Unreliable Internet Connection

I recently experienced a very unreliable internet connection at home. My internet kept on disconnecting and at times would not even connect.

So I lodged a fault with my ISP and someone came around to investigate. This is what happened.

The first thing was to test the phone jack that the ASDL Modem was plugged into. The technical had a device which plugs into the phone jack and connects to the exchange and can generate some statistics like speed, noise etc.

Before coming to my house, the technical was at the exchange testing my connection. He said that connection speed at the exchange was 16mbps and at my house it was 11mbps. He said that I live approximately 3km from the exchange. He made the point that I am very lucky to get those sort of speeds. He said people down the road we only getting about 2 to 3mbps.

For some reason, his device was not connecting and eventually it did connect. The technician decided to try another phone jack because it shouldn't take that long to connect. But surprisingly it connected straight away at the other phone jack. That meant something was wrong with the first phone jack.

So he plugged in his device into the original phone jack and it connect ok. He called the ISP to check that the statistics he is viewing on his device has the same readings as the ISP and they were the same.
So the technician said that my ADSL router might be the problem.

I have a netgear router. And the technician said these routers work very well when they are new and as they get older they dont perform that well and can play up. I have personally noticed that the performace of my wireless has degraded over time.

I then asked the technician if there was something wrong with the phone jack itself. Some sort of lose wiring. So he opened it up and had a long look at the connection. He pointed out some mold/fungus in the connection and that could be causing the problem.

He then installed a new phone jack and tested it again. The statistics where slightly better than before. I plugged my router into the phone jack and it also connected relatively quickly. I had to just monitor my connection over the next couple of days.

He suggested that if I experience these problems agains, to try another router because everything else seems to be fine.

Conclusion
The cause of my unreliable internet connection was some mold/fungus in the wiring in the phone jack. Who would have thought this would be the problem! After the phone jack was changed, my internet has been very reliable.

Note: Having an alarm system is also known to cause internet problems. If you have a monitored alarm, some special wiring needs to be done so the alarm is using the correct channels of the phone line and does not interfer with the internet connection. Its some sort of splitting so that you dont have to use line filters in the house.