Terry wrote:

When my sister first got a computer her speeds were in the 40s.

Somewhere down the road she now only gets about 20k.

She was having trouble with one of her phones. I looked in her phone
box and the security people had put their lines on the main and the
extensions on their other pair.

Her phone problems turned out to be an inside phone. I am not sure
when her speeds slowed as it could have happened over the past 5 years
or so.

Has anyone confirmed that having a security system in the phone loop
slows dial up?


That wiring is called "line-seizure". The reason the alarmco does it
is so the alarm panel gets exclusive use of the phone line when it
needs to communicate - the panel "seizes" the line to allow itself
unobstructed dial out to the central station. As you know - modem
communications can be interrupted if a phone extension gets picked up
during a data session.

It is possible that an alarm system "could" slow down a dial up
Internet connection if the dialer wire used - the wire from the
control to the phone Co. demark is inferior. Beyond that - there is
an RJ-31X jack installed at the panel meant to provide a disconnect of
the alarm and still keep the house phones working (may be the culprit
- but highly unlikely). The panel itself just has a DPDT relay that
knocks the house phones off when the panel needs to dial out.

I would look hard at the connection in the demark for all the house
phones - it may have become oxidized or was poorly made to begin with.
Then separate house phone one-by-one from that splice to see if the
problem disappears. Re-do the splice by freshly stripping the wires
and cover with a wire-nut.


You may also isolate the alarm dialer by 'only' hooking up the house
phone to the NID temporarily and see if clears up - then place house
phones on there 1-by-1 and see if it remains clear. If all that's
left is the alarm dialer, call the alarmco to run a new wire.

MAKE SURE - you test her alarm after fiddling with the phone wiring.
Simply have her call her central station and put the system in "test"
(by offering her code word), then arm the system and send a few
alarms.