Six times, in the evening I have lost my AT&T internet connection. The ‘‘internet’’ light on the modem goes off.
I have done all the boilerplate stuff, powered everything off (Once for three hours.) and back on, wiggled all the connections etc.
Here is the curious part.* I dial the AT&T DSL technical help number, their machine answers, and immediately the modem light comes back on and I have internet connection again.*
Six consecutive times. Six consecutive evenings. There persons say call us when you cannot get a connection but each time I call them I am re-connected immediately. Their technical persons are completely baffled.
Your suggestions on diagnoses and remedy are solicited.
Please post the particular customer service phone number you are calling to get that to happen!
Inquiring modems want to know!
I’ve lost the connection too occasionally, and I’ve just waited for it to recover (sometimes not until the next day), but it hasn’t been too often.
There is some number you can call that I’ve come across, where you punch buttons to answer a few questions, and it runs some sort of automatic diagnostics. (This was for plain-old-phone service, not for internet.) No doubt they have something similar for their DSL or U-verse services.
My guess: When you called that number, the first thing that happens is they run some kind of automated diagnostic on your line, that results in your connection being restored.
To test Senegoid’s theory, try calling a different number from the same phone (which I assume is sharing the same wire as your DSL service). Then use a cell phone to call AT&T, and punch in the phone number of the DSL line. Alternate possible explanation: A filter that’s supposed to separate the DSL and voice that are sharing your line isn’t doing its job, so putting a different signal on the voice side makes the DSL side try to sync up again. (But I’d think power-cycling the DSL modem would do this just as well.)
My parents internet does that. We have no explanation. But yeah, if you’re on the phone, the internet works. And if it’s wet out, the internet doesn’t work. The wiring was bad in some way, and supposedly it was my parents’ responsibility.
The number is on the back of my bill listed for DSl. In my case (Western US) it is 1-800-288-2020.
The number rings. A machine answers welcoming me to AT&T *then *the ‘‘internet’’ light on the modem comes back on. It comes back on between the machine greeting and the instructions for Spanish? assistance i.e. just a second after the answer at most.
This may be unrelated, but I’ll share the story anyway. I while back my cable modem, leased from Comcast, was having a similar problem. It would randomly lose connection and I’d have to restart it. Rinse, repeat. I discovered that when my internet use was heavy, the modem would overheat and fail. After replacing the modem, the problem disappeared.
Is it a 2wire modem? I am stuck with 2wire DSL (because the LL I rent from is too cheap to consider anything else) and it tends to go out on a regular basis, because it’s shitty internet.
This is an interesting problem (if it happens again, give it 15 minutes before you call tech support and see if the problem resolves itself). Nothing surprises me about 2wire anymore.
I had a similar problem with AT&T DSL a while back, after getting a new DSL modem upgrade. I went into the modem settings in Expert Mode, and under “Connection” configuration, I changed the “Connection Type:” from “On Demand” to “Always On”
Problem may be a hardware problem called a “high open”, something to do with old connections in the wiring. More common in climates where moisture is commonplace.
I have a similar problem with AT&T. At least once a day, every day, the connection dies. Usually all I have to do is wait and it comes back. I suspect it’s the wiring too but the tech support people would rather make me jump through 1,000 hoops and give up than send someone out to check the phone lines (which are AT&T’s). Because when the internet goes out, so does the phone line. (busy signal).
Coincidentally, they wrote and informed me that they had become aware of the shoddy service in my area and downgraded my contract to “DSL Lite” or something, which cut my bill in half. The speed of the service hasn’t changed so far. What they really want me to do is upgrade to UVerse, but I already have a contract with Dish Network.
I’m an electrical engineer with a couple of decades of experience and I’ve never heard anything called a “high open” before. From the sound of it though you seem to be describing a high impedance type of corroded connection. Basically, corrosion builds up (again, more commonplace because of moisture) breaking the connection, but if you send a higher powered signal through the wires, the higher voltage can punch through the corrosion and make it work again, for a little while at least. Then the corrosion builds up again and it stops working. Sometimes you can also get little corrosion bridges that short out signals and make things wonky. Then sometimes if you send a higher power signal through it blasts away the short and you end up in a similar situation.
The hard part is finding where the bad connection is located, especially if you don’t have any sophisticated electrical test equipment. It’s actually better when it breaks completely. Then you can easily measure where it’s broken and troubleshoot it quickly. The most likely place is where wires come together, though. Start with the entrance bridge at your home and look for corroded wires or terminals there, then follow the wires through your house and open up every jack where wires might be bridged together. It’s common to wire from the service entrance to one jack and then to another to save on wire costs, so the problem could be at either end or in the jack in the middle in that case.
The problem is less likely to be in the middle of the wire but can still happen, especially if moisture gets into the wire somehow and settles at some point in it.
The problem could also be in the phone company’s wiring.
Persons who use the ‘‘high open’’ terminology admit it is hardly ever used outside the DSL tech support community. Even there some areas call it something else.