Shell/User
Microsoft Community Newsgroups
news://msnews.microsoft.com/

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:

| First timer here. In the past week I noticed the (online & send) lights on
| my Modem
| were either off or flashing. It hapens several times a day. I will unplug
| the thin black wire at the bottom of the modem and reconnect and in a minute
| it will be ok for a while (anywhere from an hour or two to 20 minutes....
| Any help out there? Thanks in advance.--
| Beau-Beau
 
I know you are probably right, that's why I went to this post. I just bought
this moden because my other was hit by lightning. I think this one is 60
days old or so. I was hoping it wasn't the modem.
Thanks for your assistance.
 
Beau said:
I know you are probably right, that's why I went to this post. I just bought
this moden because my other was hit by lightning. I think this one is 60
days old or so. I was hoping it wasn't the modem.
Thanks for your assistance.
Click to expand...

Perhaps now is the time to consider a UPS device for your configuration.
Plug your line-in from your wall jack to the UPS and then plug the line-in
from the UPS device to your modem. Perhaps then you'll stop burning
through modems. A one-day old modem can be fried by pluses coming
down your line. My modem is still strong after 3.5 years. (Knock on wood,
not that I use it other than to send the occasional fax.)

Back in my days as a computer salesman, we were always slightly amused when
we had a terrible electrical storm because we knew it was time to stock our
shelves with all the modems on hand. Sure enough, the next day, crowds
would trample in to buy replacement modems. A good salesman would preach
the joys of owning a UPS unit, and easily could push customers out the door
with new UPS and modem units under each arm.
 
Beau, I assume we are talking a dial up modem here and not cable or DSL.

Phone lines can vary a lot with the weather and for Dial up and DSL you can
generally ask the phone company to test the line which they can do from
their office. If you hear faint cracking noises when using the phone or
anything similar it may indicate a problem either in the Telco lines or in
you own house wiring... often this will happen when a line comes into the
building or where "Someone" has done bad repairs. Damp is not a good thing
because it can degrade the connection without actually killing it.

Worth having a quick visual check around the property I think just to make
sure.

Charlie
 
Charlie, thanks for the response, you to Joe. I do not have dial up, it's
DSL. I am going down to the store and get a UPS, what ever that is. I'm not
all that computer litterate when it comes to internal or external parts. I
have the cable guy coming out again today. I don't think he will be able to
tell me much, he didn't last time and it's the same porblem. He mostly
checked the configuration and signal and at the time it was fine (working),
right after he left it went out again. Go figure.
 
UPS = Uninterruptible Power Supply. It's a battery-operated device
that sits between your PC configuration and your wall power outlet.
Plug your PC and monitor into the UPS unit and when spikes,
surges, or power outages occur, the UPS continues to power your
devices. You can then shutdown normally. When my UPS unit starts
beeping to inform me that the system is operating on battery power,
I keep on computing. If the beeping continues for five minutes, then
I shut down.

UPS devices come in all shapes, sizes, and capacities. A good solid
unit will cost between $69-129, but some cost much higher--generally
for high capacity units. Paid about $80 for mine. Most UPS devices
(all that I know of) also support a TELCO line running into it from the
TELCO wall jack and provide another TELCO line running out of it to
one's modem. This helps one's modem survive spikes and surges.

I have a cable modem so can't speak to using DSL with UP devices.
It seems as if it work the same way as connecting an ordinary dial-up
modem to the UPS unit. I don't know that for certain. Am assuming
that DSL modems use TELCO as line-in.

Good luck.
 
Beau,

DSL uses the phone line in a similar way to that in which a "Cable" modem
uses the cable line, the big difference being that the phone line was
originally designed for audio communications and the Cable for radio
frequencies.

What this means is that DSL signals degrade with distance from the phone
company building where the "Other end" modem is, so all that applies to
ordinary phone signals can apply to DSL too. Sorry if I did not make that
clear. The modems will automatically adjust to get the fastest speed they
can for the length and line conditions, but if something on the line
suddenly gets "Worse" the modems may not be able to respond to the change
and by switching off the power you force them to renegotiate the connection
again. What this means is that they run through a series of tests, probably
starting with the fastest possible speed and then stepping down until they
find something that works reliably. As the line trouble clears they may
periodically be able to recheck and up the speed until the line goes bad
again, then they just lose it. Most likely when you reconnect it is at a
lower speed but you simply don't notice it...

This could be why you see fairly regular outages so a good thing to watch
(if you can) is the time of day the outages happen. If always around the
same time this will help the Telco diagnose the problem but you will have to
tell the support people to make sure they mention the regular times to the
technicians !!!

Example of a cause might be some nearby heavy electrical equipment that's
causing interference on the lines due to a bad ground or some poor screening
in a local factory etc... Weather also may be a problem. It is vaguely
possible that older telephones and defective telephones could degrade your
service signal after it gets into the house... small things but occasionally
they can make a difference.


Charlie
 
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