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To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (18771)	5/3/2003 10:38:31 AM
From: lurqer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

an expert on telephone lines Sorry, not qualified. What I can do is give you the benefit of my experience of living in the boonies with funky phone lines. One, lean on you vendor. There are big differences in the guys that come out to "fix" problems, and it sometimes takes three or four before you get a good (competent) one. Now at $95 a pop you, need an alternative. In my case, my better half is good at "wheedling" freebies. The other thing is all modems are not equal. In particular, my experience says US Robotics is remarkable at given good performance under bad conditions. I'm currently using one (over marginal lines) at consistently > 50K connections. Hope this helps. lurqer

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (18771)	5/3/2003 12:13:16 PM
From: elpolvo	Respond to of 89467

jwcb- i worked as a line repairman for the phone company for 10 years. here's my take on your problem and what you might do about it. the first consideration is the distance from your apartment to the telco central office switch. the greater the distance - the poorer the quality of data transfer. if you are five miles or more from the central office you may not even be able to get DSL service. the phone company will not guarantee service good enough for data transfer, they only guarantee that you can talk on the line. ask the phone repairman how far it is to the central office - anything over three to five miles is not good. another consideration is the physical line to your phone. sometimes, when there are not sufficient copper pairs to provide additional services to a location the phone company will use an electronic modulator/demodulater which allows them to use the same copper pair for more than one service... this is workable for voice service but severely limits the quality and quantity of data transfer. ask the phone repairman if your line is on either a "pair gain" or an "aml" unit. the service reps will not be able to tell you because they don't have that kind of information - only the repairman will be able to tell you this. the next thing is to have the repairman meter and test the line all the way from your apartment back to the central office to verify that it is absolutely clean and clear of all grounds, shorts, or crosses and that it is perfectly balanced - a line can have minor faults like these and still work ok for voice but not data. if it is not perfectly clean and balanced, insist that they provide you with a line that IS. that is something they owe each subscriber. the final consideration is your modem. these phuckers fail at a higher rate than any other component on a PC. take lurqing dude's advice and get a US robotics modem - (the cadillac of modems). NOTE: (they can partially or intemittantly fail so just because it worked in one location with a better line does not assure that it is working 100%). this is the most likely culprit, but the other considerations regarding the quality and physical type of your phone service should also be investigated and remedied if need be. but would the intermittent troubles undermine DSL also? definitely! but if you order DSL service they then must guarantee a certain data transfer quality - if they can't do it for physical reasons, like being too far from the central office, then they will tell you that they can't provide the DSL service and there will be no charge to you. if they DO provide you with DSL service and you still have trouble, then you will KNOW that your trouble is in your PC (most likely your modem). email my candy to elpolvo@toffeelovers.com -elpolvo

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (18771)	5/3/2003 12:36:13 PM
From: elpolvo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

addendum to phone line repair post: if you DO get DSL i think you have to have a different kind of modem anyway so your trouble would most likely disappear, (and you'd like the speed and the "always on" feature so much you'd wonder why you didn't get the fat pipe much sooner). so there's your easiest solution. it would save you from pulling your hair out over the problem - if you had any hair. (i know you have some hair left... on your back - only because you can't reach it to pull it out)