Over the last few days, my internet connection has gotten very erratic. I contacted tech support, and they think the problem was with the DSL modem.
Over the entire course of my having this connection during the last 4 or so years, I've consistently gotten 4200-4500 kbps download, and 650 kbps upload. Monday started the issues, however. I noticed my CoD MW2 games would be sketchy. One time I even got a disconnected icon pop up on screen (picture of a cable disconnected from socket.)
I ran speedtests on speedtest.net and speedtest.zoomtown.com. It's very interesting to watch that needle fluctuate so rapidly. I'd done speedtests in the past just for fun, and it's always been consistent. Didn't really move except normal flicking back and forth. Now it can go crazy It can jump from 1000 to 3000, drop back down to 500, and jump up to 2000. I still get some tests where I get an unblemished report and no fluctuating, but it's not the norm anymore. I've tested this with two different computers. With a router in the mix, and connected directly to the modem.
So after I called tech support, they had me run a ping. 111/114, 3 lost (2%). They suggested a new modem. Just picked it up today.
And the same thing is still occuring. Just ran a speedtest right now, and watched the reading start out at 500ish for about 3/4 second, then jump up to 3500 and kinda stay there. Ran another immediately, and watched it go to about 3500, uniformly drop to about 2000, then slowly rise back up. I ran another ping from the command prompt on a few different sites. After about 170 pings to three different sites, I had one packet loss.
Pinged my router. On occasion, I get a ping that isn't 1-3ms, but I didn't get any packet loss on 300 packets.
The odd thing about all of this...I've not had any problem with the upload speed. It has remained at exactly the same rate on every single test. Around 640-650 kbps. Only the download is erratic.
I do have one thing to consider: I added a phone jack about two month ago. It hasn't given me any problem...that I know of. Here's the setup. I extended from another room that must have been a terminating point, because it only had one set of wires, as all other jacks were just a node along a series, so I left those alone.
If this wire I added wasn't perfect, is it possible that it can affect all other telephone wires in the house, and compromise the integrity? I figured it wouldn't matter, and that since I wired it as the last in a series, it shouldn't mess with the other wiring in the house. I connected the modem to another jack in the house (not directly connected to my new one) and I still had the same issue. Am I right on this matter that this new jack I added shouldn't affect the entire house?