Phone/DSL Saga

Ever since we have moved into the new house I have been fiddling with the phone lines to try to get rid of some audible crackling. It was annoying to hear and I was suspicious that it was reducing the bandwith for my DSL because of having to resend garbled packets.

First I found some obviously bad connections that were cobbled together by somebody else, and then checked the wiring inside the jacks. I added a new punchblock to tidy up the 4 connections on the kitchen side of the house. I disconnected a tapped line that was connected to nothing. No real improvement.

Then I simplified things. I disconnected everything where it comes into the house. I cleaned up the incoming wire ends with a little sandpaper. They were a little dirty after 40 years. Then I hooked up a jack directly to the incoming line. No Static. That meant that my problem was inside the house and not outside. Now I have bypassed the old punchblock and hooked up only the extensions that are absolutely necessary directly to the incoming line.

My bandwidth went from about 250 kbps to about 1,450 kbps. Major improvement. Very little cost.