[mdlug] Help with Spotty Internet/Network Problems

[Elisa Gomez]

I'm running Ubuntu (Fiesty and I recently upgraded to
Gutsy, but the problem's been absolutely the same) and
I have AT&T DSL and I've been having some problems
with it for the past six weeks/two months. Every two
or three weeks, I go through this period of spotty
coverage, where the connection will work for 30
minutes or so and then drop back out. If I manually
shut down the power to the modem and unplug it, the
connection will usually (but not always) come back up.
Occasionally I have to restart the computer, which
sometimes works, but sometimes I also need to shut
down the modem. The last time this happened, I booted
up my Windows XP and called tech service -- they had
me run through a bunch of stupid exercises that
involved things like clearly my Internet Explorer
cache, which was pretty much empty to begin with since
I use Windows once in a blue moon and IE perhaps once
a year.

It culminated in a technician coming out to check my
wiring, which turned up absolutely nothing, although
he replaced the old jack. So I've progressively been
working backwards -- the phone line is fine. The cable
from the jack to the modem is fine. The modem (a
Siemens SpeedStream 4100 ADSL Modem) itself may be
fine, but I'm not really sure. I have access to a
whole bunch of different diagnostic tests through the
modem gui and the tests all green-light, but I'm not
really sure what the value of those particular modem
self-tests are. It runs tests on: Ethernet, ADSL, ATM,
PPPoE, Authentication, IP, and DNS. I can also
generate a technician readout and a whole bunch of
other advanced features, but I'm not sure what most of
it means or how to interpret it. This does show up in
the technician readout, under PPP Last Connection
Error:	Your local connection is still busy, please
wait a few seconds before attempting to connect.

PC-side, I'm using the standard gnome network manager
programs. I haven't touched anything,
configuration-wise. The wired connection is set to
"Roaming Mode" rather than a specific set of
connection settings. I imagine setting those may help,
but I don't know what to ask for when I call tech
support, so I can spend minimal time running through
irritating cache clearing exercises.

Also, in the interests of full disclosure, this seems
to always happen to me when I'm downloading torrents.
This makes me exceptionally paranoid, because they're
torrents and it's AT&T. Sometimes I will go through a
period of spotty service and then if I shut down my
torrent client, my service won't go down anymore

....

I think I'm just being really paranoid, but it could
be an effect of transferring a lot of megs of data. I
don't really know. But know you all know everything I
know, so any help or advice would be greatly
appreciated!

~Elisa

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