The Broadband Modem at home ...

[percival]

... is now officially Extremely Wobbly.

It randomly disconnects from ADSL every minute or so, and repeats that pattern after roughly an hour of normal functioning.

I've disabled Auto-Disconnect, and have enabled Auto-Reconnect everytime the connection is lost. Even as I type, the Tiscali arrow keeps changing from red (no joy) to yellow (establishing connection) to green (everything fine).

I do think the fault is with the modem.

Comments

[drfidelius.livejournal.com]

That is so annoying when it happens! I had a cable modem which had 4 lights, and when it had to make connection, the first would start to blink, then become solid, then the second and so on. Of course if things where not working, it would go through its routine until 3 lights where solid, and then it would start all over again.
What would make it even more annoying was that the helpdesk would insist to go through their routine to check if the computer settings where OK. Hello.... The *modem* isn't getting a connection - not much use to see if the settings on the PC are correct, right?
Right, sorry for that ramble :-)
BTW, did you try to plug the modem directly into the wall jack to rule out any interference from the splitter or the phone? It probably will not result in any improvement, but it will save you some time when you call the helpdesk, because they will most probably ask you to try that first. :-)

[perceval.livejournal.com]

Well, I can't plug an ADSL modem right into the phoneline itself, right?

But replacing the splitter and ensuring that phone cable and modem cable are well separated helped, at least for now.

I've a routine now for checking all the connectors once the modem starts to wobble.

It's been behaving itself for an hour now, which is good, since I've been ploughing through some great anatomy and physiology tutorials online.

[drfidelius.livejournal.com]

Well, I can't plug an ADSL modem right into the phoneline itself, right?

Well, it depends on what kind of gear you've got. I've got an ADSL setup where both the phone and the ADSL modem are plugged into the splitter with standard phone-connectors (the ones that look like ISDN or Ethernet connectors but smaller). Then splitter is connected to a big ancient-looking plug which in turn is plugged into the wall socket. For me it's possible to plug the ADSL modem directly into this big ancient-looking plug, hence taking the phone and the splitter out of the loop.
Basically, if you can find a way to connect the ADSL modem directly to the phoneline without using the splitter, you've found a way to accomplish it. The whole idea behind this is that the splitter is not necessary to make the ADSL connection - it is only necessary when you want to use the phone while using the internet, and hence connecting the modem directly to the phone line is a good troubleshooting method. :-)