You see on Sunday afternoon, the Internet connection at Theresa’s house was dreadfully slow, and would randomly disconnect for a couple seconds at a time. Just enough time to cancel any sort of operation you were hoping to do while browsing the Interwebs. I, being the only tech-savvy person about, was given the … opportunity to correct the situation.

This is not what I wanted to do with my weekend, but sadly when your girlfriend is Internet dependent and gets frustrated when things don’t work (don’t we all though?) it makes fixing said Internet.

Let me run down the possible causes for you really quickly so that you know where I’m going with this:

1. GF’s laptop was crapping itself
2. The phone line filters are crapping themselves (the house runs on a DSL sytem)
3. The router is crapping itself
4. The modem is crapping itself
5. The provider is crapping itself
6. The wiring between the modem and router is crapping itself
7. The phone line to the modem is crapping itself
8. God hates me.

As you can see, I basically presumed that something had failed along the way (“crapping itself” is a very technical umbrella term). Note that for everything but the finale of this sad tale, I was on the phone with technical support, combining our brains to figure all of this out.

Now I knew it couldn’t be her laptop, because everyone on the network was being effected (my own laptop included). I also knew that it couldn’t be the filters, because not too long ago we had to call tech support to find out why things weren’t working before. One of the steps they got me to try was to unplug all of the phones and see of that was the issue, it wasn’t. I accessed the router and it was fine; no lag, no anything. I sat there and pounded the f5 key on the Net connection page to see if it was disconnecting. As it worked out, it was.

“Ha!” I thought to myself, “easy fix, new modem and we’ll be up and running in no time!” This was, as it turned out, a half-truth.

Attempt One: Modem & Wires

I bought a new modem from the provider (120 dollars, give or take a little) and went home and plugged it in. The connection became solid, but still slower than it really should have. “Hmm, alright so the modem did need replacing, but that wasn’t the cause for the slowdown.” I then decided to replace the wiring from wall to modem, as well as modem to router. Shiny, brand new wires were put in, and there was little to no change.

Attempt Two: Router

“HMMMmmm,” went I, “okay so it’s not anything to do with the modem, so it must be something to do with the router!” See the router was also getting on in years, and though it was still functioning it could probably be upgraded. So I started by upgrading the firmware (fuck you Linksys for making the worst navigation on a website ever) and though the router was happy, it didn’t fix anything.

I then opted to upgrade the router (90 dollars after tax for a new Linksys Wireless-N Broadband Router), and set that up. Everything was hunky-dory with the router, and the network was running fine. Sadly though the speed was still painfully slow. A little faster, thanks to everything I had done, but still running at about 300 kb/s (thank you speedtest.net for not going down via my repeated tests). That’s terrible for a DSL, even a DSL at the maximum range from the switch.

Attempt Three: Filters

At this point I’ve become frustrated, and decide that maybe it is a filter after all. Who knows, between the last time I called them and now maybe a filter could have died. I ran around the house and unplugged all of the phones, and did a speed test. Still sitting at 300 or so. “FUCK,” declared me, “what is going on!? There’s nothing left to cause this!” That’s when I decided to canvas the house for any phone that could be missing a filter. Still nothing, until on a whim I checked the sisters room.

Attempt Four: Filters (again)

And here is the finale, folks.

Now I knew that she didn’t have a phone. Hell she never answered it anyways so why would she have one? I had even been in her room recently playing with the cat, and I had seen no phone. She has a Blackberry that she uses for everything. She has no need for a land line.

Of course, there was a phone in the room.

A phone lacking a filter.

A filterless, fucking, phone.

I unplugged the phone, and ran another speed test; 1200 kb/s. I plugged the phone back in and ran the test; 300 kb/s. I then attached a filter (we had two laying around the house) and ran a speed test; 1200 kb/s.

So 210 dollars later, it was a missing filter that was causing most of the errors.

What I’ve learned

Sometimes the simple answer really is the right answer.

I replaced everything around the filters figuring that they couldn’t be the issue, but I was only half-right. All the filters were working properly; it was a lack of one that caused the issue. Had I bothered to canvas the house first, I could have saved the family 210 dollars. Granted the modem was failing slowly and would had to have been replaced eventually. I rationalize it this way: at least we don’t need to worry about the modem or router failing for another couple years.

Also, I’m pretty sure God still hates me, so I’m going to say it was a joint problem.