What Could Be Causing My Internet and Phone Connection Issues?

[mgroezinger]

Need urgent help with PHONE

Okay, so basically one day I woke up... went on my computer and after 10 minutes my internet got disconnected. Rebooted, 2 minutes later it disconnected. It hasn't been stable for 3 days now. I also noticed that I have no dial tones. I have tried 2 phones on every phone jack in the house and there is no dial tone. I call my house, 1 ring and than answering machine. What is the problem? PLEASE HELP!

 

[Evo]

Take a phone and go to your Standard Network Interface and plug it in on the phone compnay side and see what you get.

 

[mgroezinger]

where would that be located? is this dangerous at all?

 

[Moonbear]

When you went around to test the jacks, did you disconnect everything from all the others? If something is leaving you with an open line, you'd get the same symptoms.

What Evo is talking about is the box where your phone line comes into your home...there's a jack in there. If you plug a phone into that and still get no dial tone, it's on the phone company's side. If you plug it in there and do get a dial tone, then it's on your house side (either a wiring problem or a faulty device plugged in somewhere).

 

[mgroezinger]

okay thanks for clarifying that, where would it be located?

 

[Evo]

okay thanks for clarifying that, where would it be located?

If you live in a house, it would probably be outside on your house where the phone line comes in. In my old house it was near the electric meter and cable box outside.

In my apartment, it is located inside in my laundry room.

So where ever your phone line comes in is where you will find it. This is referred to as the "demarc", this is where the phone company line ends and your line starts (as far as responsibility goes), unless you pay the phone company to maintain your inside wiring.

If you don't get a dialtone when you plug into it and you're sure nothing is plugged into any phone outlet (make sure to disconnect everything before testing), then call your phone provider. If you get a dialtone on the phone company side and you want them to dispatch a repairman, you might be charged for a service call unless you have pre-paid repair coverage on your inside wiring.

If your phone provider is not the phone company, then it may be more of a problem to resolve (like having phone through cable).

 

[mgroezinger]

okay, i found it... but it looks like there is a phone wire in there already on the bottom? should i take it out?

 

[mgroezinger]

can anyone help me out more? i have unplugged every phone jack in the house and tried it with phones... nothing. My internet is still shaky, kicking me off every 5 minutes... I am really getting angry =/

 

[Evo]

okay, i found it... but it looks like there is a phone wire in there already on the bottom? should i take it out?

Don't remove anything, there should be at least one phone jack, and hopefully it is marked with your phone number.

Did you plug your phone in? Did you get a dial tone?

If you don't want to go through checking this, just call your phone company's repair number. They can do a test and may be able to tell if there is a problem on their side.

Do you have DSL from the phone company? If you do, that's the easiest. Just call their toll free number and they will automatically test it for free.

I do not deal with the small ISP's or alternative "phone providers", it just isn't worth the hassle. I love the fact that if I ever go down I have 24 hour support that can actually fix things while I am on the phone with them. I would never go with my cable company for phone service. Every time I call them for a cable outage, I get a recorded apology saying that phone service has been down for 2 days, but they're working on it.

 

[mgroezinger]

okay, so i took out all the phone jacks and than reset it... my phone and internet were working perfect for 3 days. however, yesterday my phone had static and than my internet started getting choppy again. I did try to examine the problem. I tried my cord phone on one particular jack in my house and switched it with 3 different DSL filters... the results?

Filter 1 - Static
Filter 2- Some Static
Filter 3- No Static at all, just dead phone


Any ideas?

 

[mgroezinger]

anyone?

 

[Evo]

As stated earlier. Check your connection on the telephone company side of the interface, if you get a good connection, no static, etc..., then the trouble is on your side and you will have to decide if you want to call the phone company to come out and fix it, which might incur a charge, try to figure out what's causing it and fix it yourself, though that doesn't sound like an option, or hire someone you trust to come out and fix it.

Did you any of the things I recommended?

If you don't want to listen to the advice I'm giving you, then I don't know why you are still asking. Gee, I only worked for the phone company for 30 years.

 

[mgroezinger]

As stated earlier. Check your connection on the telephone company side of the interface, if you get a good connection, no static, etc..., then the trouble is on your side and you will have to decide if you want to call the phone company to come out and fix it, which might incur a charge, try to figure out what's causing it and fix it yourself, though that doesn't sound like an option, or hire someone you trust to come out and fix it.

Did you any of the things I recommended?

If you don't want to listen to the advice I'm giving you, then I don't know why you are still asking. Gee, I only worked for the phone company for 30 years.

Hi, I tested the phone jack and it is inside my house. I get a dial tone. However, I don't really want to call a person... I want to try to figure it out myself. I have been on the internet for like 2hours now... Sometimes i can only get on for 2 minutes... but the phone is always dead... SO WEIRD

 

[Evo]

Good luck then. You'll need testing equipment unless you just plan to rip all of your existing inside wiring out and replace it. We can't help you with that.

 

[Moonbear]

okay, so i took out all the phone jacks and than reset it... my phone and internet were working perfect for 3 days. however, yesterday my phone had static and than my internet started getting choppy again. I did try to examine the problem. I tried my cord phone on one particular jack in my house and switched it with 3 different DSL filters... the results?

Filter 1 - Static
Filter 2- Some Static
Filter 3- No Static at all, just dead phone


Any ideas?

I'm not sure yet if you have one bad jack (the one you were getting the above results from), or if you have a more global problem within your house (do you get similar results from other jacks?) If it's just the one jack, you could try just replacing the jack. If it's all of them (but not the outside line), then let's move on to step two (step two is about as advanced as I get before calling for service).

Is your phone a corded phone, or a cordless (I think you meant corded above, but I'm not sure...I'm talking about the handset to the base, not the base to the jack)? And, when you connect your DSL, are you connecting directly to your computer, or using a wireless router of any kind? If you have a cordless phone or wireless router, you could be picking up interference...for example, from a neighbor's phone or wireless router, or between your own phone and router.

If you only get static/loss of service when your DSL filters are connected, I'd contact the DSL provider. If you have problems with three different filters (even if we assume the one is bad that gets nothing on it, the other two are still getting static), then it seems to be something to do with your DSL service.

And, just to double check...when you checked the connection where the service enters the house, you did that on a day when you were having problems inside, right? If not, check again when you are having the problems. Static in the lines can occur from rain getting into a bad cable somewhere or branches rubbing them, and is a problem for the phone company to deal with.

And the last of the advice I can offer, as minimal as it all is...do you have any mice in the walls? Mice can wreak havoc on wiring.

 

[mgroezinger]

I'm not sure yet if you have one bad jack (the one you were getting the above results from), or if you have a more global problem within your house (do you get similar results from other jacks?) If it's just the one jack, you could try just replacing the jack. If it's all of them (but not the outside line), then let's move on to step two (step two is about as advanced as I get before calling for service).

Is your phone a corded phone, or a cordless (I think you meant corded above, but I'm not sure...I'm talking about the handset to the base, not the base to the jack)? And, when you connect your DSL, are you connecting directly to your computer, or using a wireless router of any kind? If you have a cordless phone or wireless router, you could be picking up interference...for example, from a neighbor's phone or wireless router, or between your own phone and router.

If you only get static/loss of service when your DSL filters are connected, I'd contact the DSL provider. If you have problems with three different filters (even if we assume the one is bad that gets nothing on it, the other two are still getting static), then it seems to be something to do with your DSL service.

And, just to double check...when you checked the connection where the service enters the house, you did that on a day when you were having problems inside, right? If not, check again when you are having the problems. Static in the lines can occur from rain getting into a bad cable somewhere or branches rubbing them, and is a problem for the phone company to deal with.

And the last of the advice I can offer, as minimal as it all is...do you have any mice in the walls? Mice can wreak havoc on wiring.

Thankyou for writing back, to make it simple... I have taken 2 different phones "corded" and went to every jack in the house, all I hear is static. My internet works from 5 minutes to 2 hours. I went outside, tested jack and I got a dial tone. Weird enough, my sister went over her friends house and the same thing is happening to them and Verizon said it was them... So now I am dumbfounded. Verizon told me to wait 30 min and unplug all phone jacks and it should reset it, I did that and it worked for 3 days before going back to the problem again... Funny thing is I did the same technique they told me to do "resetting it" when it wasn't working and it did not work this time... I DON'T GET IT! lol
My internet is a Westell Versa link, I am connecting the phone jack into my router.as for DSL filters, one is not in one of the phone jacks cause I ran out... also i am pretty sure another one doesn't work, I am not sure if this is the problem though... i mean, that wouldn't affect me having no dial tone right?

 

[Evo]

Last time. Process of elimination.

Ok, if you plugged your phone in on the phone company side and got no static. You know it's not your phone or phone cord and you know it's not the phone company. We ruled those out days ago I thought.

You tested each jack in your house with the phone you know works. DO NOT USE ANYTHING BUT A REGULAR phone cord, the same one you used outside and was ok. Did you do this? Did you have static? If you did, either all three jacks are not working (which I doubt) or your have a problem with your inside wiring.

If you did not have static on anything, add a splitter, now do you have static? Yes or no?

Yes, bad splitter, no, your inside wiring is bad.

DSL is very sensitive to signal degredation from static. Intermittent static will cause your DSL to go up and down, it can also cause you to lose dial tone intermittently if it's bad enough.

Yes a bad splitter can result in no dial tone. I had a splitter go out, went to Walmart bought a new one for a few bucks, end of problem.

But first you need to test with and without the splitter, I assume you already did this?

 

[mgroezinger]

okay, i went up stairs with just the cord and the phone... I tried it and I got a loud screeching noise ( like calling a fax machine but a little toned down) ... Than I put on the splitter and tried for a dial tone and it was just dead with very very very little screech. Tried this with another jack upstairs and got the same result and another jack, same result... However, I tried the the phone with cord (no splitter) on my computer which is downstrairs and got nothing but dead air ( no screech).That's what happened =/

 

[Evo]

okay, i went up stairs with just the cord and the phone... I tried it and I got a loud screeching noise ( like calling a fax machine but a little toned down) ... Than I put on the splitter and tried for a dial tone and it was just dead with very very very little screech. Tried this with another jack upstairs and got the same result and another jack, same result...

However, I tried the the phone with cord (no splitter) on my computer which is downstrairs and got nothing but dead air ( no screech).

This I don't quite get, you plugged your phone into the back of your computer?

I hate to say it, but it really sounds like your inside wiring is bad. It happened to me years ago. Turns out there was a nail hammered into the wiring and after a while it caused the wiring to short out. The wiring is cheap and you can either pull it through the walls or run it externally around the baseboards. A lot of stores that sell phone equipment sell wiring kits.

I just bought 100' of phone wire and ran it from where the wires came into the house and upstairs to where my computer was, I added a double RJ11c adaptor and ran one line to my phone. Voila! Cost me around $20 and to this day it still works, that was about 8 years ago.

Have any friends that are electricians?

 

[Moonbear]

okay, i went up stairs with just the cord and the phone... I tried it and I got a loud screeching noise ( like calling a fax machine but a little toned down) ... Than I put on the splitter and tried for a dial tone and it was just dead with very very very little screech. Tried this with another jack upstairs and got the same result and another jack, same result... However, I tried the the phone with cord (no splitter) on my computer which is downstrairs and got nothing but dead air ( no screech).


That's what happened =/

Was your computer connected or disconnected while you were testing the upstairs jacks? If it was connected (i.e., plugged into a jack), unplug it and try one more time. If that solves it, maybe your computer is trying to send a fax or something. If that doesn't solve it, then like Evo suggested, now that you've ruled out everything else, it's probably inside wiring. The easiest way to pull new wiring is to attach the new wire to the old wire and as you pull out the old wire, you pull up the new wire. (And, I wasn't joking before when I asked about things like mice...they can chew through insulation on wiring and cause quite a mess...and can be a fire hazard too if they chew through the electric wiring as well...if you don't have any better explanation of why wiring suddenly went bad, you might want to have an exterminator inspect for any signs of rodents).

 

[B. Elliott]

If you're getting dial tone at the NID, it's you inside wiring. I've diagnosed literally hundreds of static and no dial tone issues and quite a few end up being caused by bad customer equipment. If you've tested with a known good chorded phone and still hearing static, it's no doubt your internal wiring.

Wouldn't happen to have an alarm system would you?