50 microns enough? gold plated contacts.

[J Burns]

Aw, you caught me trolling and now you're playing the straight man!

I was talking about all the mortgages that were underwater after 2008, and I guess millions still are.

It seems logical, if they make surface mount jacks, they must make submarine mount jacks... eh???

I'm sure Tony was talking about DeoxIT, like Stormy. I think the one you apply to contacts has been called Liquid Gold. The trouble is the price, about $25 for 7ml.

When we hit port, we'd hook up phone cables from shore to ship and to the quarterdeck shack, like a big phone booth on the pier. Electricians did that. I was in electronics. We did connections for radio and radar antennas. I don't remember any gold plating. We depended on silicone grease, RTV, and special tape.

I think you'll do fine with grease.

[J Burns]

Thanks for not calling me a dadblamed troll.

[J Burns]

If your NID has a disconnect jack, you could plug in a phone there to see if there's any problem outside your own wiring.

My phone wiring is so old that there's not even a disconnect plug at the service entrance. I think it's two insulated wires twisted around each other. I could use a browser to get a GIU interface with my DSL modem. It kept a record of what it measured when I dialed up. That showed me that my old wiring handled the frequencies very well.

There were intermittent problems on voice and DSL. I disconnected my home wiring at the NID, clipped a jumper across the ends, and used a meter to find any resistance in the system. There was a little resistance where a spade terminal of the wall jack screwed down. I cleaned that up.

Intermittent scratchiness continued for years. One morning it was especially bad. When I phoned to report it, they said they'd have it fixed in 24 hours. When I phoned from a neighbor's an hour later to say I'd lost service completely, they said a week.

I ordered cable. When the phone man showed up, he found that the phone cable along the street was broken in two places. I'll bet they'd been broken for years. By now, my neighbor had been without phone service four days. The phone man told her he could have fixed it in five minutes because he knew where her break was and his ladder was up, but that would have been against company policy. She had to wait a few more days.

Cable gives me five times the speed for less than half the price of DSL.

[micky]

This is the first time I can recall scratchiness in the phone, so I'm not going to worry about it.

You probably know that in most places, the phone company will put a NID in for free.

No kidding? How would I do that?

That was the Marine slogan. "Scratcihness we do immediately. No service we take a week."

Glad to hear that.

It turns out instead of looking for gold-plated phone modular connectors, there are screws inside the NID that I plan to use. That will get rid of their modular connection and my own. and it won't get moldy or whatever because it can be tightened down, compared to my wire that blew in the wind. I don't know if slight moviement of the plug in the jack would clean the connection or allow it to get dirty.

[J Burns]

I'm usually foggy about technical jargon, so I looked it up. An NID is the box where home wiring connects to telco wiring. It may or may not have a jack.

In 1996, I discovered that my phone electrode wasn't bonded to my power electrode, 30 feet away. In 1998, lightning hit a tree 30 feet away. It blew the "fuse" on the pole across the street, but my computer and phone equipment were OK. I told the phone guy I thought the ground surge would have wiped out my stuff if I hadn't bonded the electrodes.

For half an hour, he hemmed and hawed. Then he blurted it out. The electrical code called for bonding, but it was against telco policy because they didn't like replacing fuses.

I would have liked a jack, but I figured it would be dangerous to let a company like that replace my NID.

For my current modem, I type the IP 192.168.100.1. Sometimes the modem manual tells you the IP. In this case, I looked it up in Network in System Preferences. The procedure to find the IP is probably a little different in Windows.

The one place I found resistance in my home wiring was in a screw-down connection indoors. Grease should prevent that in a jack or a screw connection.

[Ralph Mowery]

I doubt the modem manual would tell the IP address as it is assigned by the internet system. You may be thinking of the MAC number.

[J Burns]

The ISP assigns a WAN IP. To ask the modem, "How's it going?" the computer uses the LAN IP.

If I ping my WAN IP, the signal will go to my ISP and back. If I just want to ping my modem, I use the LAN IP.

[Tony Hwang]

Typically NID is a little block grounding and lightning arrestor where you punch in wires in/out. If you need connection to modular jack, you punch in pig tail with modular plug. Micky, you always seem to have weird one of a kind problems. Are you living in a vintage house full of vintage stuffs? You have to move along with changing times. Keep on top of new things, LOL! In my neighborhood all cables are under ground. Nothing clutters or overhangs. Only trees and one piece steel street light poles(not ugly wooden poles) You live in U.S. of A. Not in a third world country some where.

[Ralph Mowery]

Yea, just wasn't thinking about the local IP address.

[J Burns]

Street lights should be underground! I should know. I don't drive drunk, but I once tried to walk while talking on a cell phone. :)

[J Burns]

Drip loops help where a cable is exposed to rain. If the jack is protected from rain, and all cables go downward from the jack and plug, no rainwater will reach it. All you have to worry about is condensation. Even if you used no grease or spray stuff, condensation might not happen enough to cause a problem.

If a cable goes straight to the modem, it's probably best to put your filters near the NID.

A phone cord with a mod plug could make troubleshooting easy. Cut it and short the conductors with a wire nut, for example.

Unplug your phones and disconnect your house wiring at the NID. Clip an ohmmeter to the leads to be sure it's infinite ohms, no short. Then put your shorted plug into each jack to be sure you have something close to zero ohms from the NID leads.

My girl will be impressed when I give her a jug of liquid gold to fertilize her house plants.

[Tony Hwang]

Of course power cables are underground for the poles. So you got big bump on your forehead?, LOL!

[J Burns]

If I'm talking to a lady, a sharp blow to the face could cause me to lose my presence of mind and express displeasure in unrefined terms.

Heavy equipment has a beeper that sounds when it backs up. Light posts should have beepers like that, for the safety of pedestrians with cell phones!

It's been years since I tried talking on a cell phone while walking, but I have been practicing with my cordless phone. I often go out to check the rain gauge while on the phone. So far, I haven't walked into the garage wall.

Neighbors give me strange looks when they saw me walking around, apparently talking to myself. I need to paint my headset and cord bright orange so they won't get the wrong impression.

[Tony Hwang]

I bumped into a pole when I was a kid walking and reading at the same time. Then there wasn't any thing like cell phones. Colliding with pole is better that falling into a manhole, LOL!

[micky]

Well, the punching's been done so what's left is the plugging and screwing.

Yeah, I had done that.

That't true. I don't want the same kind of problems everyone else has. That would be like wearing the same tie or a woman wearing the same dress as another. (Plus if I do have the same kind of problem, I have already read about it here. New problems need answers more.)

Built in 1979.

Great idea.

My neighborhood too. Who mentioned cables? I only mentioned the NID.

It's always good to hear how nice your neighborhood and house are.

[micky]

And you can get DSL with a dial-up internet connection

Or is this a record of when you dial a phone call?

It also kept a record of what it measured when you dialed up. How do you see the record? Is it on the "web page" or the "page" that displays when you use your web-browser to go to 192.168.100.1 ?

I've wondered about whether one can get DSL when he has dial-up internet. Is that what you have? When I got DSL, it was always on and didn't need me to make a connection, and at first I just assumed it was always like that.

This shows how confused I was. There was no chance of getting rid of

*their* modular connection. I misunderstood which wires were going out and which were going in, which from the customer part and which from the phone company part of the nid. So I spend 30 minutes yesterday, cleaning and connnecting to the two screws, but I had unplugged the modular plug to plug in a phone (right there) in case I got a call, and it didn't work (because the modular plug was unplugged). and I put it back the way it was.

I stuffed the surface mount jack inside the NID so it will be even dryer now, and it all clean now and should last 5 years, but next day that's not too hot, I'll connect it to the screws as I intended.

I didn't have a small wire brush so I used a pointed automobile battery clamp wire brush and it did a good job on both the jack and the plug.

I wonder if the jack and plug in the NID are gold-plated.

[micky]

No, I was serious. I thought maybe they (or you jokingly) renamed the RJ15 meant for marinas and the joke you were making was tying real jacks to flooded houses. Underwater on the mortgage didnt' even occur to me.

Right!

Wow.

Hmmm. Okay.

If the stuff on the connection is corrosion, oxidation, how does it get on the plastic too?** And if it is mold. why is it especially on electrical (phone) connections?

**There is more not on the copper than on the copper.

[micky]

I should have done that years ago. Not too late. Thanks.

Well the phone company doesn't use any grease in the NID, I was reminded of that yesterday.

Thanks.

[micky]

I wish I'd known about that. I have a fancy AM-FM radio with preset stations and 2 alarms, but it has push button switches. After 15 years some got dirty, and I cleaned them but they get dirty progressivly more quickly. Now it lasts less than a year and so I haven't used the radio for years.

Anything else I can use that might be not as good but similar?

[J Burns]

I hadn't thought of that. Mildew may grow in dirt that settles on a surface, but I thought it hated copper. Grease should prevent mildew by keeping dirt off the surface.