I was having problems with my phone lines, so I called the phone company to see if they could help me. The problems were very intermittent so I did not think he would be able to fix it. various problems. I could not hear the other person talk they could not here me talk static the line would go dead no dial tone then it would come back a little later clicking sounds fax sounds when I pick up the phone could not hear the person for a few seconds, going in and out dsl Internet connection goes up and down, and slow He came over and did the following things 1. disconnected the unused alarm system inside out and outside, that alone made me very happy. It beeps when the power goes out. 2. Installed a dsl filter. We had a dsl filter missing on one of the TVs (has satellite receiver, with phone line) 3. Removed a remote phone jack the satellite folks put there for some dumb reason. It was the base unit. No other end could be found. He said they put those if there was no phone line near the receiver, but both receivers had phone lines installed near them. I think he just put it there just out of habit. He said it was not the phone company that installed it during dsl install, as I thought because they don't do that. 4 re-booted router. He said a missing dsl filter can cause static. He said rebooting the router as any electronic device helps since the get over heated and need to be shut off from time to time. He said wireless phone jacks are bad news. He did not say why, that I can remember. He wondered where the other half was but we never found it. The thing I was having the most problems with was, how an alarm system, not in use would cause problems. He explained it, but I forgot most of what he said, maybe because I did not thoroughly understand. Can anyone, in not too technical terms, explain what happens when an alarm system, not being used, tries to take over the phone lines? and how and why it can cause the above problems. I wondered if the sat company calls at 2 am why would that cause static during the day? why would a remote phone jack cause problems? He suggested a new router if we continued to have internet problems. These are the three options he suggested a. multi line modem so we could stop using router b. 2 computer wireless modem - set up with password so others could not hijack our system c. lynk sys router if we still wanted a router (I asked for a decent brand. We are using blittzz wireless firewall router - BWA 711, now I we get a new router, what do you think we should get, that cause the least problems? Please let me know which fixes would fix which problems and why. I hope all this is not too confusing. It is to me. Internet connection does seem faster now since he left, about 1 hour ago. Mary

Yes, you're right in what you said at the end of your post; this is coming from 3-way calling. Many phone companies have now enabled 3-way calling and all the other "custom calling features" on a pay-per-use basis, so your line probably does have 3-way calling enabled on it. This will not occur on all calls because if it is on your local exchange that you have gotten a busy signal, the phone company's computer is "smart" enough to know that you would not want to put a busy signal on hold and dial a second number. However, if the busy signal is on a long-distance number, your local phone company's computer doesn't know it's a busy signal, so it will let you put it on hold and dial a second number. You need to keep the phone hung up longer before making a second call. In some cases, you may be charged long distance for the call that's hearing a busy signal but is on hold, and in others you might be charged for a use of 3-way calling if it's on your line as a pay-per-use feature.

my thingking... I'm inventive and handy with a ships auger and masonary bit! Add it as you need it. My wifi with 100% signal is actually moving around 5 mbyte/s across the room to/from the router. When I get fios I'm not going to be happy if I dont have at least one wired computer for large downloads. Probably wont be happy with my laptop wifi speeds. Takes it a long time now to move even a CD from the Desktop to laptop with wifi. Network cable is like WoW speed after using wifi. I keep a 100 foot network cable coiled at ready and stretch it out to my laptop for things like the soon coming xp sp3 upgrade (350mb) & also for that occasional DVD I want to download and watch. Wifi just is too slow for bigger byte stuff. Wifi DVD downloads and sending movies to set-top media center on wifi, sucks. Other than that kind of stuff, you're right. Don't really need a built in wired local LAN .. networking with all the wifi and other plug instant connect doohickeys is pretty simple, but definitely much slower. Someday you're going to find yourself with a 10 - 30 megaByte internet connection with fios or cable and you;ll not be able to utilize that connection to its potential with wifi though.

Thanks, bus_driver. Can I ground it to the panel then, instead? The main panel is grounded via a stake in the ground outside (It was just done 2 years ago and passed inspection).