keith’s new self

my ADSL has had a curse on it ever since I moved into this house a year ago. it would work ok for a period of time, but then go through periods where the ADSL modem disconnected regularly. the only way to make it go again was to take the phone off the hook for a few moments (until i hear the operator’s voice telling me to hang up) - after which it would start working again for an some amount of time. often it would crap out every five minutes, forcing me to have the cordless phone in my hand at all times. another symptom that accompanied the curse was a crackle on the phone handset, which would go away after a while of having it off the hook. all this pointed towards some kind of static electricity buildup on the line. very odd. surprisingly, google had no answers for me. surely i’m not the only person on the planet experiencing this? and the kicker is that because it is so inconsistent, it’s been hard to get a telephone / internet repair person to come over to fix it.

however, hope is in sight cause i think i’ve nailed it. the ADSL modem has been SUPER crappy lately, coinciding with some extremely low humidity weather. this points to a static buildup problem for sure. so i just did a little experiment - i hooked the phone up through a telephone surge protector. lo and behold, the curse seems to have lifted! i’ve been getting a clean connection ever since. not sure how the surge protection works, but perhaps it is isolating the line such a way that the static is grounded. anyhoo - it seems to do the trick.

i only hope other poor souls find this article and learn how to protect themselves from this terrible affliction.

metallica says: interweb curse bad!

tags: electricity, internet, science

posted: 10:14 pm