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For anybody with DSL, there are some very simple things you can do to boost your signal and reliability:
#1 Use the damned filters the telco provides! Too often, as a technician for a telco, I run into people who get intermittent connections, only to find out something silly like a caller ID or satellite receiver has an unfiltered connection to the phone line. Unfiltered devices can even degrade performance without any obvious signs of it, providing feedback in portions of the DSL spectrum that may not kill the connection, but limiting the use of channels within the spectrum.
#2 Even better than #1, but a little more work, is to install a single filter at the telephone network interface (the main phone feed to the house), and route the DSL signal over it's own dedicated unfiltered home run wire to the jack. Don't connect anything else to the line except to use the sometimes provided phone out jack on the back of the modem. This means no other jacks, phones, fax machines etc - unless they use the jack on the back of the modem or a splitter with a filter at the wall end - not at the back of the dang machine! Even a simple moving of filters from the device end of a phone cord to the wall end can make a difference. (Yes, they are reversible.)
#3 Test the remainder of your house wiring for potential problems such as any shorts or grounds - or anything else that might send static back into the line. Any extra noise from poor wiring just cuts into the signal to noise ratio and should be avoided if at all possible. (Minor stray noise in the audio spectrum like a nearby radio station or a little AC hum by themselves generally won't affect the signal - but suggest the possibility of other problems that can.)
After taking the time to do #'s 2&3 on my own home, I watched my own SNR go from a range of 6-9dB to a more stable 9-11dB. For my installation, that extra 2-3 dB has made all of the difference between regular retrains and fallbacks from my 7Mb service to only a 5Mbps actual connection speed. It hasn't retrained more than once in the nine months since I did that.
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