DSL and Phone Problem

[bphgravity]

I recently went to a DSL internet service through my local phone company. My single phone line connects to the DSL modem at the computer. With the modem package, several in-line filters were provided for the phone connections. These are installed at the phone jacks.

For a day or two each month, when someone calls in, the phone rings once and disconnects. This occurs when both the internet is in use and when it is off.

I have not called the phone company (Embarq) as it only has occured a few times and really doesn't bother me all that much. It doens't appear to be effecting my internet connection.

Is this a common problem and something I need to look into? Is it an issue on the phone comany side or mine?


Any advice would be great.

 

[mdshunk]

That can often be traced to the phone itself, particularly many models of cordless phones that are end of life or end of battery life. Try going down to just one phone for a little bit and see how things hash out. These intermittent problems are a real pain to figure out.

 

[ELA]

I had that exact problem with my cordless phone even though I had the DSL filters in place.
I ended up adding a second filter to the cordless phone and the problem went away.

 

[hbiss]

That's called a ring-trip. I can't see it having anything to do with your DSL other than the pair may have been changed outside back to the CO by the telco when they installed it.

Call it over a period of time from your cell to see if you can make the problem happen. If yes I would then disconnect all your phones and filters (but not the modem) and connect a regular non-cordless phone (with a filter) to a jack. If your NID has a test jack that would be the place to connect it. Try the calls again. If it happens now it's most likely the telco.

Some things to check which might cause this in your house are defective phones, modems and alarm modems and corroded jacks, splices and damaged wiring.

-Hal

 

[Jerry the Phone Guy]

I wonder whether this is a 'full ring' or a partial? Partial ring means there is too much leakage either between tip and ring or ring and ground. Leakage is almost always an outside wiring problem, but check it at the NID to make sure. There may be a cable that gets waterlogged periodically?

A full ring could be lots of things: an automated call that was terminated, a device on your line that is answering after one ring, or simply an impatient or clumsy caller dialing the wrong number.

If you get a full ring, what does the caller ID say in response?

 

[bphgravity]

Thanks for all the comments. I do a little experimenting and get back to you with the results...

 

[badabing]

Not sure if it'll help or anything, but I'm on DSL as well, with several phone lines in my house and have removed all the filters. The filters the phone company gave me in my original install package kept disrupting my dsl connection, and after calling them, they said some of the filters may be bad and to just remove them and if i wanted to, i could purchase new ones at RadioShak(ha!). After a while i removed them all and now have no problems (several years later) with my internet connection.

 

[hbiss]

If you get only a full ring you probably won't receive any CID information since it's sent between the first and second ring. That is a good point though because if it is a full ring it's not a ring-trip. In that case I would try dialing *69 to see if a number has been stored for that call. If that yields nothing and you are certain nothing is picking up that line in your house- like a modem in a computer or an alarm dialer I would report the situation to your telco nuisance or unlawful call department.

-Hal

 

[Jerry the Phone Guy]

Right, CID info is sent after the first ring. Usually immediately after, in my experience. And if you don't have CID, not at all.

As for sharing a line with DSL, I've found that the supplied filters are terrible and you usually have to daisy-chain two in a row to get decent isolation of the modem's signal from the voice side. Symptoms of poor isolation are: a muffled or unintelligible voice quality from either end of the line. If you listen very carefully with your butt-in set, you may even be able to hear the modem leaking through to the voice side.

Siecor makes an excellent-quality filter mounted on a single-gang face plate. Only place I've found it is on ebay! Thank God for ebay...:grin: