After several years of near flawless working,
I am starting to have trouble with my DSL
connection. A few times per year the modem
would lock-up. It was rare enough that I did
not worry much, I figured it was due to
lightening or cosmic rays. In any case, it
was rare enough that I could think of no way
to debug it, and there seemed to be no real
reason to, the power went out more often than
the DSL.
Lately it has been happening several times
a day, I just got done with a burst of about
ten consecutive lock-ups.
I will be browsing the web, or something
and it will just quit working. Ping of
the ISP's nearest computer (by IP addr) does
not work. I go to the modem, pull out the
power plug, wait a few seconds, plug it in,
wait for it to boot up, and it works again
until the next time.
I complained to the ISP (Speakeasy) and
the nice guy there said:
> I had a look at your circuit and see a sync at 1536
> kbps Downstream / 384 kbps Upstream with decibel
> margins of 2.0 dB Downstream / 17.0 dB Upstream. The
> downstream decibel margins are very low and as a
> result, your line is incrementing heavy errors.
I asked if I could see these numbers myself,
so that I could try some re-wiring to see if
it made the problem better (or worse).
He said:
> You won't be able to see real time Layer 2 stats of
> your circuit, as this information is accessed from
> the DSLAM in the Central Office.
But I know I have heard some of you talking about
statistics gathering programs for network performance.
Does anyone know of a program that might help to
see how well a DSL line is working, or other
diagnostic tools for this?
-- Keith
