For some reason in the past year, I'd been having dropped connections (ATT/2Wire Gateway), spastically, without any rhyme or reason. ATT worked and worked with me changing settings, 3 new modems, etc. I even wired my modem directly to the outside terminal box to rule out any line noise on the house wiring. (I don't use it for anything else except DSL . . . no land line phones.) Finally, they sent out a repair person who checked all the drop points (we live out in the country), and he found that despite all the other tests they had run from their office, there was a signal drop every once in a while, just long enough to cut the signal and lose connection. He ordered new cable from that drop point back to the main switch. That was two days ago. I've not seen a drop since then.
So, I guess that sometimes, the tests they run from the office don't always tell everything. In this case, it was a line problem that they couldn't detect from the office.
Good luck.
