Quoted:
I run CenturyLink (ugh) and I've seen these sorts of problems as well.
It's likely that there's not enough bandwidth in your area to service
everyone. Do you live in a college area or an area with a lot of
youths? Midnight seems to be a popular time for that.
The
Westell 6100 is a major piece of shit and will easily run out of system
resources and crap itself. Go to 192.168.1.1 in your browser and go to
Advanced -> Diagnostics and paste some of the messages you're
getting.
What sort of router are you running, if any? Have you upgraded the firmware on it?
Low population area, especially where I am specifically.
Diagnostics is just a sub-menu, with numerous options to choose from. Which one should I be going to?
No router, just the 6100.
Quoted:
You have separate problems. Isolate and deal with them that way.
Forget about your line speed and ping for a minute, it's confusing and distracting you.
You have two other problems:
1) Your line drops at midnight.
2) 411 calls on your circuit.
They MAY be related, they may not. The first step, is stop playing around with their phone support, tell them, "fix this or cancel my fucking service". Remember, they are used to dealing with people who just want to get their email and look at ESPN.com who don't care if it's out, and wouldn't know a ping time from a snake up the butt. You need to pound home that you consider this a BIG problem because as far as they are concerned, it works fine, and you are pestering them for no reason.
Then, when they send the goober out to mess with the lines, demand to go WITH him and have them show you the tags on your circuit. This will give you a circuit number and forces the guy to know what he's looking at. (This will doubtless annoy him, but whatever.) Also, while you are doing this, check for other devices or joined wires on your circuit. It should be neat, labeled and safe from rain/snow/bugs/flooding, etc.
Dropped modem lights ARE NOT BANDWIDTH ISSUES, no matter how much data your neighborhood is using, that will NEVER cause the lights to do the search and connect. That only happens when the power is out on the box on the other end, the circuit is broken, or the cable is unplugged somewhere.
Regular resetting like that used to happen on old phone neighborhood circuitry that got "out of whack" with constantly open lines (which a DSL modem is) and they would reset. There may be an old device like that down the street. I also would not rule out a security problem in the DSL modem. Get the model number, look it up, and read forums discussing it. Look for firmware upgrades or security problems.
Now, with your circuit number, you can call the next time you have billing anomalies, and verify (make them tell you what it is) your circuit number is actually the one on your account. You may just have a wrong circuit ID on the provisioning that is causing you to get someone else's line activity. (Better hope they aren't into child porn or sharing file movies via Limewire...)
Barring a typo in the circuit numbers, you may have a security problem elsewhere. When do these 411 calls take place? The same time the DSL modem is out? Are you SURE it's not dialing as a regular phone because someone has control over it? Call the local numbers listed from the 411 and find out what is there. At the very least, that may tip off whomever is doing it that you are onto them so they knock it off.
Also, inspect your premise, the local poles, and so on as far as you can go for anything that looks like someone stealing phone service from your line.
I suspect the issue is nothing more than you got bumped to an older box because some new one died (which is why it pukes every night, it's an old one) and they are just using it to hold circuits (one of which is yours) while they get the replacement installed. Your ping time may get back down to where you want it to be when they are done.
The 411 thing should be setting off big alarm bells though, that's suspicious.
The local line tech I've been dealing with is really advanced with this stuff, and has been really helpful so far. I know enough to know nothing is crossed or tampered with here in my boxes, so that shouldn't be the problem. The line to the green box from wherever, and from the green box to my TNI are both buried, so I can guarantee no one has beige-boxed my shit(I was a busy kid back in the day). He assures me there has been no recent work done or problems at the c/o, but he still has some stuff to check out. He called earlier to check on my connection because he removed some sort of hardware from my line that allows for a dial-tone or something, says this should keep those calls from showing up wherever they're coming from...and if it doesn't, then there's an internal billing problem that CL customer support needs to fix ASAP. Like I said it's 411 calls here and there during the day stretched out over the month, with a few local calls mixed in...all of which are to home loan type places and etc. I haven't bothered to call any of them as I know they won't give me any information on who may have called.
There is no firmware update available for this 6100 that I know of, there is one available for the spare 7500 I have sitting here...but I don't want to use that modem because it jumps my line attenuation up from 52 to 61-62 and runs hotter than the 6100.
Tomorrow the local line tech should be calling me after he has a chance to speak to his supervisor about what's been going on, and ask him about what may need to be done at the c/o in an attempt to fix the problems.
I don't know my neighbors at all, but it wouldn't hurt to cruise out to their places to see if they've been having any issues with phones or net...but from what the tech said, I'm the only person in the immediate area that has DSL that he knows of.
For at least 48 hours I have not had any "outages". These "outages" never happened around the times of those 411 calls, from what I can remember...I don't know anything about the calls until I get a bill which documents the dates and times. As far as I know my connection has never dropped during the day, the calls range from morning to late afternoon, sometimes several times a day.
What really confuses me about those mysterious calls is the fact I have an outgoing call block on the voice half of the line, and that option even shows up on my bill. The local line tech and customer support both agree that the only calls I should be able to make are either 911 or CenturyLink's main 800 number...so shouldn't this rule out a crossed line or someone tampering with my line and pretty much limit it to an internal billing fuck up?
While on the phone earlier with the local line tech, he had me run a traceroute in cmd prompt and give him the results. Not sure what they're for or what he's going to do with them, but it's nice to see that he's actually trying to help me out with the sudden high ping.