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Squirrels and rain can slow down an ADSL modem...

2001-02-01 (updated: 2014-08-17) by

When I received my huge package from Bell Sympatico, I unpacked everything, installed all the hardware and software, and waited until morning for the account to be activated. When It was, I was receiving around 200k download, and .3k upload! Disgusting! I phoned Bell Sympatico, and the tech there walked me through the standard; "Check this...Check that..." routine. Still no improvement. After about 3 days of frustrating calls, my 'ticket' was escalated. The tech who called me at the time I had said I would be home, walked me through more of the advanced settings, and tricks to get my speed up...Still nothing. I informed him that the speed would drop even further when it rained... So he booked a technician in two days, and refunded a full month of service (At this time I had been on this service for about 5 days).

When the service tech arrived, he went around to the back to check to see whether the connection to the line that runs between the block of houses was damaged, he found nothing. He then went up to the switching station at the end our block and came back an hour later and informed me that the speed should be better now. I went and tried it and lo and behold 780k!!! I asked him what the problem was and he told me that the switching station was half full of water and there was a family of squirrels living in the switch! I was satisfied with the speed improvement, but he insisted that he stay to get it up past 1mb...Very sweet...

Well needless to say, an hour later I checked my speed, and I was totally surprised to see that my speed was above 1mb/sec!!! (It didn't last though, I have been sitting around 95 for about three months now...

The moral of the story? If your speed decreases, check for rain and squirrels...

Cheers!!!

  User Reviews/Comments:
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by bluegoddess - 2006-05-16 12:55
Hilarious!!!
by anonymous - 2012-01-31 13:39
Had a entire datacenter taken down by a squirrel who was hopping along a wire and tried to walk across a transformer. As it hit both connections on the transformer we heard the explosion then all went dark. Next day the company invested in a UPS system :-)
by williams - 2015-10-15 10:27
I upgraded my router firmware with WORKSKILLER (WRTG4G2 V1) Now i cannot acces the router web page GATEWAY again, what can i do
by Philip - 2015-10-15 21:10
The first thing to do would be to try and reset the router (hold down the reset button for 30+seconds while powering up). If that doesn't work, there are instructions on the dd-wrt website on how to try and revert to the stock firmware, here is a link:

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Linksys_WRT54G2#Reverting_back_to_stock_Linksys_firmware
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