On Tue, 26 Jul 2005 08:45:01 -0400 "RichK" wrote:

"Jim Adney" wrote

What do people out there get these days? Is switching local telco
providers likely to make any difference? Is there any chance that the
14.4k is just a smoke screen that I need to poke thru a bit to get
better results.

We all had modem problems at one time. Find out from your telco TS what is
the distnace from your house to their equipment. Overk 10K feet will not
give you good connection.

Hmmm, do you think they will just tell me this?

I know it worked well before, but something has changed. They could have
re-routed the lines, although unlikely.

The first drop in speed occurred when they replaced a broken wire into
my house. They replaced a very old single pair (looked like large zip
cord, with copper coated steet wires in it) with a multiple pair
cable, even though I'm only using a single pair. The service man told
me that this was what they were doing everywhere, so that the next
time someone wanted to upgrade the wires would already be available.

Is it safe to assume that if he didn't get the pairing right then I'd
also have problems with voice? Voice is fine, and noise free.

Changing local service providers over the same POTS will not help. You will
connect via the same lines and hardware. If you can get phone service via
cable company, that is a guarantee of 50K conneciton. Been there.

That's what I figured about my LSP.

I don't have cable (I figure I watch too much TV already.) Wouldn't a
cable modem give much more than 50k?

Your ISP may have changed their modems and they are not as compatible with
yours - that could be the reason for speed drop

No, it works from work, and I know they have not changed.

Using another dialup number may give you anther set of hardware modems. It
can help that way. Putting area code in front of your number may help too,
as you use different ckts in the phone company.

Hmmm, I'll have to try adding the area code. I don't know if that will
get thru on this system, but I can try it.

You phone lines could have gotten noisier over time. Loose connection,
cables swaying in the wind, etc.

Certainly possible, but there's no noise on voice.

An finally, your modem may have deteriorated as well. They do fail - have
seen it.

The results with 2 different modems (laptop and desktop) are the same
from home, and the laptop connects nicely from work.

I think that all I know at this point is that the problem is somewhere
between my home and my ISP, and not actually IN either end.

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Jim Adney
Madison, WI 53711 USA
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