Friday, January 15, 2010

Does your DSL seem slow?

I recently came across a client who was having poor internet performance. His service was rated by AT&T as 6,016 Mbps download and 768 Mbps upload. But when we measured it with Speakeasy's Speedtest website (which usually shows about 80% of rated speed), it only showed 900/650 download and upload!

The client had had DSL for a while. Unlike cable internet, DSL shares the phone line with your house phone. When you first installed it, you were given a kit of DSL filters for wall and desk phones. In this case, the client had added both a cordless phone as well as an All-In-One printer with a FAX line, but neither had DSL filters. Once we added the appropriate filters, the speed bounced back to normal.

The Moral is: When DSL shares a line, EVERY PHONE AND FAX DEVICE NEEDS A FILTER!

You can check your rated DSL speed by looking at your AT&T phone bill, or by logging onto you network's DSL modem (one of these should work):
AT&T DSL Modem
AT&T 2WIRE Router (new)
AT&T 2WIRE Router (old)
AT&T 2WIRE Router (old-alternate)

Here are some other Internet Speed Test websites:
AT&T Yahoo! Speed Test
Comcast Speed Test
Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test

No comments:

Post a Comment