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