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Lumberg
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So my mom wants an Ipod with iTunes....I help her. We decide that Earthlink has the best deal on DSL. So we order it up.
We can only get the DSL modem to link up on one of the phone sockets in the house. The house is about 50 years old. We get a dial tone on three different sockets I think.
The best DL speed we can get is around 83 kBPS on Toast.net. We also try cNET but the numbers there seem to be worse than the Toast.net ones, we're in MD and I use the VA location for toast. links:
http://www.toast.net/performance/
http://reviews.cnet.com/Bandwidth_meter/7004-7254_7-0.html
I figure the wiring inside the house is sub-par.
I try plugging directly into the network interface jack, but no dice. But I think that's because the wiring to the house doesn't just plug in there, it's actually a pair of wires screwed in. One Dark blue with white stripes, one white with blue stripes.
So as far as i can tell those wores come in and attach to a distribution block type thing in the same cabinet where the fuse box is. So I buy one of those modular phone jacks with the pigtails and detach all the other phone wires from the block, so it's basically the connection coming into the house right into this one jack. I plug the DSL modem in and it can't get a DSL sync.
Weird.
I put everything back together, and I can still get DSL on the one jack, and the speeds seem to be higher now ~130 kB/s.
The speed is definitely sub-par. But the thing that strikes me is the fact that hooking directly to the wires from outside (AFAIK) doens't work but using just this one jack in teh basement does.
DO I need to call in an expert? I don't think we need to re-wire the house cos we only need one good jack. Also is it possible we're just right at the limit of distance from the CO where DSL is possible but the speed just isn't good?
This is driving me (and my mom, whose purpose in life at the moment is to watch streaming tsunami videos) crazy!
We can only get the DSL modem to link up on one of the phone sockets in the house. The house is about 50 years old. We get a dial tone on three different sockets I think.
The best DL speed we can get is around 83 kBPS on Toast.net. We also try cNET but the numbers there seem to be worse than the Toast.net ones, we're in MD and I use the VA location for toast. links:
http://www.toast.net/performance/
http://reviews.cnet.com/Bandwidth_meter/7004-7254_7-0.html
I figure the wiring inside the house is sub-par.
I try plugging directly into the network interface jack, but no dice. But I think that's because the wiring to the house doesn't just plug in there, it's actually a pair of wires screwed in. One Dark blue with white stripes, one white with blue stripes.
So as far as i can tell those wores come in and attach to a distribution block type thing in the same cabinet where the fuse box is. So I buy one of those modular phone jacks with the pigtails and detach all the other phone wires from the block, so it's basically the connection coming into the house right into this one jack. I plug the DSL modem in and it can't get a DSL sync.
Weird.
I put everything back together, and I can still get DSL on the one jack, and the speeds seem to be higher now ~130 kB/s.
The speed is definitely sub-par. But the thing that strikes me is the fact that hooking directly to the wires from outside (AFAIK) doens't work but using just this one jack in teh basement does.
DO I need to call in an expert? I don't think we need to re-wire the house cos we only need one good jack. Also is it possible we're just right at the limit of distance from the CO where DSL is possible but the speed just isn't good?
This is driving me (and my mom, whose purpose in life at the moment is to watch streaming tsunami videos) crazy!
