Holy Crap I Fixed the Internet

There was a conversation I was really dreading having with my grandfather. The DSL here was absolutely ridiculous. It was nearly impossible to simply watch any videos, Gmail didn’t work properly and as such I had to resort to basic HTML mode, it took about 7 hours to download a single anime episode. 70kbps and 9KB/s download speeds (just barely better than dialup). You get the idea. I really, really, really didn’t want to have to ask him to pay more than twice as much per month for something he’s never used to upgrade to cable internet.

Then I took a look at the line to the wall down by my feet. I figured maybe, just maybe, there’s a loose connection somewhere. Instead, I found something I hadn’t noticed before. A DSL filter on the line. I know enough about networking to get by, and though I hadn’t even heard of a DSL filter before (as I’ve never had DSL before), it sounded like exactly the kind of thing that could be slowing me down.

About two minutes on Google confirmed my suspicions. The f%$&ing DSL filter is supposed to be on the line to the phone, not the line to the DSL modem. Freaking incompetent installers. I ran some baseline tests in anticipation of only minor speed gains, and averaged 72kbps down, 120kbps up. Even if you don’t know much about these things, you would probably know that that’s backwards – downlink speeds are supposed to be much faster than uplink speeds. I removed the filter from the line and about crapped my pants at the fact that some silly little plastic device really did manage to send me back to the stone age – now averaging over 500kbps down, and downloading files at a vastly improved 60KB/s.

My job wasn’t done, though. I had to check the phones. Based on what I read, I suspected that I would basically hear what a dial-up modem sounds like when connecting. You bet, I picked up the phone and got a shit-ton of static, pings, clicks… it kind of sounds like you’re listening to aliens. So I threw the filter on the phone up here, and insta-fixed. However, I don’t use the phone up here, and neither does the primary landline user – my grandfather. So I hopped downstairs, picked up the phone next to his chair in the living room, and was deafened with static. Had him move the chair out a bit so I could get to the line, threw the filter on, all’s well. Huzzah. Even checked the phone in the kitchen, and somehow that didn’t have any static at all.

Well golly gosh, don’t I feel like I achieved something? It’s actually quite exciting after living with horrid service for the past month.

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