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Sunday 30 July 2006

Update - Help! My Broadband Is Sick 8-(

Original post - Help! My Broadband Is Sick And No-One Will Listen 8-(

I did some further research into my particular model of cable modem and discovered that it is particularly susceptible to line noise. I found out how to interrogate the modem and noticed that it was reporting a high level of errors. It was quite clear that the incoming transmissions were quite low and the signal to noise ratio was higher than I would have expected.

The other thing I noticed was that after it had failed to communicate with my ISP it was reporting that everything was fine! Not a very useful reporting log. I made a copy of the log to use next time I phoned the helpline.

The following morning I stepped out of my front door and almost fell over two of my cable company’s engineer’s peer into a cable duct outside my house. Great Scott, maybe someone is listening after all!

Wonder of wonders, my fault has been fixed now and the line levels have returned to normal. It would have been nice to be told by the technician I phoned, that they would be looking into my fault. Just an e-mail would have done and it would have been good PR too.

Oh well, another missed opportunity on their part.

Normal service has been resumed and I am a happy bunny once more.

Regards



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2 comments:

  1. So actually it wasn't a dodgy modem at all? :p

    "and the signal to noise ratio was higher than I would have expected."

    Surely a high SNR is good!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Matt,

    I hadn't looked at it that way around, but I see what you mean. I'm now of the opinion that it was the line which had a fault and not the modem.

    ReplyDelete