cb6614

hey--- thanks for all the help. I can tell you know what your talking about because I have done support work for 40 years. It is refreshing to talk to someone that can communicate and not just spread baloney like most others do. There are a few things you should know about how this issue evolved. I had 6M service over dialtone for years. Then I dropped AT&T for my dialtone provider for reasons that we don't need to go into. Let's just say they burned me.

Before going to dry loop, my old Speedstream modem took a dump. It was old.!! So I got a Motorola 2210. Working OK and speed was acceptable. Argonne Labs is close and their speed test showed 5.2 to 5.4 M downstream all the time. There was a linksys wrt54g for the routing. no issues there.

I then went to dry loop because I dropped the dialtone and went to Vonage. The loss of internet stated within a month. The issue is not Vonage, because I actually disconnected this for 48 hours and let it forward to my iphone. Still loss of internet.

My son needed a router. I gave hime my linksys and put in a mac airport I had in the back room. Convenient because of the usb printer port on the router. I would still get intermittent loss of internet, but I was still getting a good/synced DSL .I disconnected the airport at night, and I would still lose internet overnight while nothing was connected but a laptop. So it's not the airport.

I then called AT&T again and that's when the tech offered me the 2701, so now I am using it exclusively --- no airport. Loss of internet sometimes 10 in one day, then no problems for a week or two.

I not trying to be smat about the power, but the power supply/transformer for the 2710 does not event have a ground lead on the plug. I'm using a Monster power distribution strip and I have even put a power graph (Dranitz) on the ooutput. No problems. I have 14 equipment rooms at work with hundreds of HP and Dell blades running HPUX or windows. All off them run off power strips of one sort or another. Our comm room has DSL/async/x25 modems or mutilplexers stacked on each other --- all running off a zip strip of some sort.  For AT&T to ask for a dedicated outet for a residential DSL modem is bordering on the adsurd.

I guess the bottom line here is that AT&T has a modem that has design problems or they just have not kept up with technology. All you have suggested makes a lot of sense. But I should not have to do this to get the service I am paying for. I expect AT&T to fix this, or prvide equipment that works.

Again, thank for your help. I'll sit and think about what I do next and let you know.

Ekenny