In article ,
Dallas wrote:

Today the guy from India calls and tells me the AT&T guy said the problem
was in the house wires. I said, nope... I disconnected the house and ran a
direct 30 foot wire. He said, "Oh well, the problem could be in that 30
foot wire."

Just a sanity check here before I call them back and start yelling, that's
an absolutely absurd statement isn't it?

It's not *absolutely* absurd. Just highly improbable.

Just so you can be sure... I'd suggest re-doing the test, with the DSL
modem plugged directly into the demarc connector using a short 6'
cable. If necessary, run a 30' Ethernet cable and a 30' power
extension cord, so that you can move the DSL modem right next to the
demarc. Ideally, plug a laptop computer directly into the DSL modem's
Ethernet port, so that you can eliminate your home Ethernet wiring
from consideration.

Try this with two different 6' phone cords.

If you still get low bandwidth (and I strongly suspect that you
will), call them back and start yelling.

I've found that the phrases "Connected directly to the demarc, with
the house wiring completely disconnected" and "I tried two different
cables, with identical results" work pretty well. This sort of test
result pretty much eliminates the house, and your own equipment, as
the source of the problem.

Another thing to consider: there are a couple of different ways to
check the connection bandwidth. One is to perform an actual
end-to-end bandwidth download test.. it's the surest way to measure
your true download speed, but can be subject to a bunch of confounding
factors (e.g. whether your home Ethernet wiring has problems that are
causing dropped packets, whether the ISP's backbone network or DSLAM
is saturated, etc.).

The other way is to log into the DSL modem's administrative interface,
and ask for the line statistics. It should show you the actual
on-the-wire data connection rate, and the number of data frames which
are being dropped due to transmission errors.

If the DSL modem itself says taht the line rate is 1.6
megabits/second, when the modem is jacked directly into the demarc,
then you *definitely* have line problems that AT&T should fix.

If the DSL modem says that you've got a higher line rate, but you
can't actually download at more than a fraction of that rate, then
the problem lies elsewhere (maybe in your house Ethernet wiring, maybe
in the DSL modem configuration, maybe at the ISP end due to some sort
of data throttling or over-subscription of their backbone).

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
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