Intermittent Disconnects

[Erm3]

Hello and thank you for your time.

I started using Verizon DSL near the start of December.  Over the past 4 or so weeks I have been receiving disconnects from my dsl modem.  These mostly happen during the evening but can happen all day. Most of the time they happen is when I'm playing WoW but can happen when I am on the web.( It happened just now).  Once they start happening I get a chain for maybe hours at a time.

At first I thought it was something wrong with the computer but then it happened when I used the Xbox and I received disconnects every 5-10 min while playing Call of Duty.

After several calls to India I finally got someone to come to the house.  He couldn't really find much wrong but said that something might be acting up outside.  He came back and said he removed a chip and that might have fixed the problem.

That was Friday morning and from that point on until Monday night I did not receive a disconnect.  Starting Monday night the problem started again.

My modem is 6100 Westell and I do not use a router.

My transtats at this moment are: http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/4523/onlinetrans.png

I got this when I was randomly checking the Trans stats and it had just went out.  The number was like .7 for the margin but when i took the screen cap it displayed this: http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/7193/dctrans.png

Thank you in advance for any help you can offer.

[smith6612]

Here's a reply I wrote to the thread you made at DSLReports:

Your line seems to be having an issue with the downstream and noise spikes on the line causing the disconnects (and slight drops in speeds). Your line looks fine besides that. I'm curious, does the same thing occur when you hook your modem up to your NID for a little while? Do these drops occur at particular times of the day or are they all the time? If you can't plug the modem into a NID, check over the condition of your jacks first of all and make sure nothing is shorting out, corroded, or is loose. Also, move phone cords, especially those that are not twisted pair cables such as the one the DSL modem came with away from noisy (electrically) electronics.

[jottati]

I have had the same problem.  My boyfriend (who knows more about computers than me, checked the modem himself and seems to think that is the problem.  i have a Westell 7500 modem/router combo and have had nothing but disconnection issues and signal drops since I signed up for this service.  My boyfriend called tech support for me several times and all they come back with is "Reboot the modem".  He's done that over a dozen times in one day!  He called the tech support again yesterday and they said that the password to my account is causing the disconnections.  Huh?  How does that make sense?

Here's the transceiver stats before and after the modem was rebooted:

Transceiver Statistics
Transceiver Revision     A2pB020b3.d20h
Vendor ID Code     4D54
Line Mode     ADSL_G.dmt
Data Path    FAST

Transceiver Information    Down Stream Path    Up Stream Path
DSL Speed (Kbits/Sec)        3360        608
Margin (dB)            22.4        7.0
Line Attenuation (dB)        29.0        17.0
Transmit Power (dBm)        9.1        11.9

after reboot
Transceiver Information    Down Stream Path    Up Stream Path
DSL Speed (Kbits/Sec)        3360        608
Margin (dB)            22.1        7.0
Line Attenuation (dB)        29.0        17.0
Transmit Power (dBm)        8.9        11.9

I have two laptops, one of which is his, that run Windows XP.  Mine is wired and his is wiresless.  He seems to think that the up speed changes cause the connection to drop.  We're both getting fustrated with this because we do alot online and I do not see paying for a service which we cannot fully use.

[smith6612]

Here's the reply I wrote to your exact post over at DSLReports:

Your line is having a noise issue. Proper sync rates for the upstream on the 3Mbps package should be 864kbps, and given your distance your margin and speed should be much higher on the upstream. If you have access to a NID, plug the modem into the NID's test jack and post up the new statistics you get.

[TopherMac]

I have been having a similar problem over the last 2-3 weeks in the late evenings I will get disconnected from the internet off and on for 20-30 minutes then I am fine until the next night. Last night and tonight it happened around 22:15-22:30 EST. Last week it was happening more around 23:00.

Here are my current Trans stats for reference:

Speed: 3355 down 863 up

Margin dB: 31.0 down 17.0 up

Attenuation: 33.0 down 11.5 down

Transmit Power: 19.2 down 12.1 up

[smith6612]

Those statistics look fine. What might show what is going on however, is the modem's "All" log. Let the modem go through it's cycle of disconnecting and reconnecting, but do not reboot the modem. Post up the logs (preferably via Pastebin.com and a link in this post) for us to see.

[TopherMac]

Went down again last night first at 22:11 then again at 22:27. Here is the brief except of the logs. The full log is for last 42 hours can be found here: http://pastebin.com/asjWzeix 

THU FEB 03 22:12:44 2011

      WanMgr reports DSL is UP

THU FEB 03 22:12:33 2011

      LAN PC Unable to communicate with DNS Server. (error = 'connection timed out', count = 9)

THU FEB 03 22:12:30 2011

      LAN PC Unable to communicate with DNS Server. (error = 'connection timed out', count = 6)

THU FEB 03 22:12:27 2011

      LAN PC Unable to communicate with DNS Server. (error = 'connection timed out', count = 3)

THU FEB 03 22:11:38 2011

      WanMgr reports DSL is Down

[smith6612]

The log is showing the disconnects, but besides the frequent chatter to an NTP server, it seems to be disconnects that have no real cause to them. The statistics are staying relatively the same (and look just fine) and the speed is not falling. This suggests that either the modem is acting up during certain times of the day, there is something adding noise into the line briefly to mess up the DSL (especially if it seems to happen at the same time every day, ex: Street lamps powering on) or equipment trouble on Verizon's end leading to re-syncs.