Not exactly. All main cables are shielded and bonded to reduce noise. For the most part all buried service wires that have been installed in the past 5 years are also bonded. No wire in a residential building is shielded or bonded unless some one has done it themselves. A NID is nothing more than a lightning protection element and a phone jack all wrapped up in one pretty box. Most phone lines are still mostly run on copper, the biggest difference comes in the newer fibre fed boxes which will incorporate their own SLAMs rather than having the SLAM in the CO. This severely reduces the length of the DSL loop and gives greater reach to the ISP. Some boxes are large walk in cabinets that have shelves specifically for SLAMs or "Combo Cards" which are just as they sound a SLAM and POTS OE all in one card. Older boxes that have fibre capabilities previously just for voice are sometimes upgraded to include a "Stinger" which is just a small fibre fed cabinet that sits on the side of the original box and provides the SLAMs. These outside SLAM ports are generally not called DSLAM but take on other letter combos like RSLAM to differentiate them and make it easier for the field techs to know what they are dealing with. Here where I work we have D/B/F/N/R/S/Z SLAMs all tied to different types of fibre nodes. These outside nodes are where the POTS/DSL signals are split then sent to the CO where they are routed to the nearest POP for your ISP.Originally Posted by Sentential
I am a broadcom field tech for a very large DSL provider in Canada. What you are experiencing could be caused by what we refer to as "capping out". Basically you should never be profiled for more than 80% of what your line can handle (basically what Sentential said to provide 6m service you need a max attainable of ~8m). Problem is most providers forget to look at both sides of the sync. Generally the problems are not with the down stream but with the up. From the sounds of it you would be at a 6046/800 profile. This can be caused by many factors, noise, loop length, defective or missing filters, poor quality wiring, defective or leaking splices among many others. Without being able to see the line report I couldn't tell you what or where the problem is. Things to always try and avoid: line cords in excess of 6 feet, multiple phones run on one filter, using a surge protector on the DSL line I can't think of any others off the top of my head.
I don't know about down in the US but up here tech's that swap out modems are either just lazy or don't know what they are doing. Very rarely do modems just go bad unless they get hit with a power surge, are dropped, or some one takes a hammer to it (had this happen this week).
Ask your service provider to install a POTS splitter. Run a dedicated line from the POTS splitter directly to the spot where you use the modem. This way you can make sure that the wiring is good. Don't buy cheap wiring. 22AWG 4 conductor "Quad" as we call it isn't very expensive and will do you wonders. Don't use anything that is stranded, ever. Solid core wiring is the only thing you should be using.
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