I just had another of those surreal conversations with Centurylink...
A month or so ago, we made some changes to our Clink account - we dropped the landline. DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO THE DSL. NOTHING.
But, since approximately that time I've noticed a marked increase in the time it takes to connect to websites. Not the download speed once the download is started but very much slower connection and browsing. PRIOR to the change I did NOT have the perception that there was a deterioration in speed.
Waited and watched. No improvement. Pulled the plug on the modem. No improvement. Got to Thanksgiving and I figured it was just LOTS of traffic. On cyber Monday it was incredibly slow, but I figured EVERYBODY was on buying important stuff.
But, it continued so I pulled the plug. No perceptible difference. Waited. Today, still slow, so I called Centurylink, figuring I'd get one of the knowledgeable network folks (I actually DID used to get really knowledgeable people) that can diagnose dsl problems and oddities...
Got a guy, who after a couple minutes of doing something said "Hm, I can see that we seem to be having some problems on your connection. I'm going to send a signal to your modem. Can you UNPLUG the modem while I send the signal? Which seemed odd 'cause how's the powered-down modem going to RECEIVE the signal? But, I pulled the plug. Unfortunately, being a fumble-fingered clod, while messing with the modem I hit the button on the phone and disconnected.
So, I called back. Got a different person. Gave her the info from the previous call. Rather than jumping on the DSL problem we did the long authentication dance, but eventually she declared that she didn't see any problems...
Her advice, and I queried her 'cause I figured my elderly ears were deceiving me, was "At LEAST THREE times a week, you need to unplug the modem because there are a "lot" of people in your area using DSL." Huh?
Me:"So, to keep this thing running decently I have to kill it every day or it'll degrade?" Her: "OH, no, JUST THREE TIMES A WEEK, maybe Monday, Wednesday, and Friday."
Oh...
As I said previously, download speed seems relatively normal, it's just the connection and browsing that is slow.
So, since Centurylink doesn't appear to have their own forum to support their customers (or, if they do, I haven't found it), I figured I'd ask in here... Is this what we've come to? At a minimum, you have to kill your network connection every other day to keep it working decently? Is this the advice y'all receive when it's taking 20-30 SECONDS to get to websites? Or did I just get a whole bunch of sunshine blown up my skirt again?
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