More Internet Problems

Well Telekom has followed up with my problem the other day and still no joy. They've already put me on an elevated priority but so far the problem is still there. Very dirty connection, lots of timeouts, lost packets and line dropping.

Since it's the Chinese New Year holidays I'm not expecting this problem to be resolved until at least next week. In the mean time, I've been scouring the net for possible causes and solutions.

Two things at the moment.

One, my phone line is very noisy. Noisy as in lots of clicking noises and static when you're on the phone. All this while I've taken this for granted since the line's been dirty a long time actually. It's even worse when my router is working. Apparently this is not normal and may affect my internet connection. But the strange thing is even with all the noise, my DSL connection's been working all this time without any problem.

This leads me to...

Two, the router. I've been reading a lot about DSL connections problem and now I have this nagging suspicion that my router may be dying. I need to bring my router to a friend's house and test it there. His connection's been fine and very fast. If I get time outs at his place with my router...

That means I need to buy a new router...

Shit. More money gone. Is there a way to repair a router? It's a shame really. Or maybe I can sell my current router. The modem part of it might be busted but the wireless and the switch parts of it is still ok.

I'll know for sure on Monday.

Meanwhile, I'm tracking this quality Linksys product.

*Sigh*

In other news... well there isn't any at the moment. Apart from yesterday evening when another friend's PC developed a problem. His 6 year old 20Gb hard disk is finally in it's death throes. It's got bad sectors now. Luckily, the dude bought an 80Gb unit last year so now he's booting up from that.

I noticed that his PC is now noticeably faster than it used to be. It now runs Titan Quest very nicely and I could even bump up the detail level and use a higher resolution without lagging. So if you are running your PC from an ancient hard disk and feel the thing is quite slow, it is. Time to fork out the cash and change the disk.

Don't worry about it, hard drives are cheap. RM180 will get you a nice, fast and reasonably large 160Gb. The 80gb ones are cheaper still.

Yeah that's it for now. Nothing interesting these few days.

Happy holidays and have a Happy and Prosperous New Year~!