OT: DSL/Modems

[Fairlight]

You'll never BELIEVE what Bill Vermillion said here...:
> 
> And an interesting thing that can happen with DSL - since it
> is a high-frequency signal - similar to RF - is that sometimes
> you can lose your voice line - as there needs to be enough
> conductivity to carry the voltages for ring, etc., - that the HF
> will seem to bleed past LF impairments and the DSL will work
> when the regular phone line wont.

That's exactly what happened when I lost my voice line to that hum.  -If- I
could get a dialtone at all, I had the hum at about 25db+.  If I hung up,
it wouldn't--it would just be the hum, no dial tone.  To force a dialtone,
I actually had to use multiple devices off-hook at once to force it to
acknowledge and kick over a dialtone.  Ahh, the fun effects of a hard
ground.  Words cannot convey my joy.  :)  However, it was a blessing 
disguised as a curse, since after the week of hell, I actually ended up
with a 30%+ increase in average DSL performance.  I'll take that, even if a
week of hell is the cost. 

Yet the DSL chugged merrily away at 97KB/sec while the voice line was
completely knackered before they tried the first fix, 120KB/sec after
the first fix, and after they finally actually cleared the voice line,
137KB/sec, and since then it's improved into the 143-153 range, depending
on my sync, which will go weeks at a time without being touched.  It's -so-
much less finnicky now than it used to be.

But yeah, I've had the DSL working full bore and a next to unusable (in
some instances that week, unusable) voice line.  BTDTGTTS.

mark->
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