Name: Chani Slaughter
Hi, and hoping you can help.
We had a bad thunderstorm two nights ago, with a lightning strike that seemed to be right above the house. There are two computers in the house, both plugged into surge protectors. My cable connection is okay but a room mate has DSL and now cannot connect to the internet. The phone line still works and his PC works, just without internet connection. He called the service provider and was told the problem must be with his Ethernet, but he’s checked that and it’s okay. The two bottom lights on his DSL modem are on but the ones above are not. He has reset everything twice.
Any ideas about what he can do, apart from buying a new DSL modem? I tried to talk him into networking with my PC and the cable connection but he already had a contract with the DSL provider when he moved in here, and he tends to think DSL is better than cable.
First off, I’m going to completely agree with you that your roommate should just network with you and dump the DSL connection. Having two separate ISPs in the house may be nice for redundancy’s sake, but it’s honestly just a complete waste of money.
To make sure that his ethernet connection is in fact OK, I would first connect his computer to your cable connection. If he’s able to grab and IP address and get on the internet OK then we can rule out that as a possibility right away.
More than likely his DSL modem is in fact dead. Lightning strikes have a major tendency to travel over phone lines, and because of this it’s very possible that the DSL modem is hosed. The only real way to see if it’s that would be to have another DSL modem to test with. Most phone companies actually rent out the modem itself, and if that’s the case, he should actually be able to get the phone company to RMA the modem and send him a new one. I’d not mention the lightning thing, or they might not cover it under the warranty.
All in all, you should buy a router, convince him to break his contract with the phone company, and then split the cable bill with him. 🙂
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