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without getting nasty...

Without getting nasty, as I rightfully should with this glorified dial-up that Verizon calls DSL, let me give a background....

I have 33+ years in the communications electronic field as a field service technician for the US government. I'm retired now, but I think I still know a little.

Starting in May of this year my "low speed" DSL was crapping out, constant resetting of modem because the Indian technical support would tell me nothing different than that. Resetting at least twice to five times every day. It got pretty darn frustrating when one has a message all typed in for a forum and you click on post and never-never-land as the connection was lost.

So in August I opted for the high speed (up to 3.0 meg) plan.

I requested and got a new Westell 7500 modem with the router built in. Great now I can directly log into the modem as before the router prevented me from getting access through it to the single port modem. (Westell 6100).

September second was a great day, my speed as reported with www.speedtest.verizon.net was:

Client to server 306.57Kb/s

Server to client 242.61Kb/s

(no lie, I started serious logging of it then!)

I have Windows 2000 with all the updates, running the newest version of Java from Sun Microsystems, The latest version of Firefox, the up-to-date virus protection, no firewall except in the modem and no viruses, trojans or mallware on the machine.

I have made more than 20 hours of calls with tech support in India.

I have had a technician to my house once for the phone and once for the DSL.

They both say the lines are fine.

Now the DSL technician put in a block filter outside the house after his visit and said that it seems I was only provisioned for 1.5 meg rather than what I was told I would be provisioned for, 3.0 meg.

I asked if he could do something about it and he said he would try and also he would notify the lines department to trim the line. I did see a Verizon lines dept truck at my pole, aparently cutting off the excess wire that ran further than my house.

So within one hour after that technician left, my speed was:

Client to server 314.07 Kb/s

Server to client 2.31Mb/s

There was a time just a day or two ago I had:

Client to server 314.07 Kb/s

Server to client 2.84Mb/s

Today the modem lost lock as usual in the early evening and it took 1 hr and 42 minutes for it to lock up again at:

Client to server 281.80Kb/s

Server to Client 327.56Kb/s

Not good enough to do anything but check email if there are no images in them that is!

So I reset the modem again and right now it's at:

Client to server 3.08.01Kb/s

Server to client 1.51Mb/s

I have sent an email off to The Consumerist regarding this as well with my g-mail account as the return address.

I never use my Verizon email since the master account email addresses were harvested by spammers years ago.

I have a technician coming again on Thursday afternoon, they wanted to send somebody on Monday, but wanted me to sit at home all day to wait for him, so I said not good enough too much time waisted.

If this does not solve the problem, there is another, start-up in our area, phone company called Frontier that will offer me Phone and DSL. They employ Americans as phone technicians not Indians, If not them then I believe I can get phone service from Comcast as well as internet.

Bottom line here, what's the caliber of technicians at the CO or over the road if they can't diagnose a problem of dropouts.

I know that nothing will come of this post, but at least I feel a bit relieved that I vented it.

Thanks for your time in reading it,

Gerry

Comments

dslr595148

Please post the Transceiver Stats, that you talked about finding in

http://forums.verizon.com/t5/High-Speed-Internet-DSL-and-Dial/Hiden-DSL-modem-features/m-p/238828

Gerry_D

Spoiler

Maybe, just MAYBE, my problems are solved....

Maybe, just MAYBE, my problems are solved. Smiley Happy

After much time elapsing, technicians coming to the house, endless hours with tech support, Verizon sending me a wrong type replacement modem and I must admit some prayers....

It seems to be working.

My Download is 2.88 Mbps and Upload is 0.51 Mbps. ( as per speedtest.net )

(Verizon says: 2.829 Mbps Down & 0.346 Mbps Up )

( Modem says: Speed(Down/Up) 3360 Kbps / 608 Kbps )

This has been the norm for several days now.

This I can accept, considering the distance to the CO.

Last contact with Verizon was a telephonic message they left on my answering machine saying; " it was a network problem".

Nothing more, nothing less.

Sounds like an equipment malfunction that finally got so bad that others were affected as well, then it got fixed.

Just wish it was sooner.... Smiley Sad

Silmenume

Having similar problems but not quite as bad. We were losing connectivity about twice a day average. We'd have to reboot the Westell modem/router and it would reconnect within a minute or two. Annoying as all get out. Finally we got a line technician out and he seemed more knowledgable than your average bear. He got on the radio after checking a few things out and found that our physical line was a 26AWG wire running from the CO to my house. The line tech told us that basically the line was too small for our speed (3mbs)/distance and that if we really wanted uninterrupted service we'd better served by dropping down to the next speed. This was off the record, as it were.

It appears that Verizon is over driving their gear to try and stay competative with other services that offer truly high speed transmission rates and is running into problems of overextending the design parameters of their gear - though they won't say it directly.

I should note that I live in Los Angeles, CA. The reason being the line tech told us that in order for Verizon to lay down fiber cable down already paved city streets the company has to do environmental impact survery reports. Verizon is doing it, but it costs money and even more problematically - time getting the permits from the city.

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT SURVEY REPORTS!!! To run a small trench down a street!!! He told us that Verizon's efforts in Texas were well ahead of the game here for that very reason. I don't know a state that is working harding to make living and doing business more difficult.

smith6612

It happens. What can you do though. Oh, and about the Environmental Impact Report; that needs to be ran whenver a trench is being dug. Part of the lengthy process any company has go through when working on a major project, besides finding out where other companies have services buried (such as Cable, Fiber, Water, Sewer, Gas, Electric, Phone).