One of the ladies who work for the 'Phone Company went and got herself (her son actually) DSL. Finally -- I had mine since December '99. They opted for the self-install. Put it together, modem synch'ed up, worked fine. Except when they tried to use the telephone -- the DSL crashed and the line was noisy. Called tech support several times for a week, no help. About to give up on DSL, complaining at work, overheard by my friend, Mary. "Call Mikey!" she says, "Mikey can fix it!"
So they call. I do a line test, a tad over 14K feet, no MTU shown. Ask a few questions. Given that tech support bounced did not expect the obvious to have been overlooked and doubted I could fix over the 'phone. Lady's house is only a half mile dogleg on my drive home so I stop by after work to look. The micro filters were all properly placed, the modem correctly installed. Looked in the NID, not too ugly, no obvious errors.
Tell her I'll have to come back with a Splitter, am walking away, realized I made a mistake. I trusted the MLT (mechanized line test) when it did not find an MTU (maintenance test unit.) I go back and open the teleco side of the NID. Sure enough, there is an MTU sitting there.
The MTU is a little device that the MLT can access to disconnect the premise wiring from the outside plant. It kills DSL. I remove it, reconnect the IW's and close up the NID.
Test the phones -- all have dial tone (I didn't break any wires!) The DSL modem is all green. Lady calls out, no noise, and the modem stays green. Trouble fixed.
Lady thanks me.
Posted by at July 13, 2004 07:22 PM