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Internet trouble (again)
4 years ago
It reared its head again. I am aware that there is fairly good evidence that my house has degraded or damaged phone wiring. Ever since that one storm had screwed with the copper phone lines nine months ago, things have been bordering on the edge of stability where DSL is concerned.
Things like Far End CRC Interleave errors became a thing, and receiving phone calls made those errors go up. For a time we couldn't even use the modem that was sent to us.
I even got a Netgear modem with OpenWRT to use, but due to screw-ups on my part I failed to write down the password for it. And I will have to do a failsafe reset before I can finish configuring it.
My quest to stabilize our connection seemed to be getting difficult. Tracing down the problem felt like it could entail cutting holes in our walls and tracing the phone wires all over the place.
The closest I've gotten to a potential answer was one RJ-11 jack that had a strange brown discoloration on the contacts and a wad of clear soft gunk in it that could've been some kind of glue. The best course of action I could think of was to replace that jack, something we have to do once we've obtained a replacement wall-mount jack.
And now we get to today...
Things looked okay for most of the day. But then we received two strange calls in the space of an hour that had dead silence on the other end. It could've been someone working on the lines, or a thunderstorm north of us (that apparently happened) I dunno.
Soon afterward, I started noticing "Near End CRC Interleave" errors popping up for the first time. It was particularly concerning since it happened around mid-afternoon. And the line attenuation went from 36 dB to 38 (40 and up is unstable/bad territory)
So I chat with Verizon and they suggest a technician come by to investigate. I've informed them that we have wiring issues, and that the "Near End" errors are at the DSLAM according to what I could learn about the terminology. But I did not neglect to mention the possibility that it could be my home's phone wiring getting more degraded.
Now I've been in the process of changing service providers from Verizon to Xfinity, since they are the only other wired provider in my area (my family doesn't trust wireless or satellite, end of discussion). Its been very slow, made worse by my father's medical bills and having to pay that off. But I need a working phone and internet service to last us up to when we actually switch to Xfinity. That's hard to do if it decides to crap out now.
But my parents don't like the idea of a technician showing up. My mother doesn't like strangers poking around, and my father took an irritated "oh geeze, here we fecking go" tone (especially given that I had looked up prices for a new jack at his request almost 8 hours ago). This makes me anxious and fidgety.
So I'm watching the WAN status display page of my modem's dash board like a hawk. I'm nervous about downloading or uploading anything right now, as that could make things a bit worse? It just makes me nervous and maybe a bit paranoid. :/
I hope we can make this DSL stretch until we get Xfinity's stuff installed. My next door neighbor got theirs hooked up, a gigabit plan. But they've also got their own problems do deal with regarding their home... So asking them to share may not go well.
EDIT: The phantom call issue has been identified. Somehow, the "ringer" voltage near our line was higher than it should've been. So when a call came in for someone else, it tripped our ringer as well.
But we still have CRC errors in both directions. There is not a lot that can be done about that right now. We have to wait until June 3rd at the earliest to get a surface-mount RJ-11 phone jack to replace the one that has the brown-ish gunk on the contact pins (and the glue-like gunk in it).
Things like Far End CRC Interleave errors became a thing, and receiving phone calls made those errors go up. For a time we couldn't even use the modem that was sent to us.
I even got a Netgear modem with OpenWRT to use, but due to screw-ups on my part I failed to write down the password for it. And I will have to do a failsafe reset before I can finish configuring it.
My quest to stabilize our connection seemed to be getting difficult. Tracing down the problem felt like it could entail cutting holes in our walls and tracing the phone wires all over the place.
The closest I've gotten to a potential answer was one RJ-11 jack that had a strange brown discoloration on the contacts and a wad of clear soft gunk in it that could've been some kind of glue. The best course of action I could think of was to replace that jack, something we have to do once we've obtained a replacement wall-mount jack.
And now we get to today...
Things looked okay for most of the day. But then we received two strange calls in the space of an hour that had dead silence on the other end. It could've been someone working on the lines, or a thunderstorm north of us (that apparently happened) I dunno.
Soon afterward, I started noticing "Near End CRC Interleave" errors popping up for the first time. It was particularly concerning since it happened around mid-afternoon. And the line attenuation went from 36 dB to 38 (40 and up is unstable/bad territory)
So I chat with Verizon and they suggest a technician come by to investigate. I've informed them that we have wiring issues, and that the "Near End" errors are at the DSLAM according to what I could learn about the terminology. But I did not neglect to mention the possibility that it could be my home's phone wiring getting more degraded.
Now I've been in the process of changing service providers from Verizon to Xfinity, since they are the only other wired provider in my area (my family doesn't trust wireless or satellite, end of discussion). Its been very slow, made worse by my father's medical bills and having to pay that off. But I need a working phone and internet service to last us up to when we actually switch to Xfinity. That's hard to do if it decides to crap out now.
But my parents don't like the idea of a technician showing up. My mother doesn't like strangers poking around, and my father took an irritated "oh geeze, here we fecking go" tone (especially given that I had looked up prices for a new jack at his request almost 8 hours ago). This makes me anxious and fidgety.
So I'm watching the WAN status display page of my modem's dash board like a hawk. I'm nervous about downloading or uploading anything right now, as that could make things a bit worse? It just makes me nervous and maybe a bit paranoid. :/
I hope we can make this DSL stretch until we get Xfinity's stuff installed. My next door neighbor got theirs hooked up, a gigabit plan. But they've also got their own problems do deal with regarding their home... So asking them to share may not go well.
EDIT: The phantom call issue has been identified. Somehow, the "ringer" voltage near our line was higher than it should've been. So when a call came in for someone else, it tripped our ringer as well.
But we still have CRC errors in both directions. There is not a lot that can be done about that right now. We have to wait until June 3rd at the earliest to get a surface-mount RJ-11 phone jack to replace the one that has the brown-ish gunk on the contact pins (and the glue-like gunk in it).
Xfinity rolled out some fiber-optic lines though, but only to a point. I assume its a fiber-coaxial hybrid system they are using out here. Because their "gigabit" plan only offers download speeds that are a bit over 620 Mbps, according to our next door neighbor.
I need to add an update edit to my journal.
As such, fixing it may only be possible by switching to Xfinity. They can do phone, internet, and TV all at once in one service package. And we can transfer our phone number too.
But we need our current service to last long enough for us to make the arrangements to switch to Xfinity. This is being hampered by bills among other things. :/
The sour note here is that DSL itself is obsolete. The parts and equipment that is needed to conduct maintenance has been becoming harder to get for a little while now.