Rains attack. Tod defends. Communication lines are compromised. Safe mode is engaged and Tod belatedly pounces on the demarc with cutters and splices.
I have Speakeasy as my DSL provider, with a static IP so I can host stuff. They are pretty awesome: their customer service seem to actually have a clue and are fun to talk with, their web site has a decent webmail and useful help ticket system, they don’t block ports, they encourage line sharing, and (as I recently discovered) they’ll send their hardware-level guys called Covad out to your house to check things out when your connection is showing line errors (as opposed to routing or other Speakeasy-related issues).
Covad was scheduled to come out Monday morning, 8a-12p, which is fine I guess, but a bit early for me. The guy promptly showed up at 8a and was a nicely kempt, polite, intelligent young man, totally obliterating any stereotype you might have floating around in your head. Unfortunately there wasn’t much for him to do because I think I solved the problem the previous day.
I had decided to not be such a pansy and actually look at my demarc and see if anything was obviously wrong. Amidst the standard telco rats nest were the two wire splices that were my DSL. I touched one and it fell apart in my hand. Then I verified, yup, I have no DSL. I fetched some new telco splices (those nice ones with the gel that keeps moisture out), cut out the offenders and redid them. Verified: yep, now I have DSL. A few ping tests and speed tests with http://lax.speakeasy.net/ showed that my packet loss had gone away and my upstream was now back up around the 320 kbps mark. The downstream was higher too, but peaked around 720 kbps (lax.speakeasy.net report) or 900 kbps (my tests to herbie.ddv.com)
Looking at the demarc I also discovered I have a telco-installed external splitter, meaning only one pair of one phone cable was actually DSL, and that all those stupid filters I installed were pointless. The DSL providers (and you) love it if you have an external splitter because it means they can short-circuit huge chunks of their customer service scripts where they ask you “do you have filters installed on all your phones?” etc. etc.
I showed the Covad guy my DSL modem, the fact I had a splitter, and my new splices. He said that my line had been showing no errors for at least the last three hours (the depth of his diagnostic tool) and what I did probably fixed my problem. Nice to have independent confirmation. He did state that the reason why I wasn’t up to full speed was that my line was in “safe mode”, a tactic they do to troublesome lines. He would make some calls, get the safe mode removed and “if I don’t see any problems in a few days”, I should consider everything okay. Just now I did an scp from my server to herbie and I’m getting 1591 kbps / 380 kbps, so I think I’m pretty golden.
Note to self: next time I have problems that I’m sure are not my fault (routing-wise), go check the stupid physical cable and see if it’s rotten.
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