BitTorrent interference with a landline telephone

Question

There are still certain spots in Lancaster County, PA farmland where DSL internet is the only thing available through a wire (there's satellite, but that is a different matter).

Now, DSL and a landline telephone should be able to be used together -- with neither service interfering with the other. Despite this, there have been several occasions when the landline telephone has stopped working correctly. On the receiving end, there might be a few short or spotty rings, followed by interludes of silence. On the calling end, everything sounded normal, except no one ever picked up the phone! The incoming signal would not stay connected long enough for the answering machine to pick up.

Merely pausing torrent downloads instantly solved the problem. Setting a limit on the bandwidth the torrents used has also worked out very well. DSL is provided by Verizon. Speed is 768kbps down/128kbps up. BitTorrent client is uTorrent 1.7.7.

So, even though I have a way to block one symptom, I am still interested in the underlying network problem.

Has anyone else experienced this kind of thing? Are there other problems I should be looking for?

Answer 1

This is probably coincidence. If not, it's a broken ADSL modem, and it's still coincidence that only BitTorrent breaks.

ADSL works on a different frequency as voice. The two shouldn't interfere at all. This is physics. A broken modem might use a wrong frequency.

ADSL carries bits. It doesn't know about IP, let alone BitTorrent. It therefore treats all bits the same. This is electrical. Even a broken modem doesn't know about BitTorrent.