A bit of a non-astronomical question, but I'm not getting much joy with the local services here:
About two weeks ago my modem suddenly stopped working, even though it was flashing all the right lights indicating it was ok. After waiting a few days thinking it was a line fault I rang the ISP help desk and spent an hour on the phone looking at the modem with them, but nothing seemed to be wrong. On the weekend I decided to buy and try a new modem anyway, and thought I'd try it first with an old lap top. It wouldn't connect. The next day I tried installing it on the desktop, and it worked. Yay.
BUT...
There is now a lot of noise on the phone line. Some phone technicians came out to look at it and declared it was the new modem making all the noise, because "sometimes they are faulty duds, happens a lot" (
really?), declared that I didn't need a filter on the modem anyway and charged $120 for a false call out. Due to various happenings I didn't have time to return the new modem to the shop but as soon as I could I called in at the local computer specialist store to make inquiries about another new modem. "Oh, you need filters, on the modem
and the phone, and you should make sure you have one suited for ASDL2". They didn't have them on the shelf, had been waiting for them, yada yada - but I should be able to get something similar at a popular electronics store. hmmm Went to popular electronics store, they shoved something that looked just like what I had at home in my hand and treated me like an idiot but I took it because I'm desperate ..and found it didn't work. Went back to computer store, who now had new filters, bought them and installed them. The line is still noisy!!!
So, my question is, do I really have a dud modem? Or has everyone told me the wrong story about line filters?
