What is ADSL
ADSL stands for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line and before NBN (National Broadband Network) was the standard by which internet was measured by.
Up until that point, there was only the old slow dial up internet available to the public and even though the technology is old now, it is still fast enough for most people to be able to watch Netflix on it and a lot of people still have it.
For ADSL to work in your home or business, you needed to have a ADSL enabled exchange, be close enough to that exchange and a ADSL modem.
Not all ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) such as Bigpond, Iinet and Optus are available on all exchanges and there are always mixed results depending who you go with.
For ADSL and ADSL2 to work you also needed a telephone line. This telephone line needed to be connected to the copper network.
Typical speeds were about 1mb for ADSL and 4mb+ for ADSL2 connections.
TPG have a lot of good competitive plans right now.
Faulty Modem
ADSL Modems have a habit of dying after a few years. Fortunately they are easy and inexpensive to replace.
Also as technology improves so do the modems and the features new modems include life faster wireless and better security on your modem, so when replacing your ADSL modem you usually notice a difference in speeds and better wireless, longer up times etc.
If replacing your modem doesn’t work and you still keep disconnecting there are probably other problems such as the following.
After the Rains
It doesn’t rain often in Townsville, but when it does, it rains big.
Usually in the wet seasons or during and after the rains we see a lot of people with ADSL modems disconnecting often.
This is because when such large volumes of rain feels the streets and run into the telephone communication pits, they fill up with water, and water and technology usually don’t go well together.
The pits either dry up and start working good again or the telecommunication companies get enough calls from angry customers and send someone to the exchange to check it out and fix it.
Contention Ratio
Contention ratio put simply is how many people are using your providers line. When you use ADSL it would be way to expensive for everyone to get their own dedicated line, so you basically share a line with other people.
This is great if you are the only user, but that’s probably not the case. The more people in your area who sign up with ADSL and use the same service as you, the slower it will get.
If your provider has a low contention ratio, less people per line you will have a faster connection, the higher the contention ratio, the slower.
After School
If your internet is running slow or starts disconnecting weekdays at around 3.30pm every day you can bet it when all the kids are coming home from school and using the internet.
The networks get overloaded, contention ratios go through the roof and poor old you will suddenly get disconnected or very slow internet.
The NBN is suppose to fix this and stop it from happening, but the NBN is not available at everyone home or business and it turning out to have its own fair share of problems as well.
Dodgy Internet Service Provider
This goes back to factors such as contention ratio, how many people are using the service and how much capacity the internet service provider is paying for etc.
Do they maintain their lines themselves, are the just a wholesale service?
Not all internet service providers are equal, we seems to see a lot that a very good and some which are very bad. Budget plans usually perform poor, you do get what you pay for.
It Might Just Be Your Wifi
If you are using wireless to connect to your ADSL modem, it could be you have a wireless problem.
To rule that out all you need to do is connect your computer to your modem/router via a Ethernet cable and see how it performs.
If it performs better you know you have a wireless problem. Wireless problems happen due to faulty hardware, incompatible devices, network interference, to many wireless devices in close proximity, electrical wiring in the walls etc.
