[PLUG] intermittent Actiontecs (was Cisco 678 again)

Ed Sawicki ed at alcpress.com
Fri Sep 7 16:27:07 UTC 2007


Bill Barry wrote:
> On 9/6/07, Ed Sawicki <ed at alcpress.com> wrote:...
>> I'll take it. I might as well lay in a supply. A few people
>> I know have intermittent Actiontecs that need replacing.
> 
> I have an Actiontec DSL modem and had intermittent DSL access for several
> weeks. It turned out not to be the Actiontecs fault  The link would be fine
> for several hours at a time, sometimes several days at a time. Then the link
> would drop and the modem would try to retrain and would fail or it would
> reconnect and drop the link again a few minutes later and would generally
> misbehave for several hours at a time. The local phone coop while trying to
> locate the problem has replaced almost every connection between the DSL
> modem and the remote (which is about 1 mile away). We even changed out the
> Actiontec modem for a new Zoom modem which did not fix the problem.
> Yesterday I remembered that there was one part of the circuit which had not
> been replaced. It was a regular phone line going to another part of the
> house which had no phone plugged into it. I had almost no DSL access for
> several hours. I plugged a phone into that other line and the DSL synced
> immediately and has had no problems for over 8 hours. I log the Signal/Noise
> from the modem every minute and it is better than it has been for weeks and
> is rock solid. As a test I  unplugged the phone and still everything is
> working. So the problem is a bad connection in that seemingly unrelated
> phone line. Plugging in the phone just jostled it enough to make it behave.
> I will replace that line today, but I am pretty sure that it was the cause
> of all my problems.

I had an Actiontec that would drop the circuit about every
48 hours. This happened for about one year. Qwest supplied
the Actiontec when they installed the circuit and they could
not fix the problem. The phone line is a dedicated line; it's
only purpose was for DSL. I personally ran the wire from the
demarc to the Actiontec, so there were no phones and no stray
segments of phone wire hanging off.

Replacing the Actiontec with a Cisco 678 fixed the problem.

I now have a customer with the same problem.

I have a friend who has intermittent DSL problems and he
has an Actiontec but I don't know anything about his phone
line.

Ed







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